“They are strange names,” he said with a laugh, “but we of the plains often have to find the way on land as a sailor on the sea.”
“Has he any papers?” demanded the captain, apparently satisfied that the passenger was really acquainted with the chief star-groups.
Maseden produced that thrice-fortunate duplicate of the receipt for cattle brought from the San Luis ranch to Cartagena by Ramon Aliones that very day. The captain examined it, and turned wrathfully on the steward.
“Be off to the devil!” he growled. “Find some other job than bothering me with your fool’s tales!”
When Alfonso had vanished, he added, seemingly as an afterthought:
“If I was a vaquero with a dirty face, I wouldn’t worry about clean fingernails or wear silk underclothing, and I’d do my star-gazing in dumb show!”
With that he, too, strode away. Undoubtedly, the captain of the Southern Cross was no fool.
Five minutes later the silk vest and pants which Maseden had not troubled to change while donning the gay attire of old Lopez’s nephew, went into the Pacific through the small port-hole which redeemed the cabin’s otherwise stuffy atmosphere. Happily the bunk, though crude, was clean, and long enough to hold a tall man.
Maseden fancied he would lie awake for hours. In reality, he was dead tired, and slept the sleep of sheer exhaustion until wakened by a loud-voiced intimation that all crimson-hued Dagoes must rouse themselves if they didn’t want to be stirred up by a hose-pipe.
Now, if there was one thing more than another that Maseden liked when on board ship, it was a cold salt-water bath. But he dared neither take a bath nor wash his face. Personal cleanliness is not a marked characteristic of South American cowboys. That he should display close-cropped hair instead of an abundance of oiled and curly tresses was a fact singular enough in itself, without inviting attention by the use of soap and water.