The boundary of Son Españolet, which joined the country, was heavily guarded. In addition to high walls and much intricate zigzagging of barbed wire, wherever two roads met there was a little station-house, or, to be more exact, a shanty, for the shelter of consumeros, both male and female, whose duty it was to examine all goods entering the city limits. And at frequent intervals all along the boundary roads was a species of sentry-box, usually containing a chair and a water-jar, in which for sixteen hours a day a consumero was supposed to keep watch over his own bit of boundary, and to be ready, if anything suspicious attracted his notice, to warn the others, by a series of shrill whistles, to be on the alert.
During the long hours passed in enforced idleness at their posts, many of the men had contrived to give their surroundings quite a home-like appearance. A pleasant man, whose location was at the end of our road, always seemed to have his children playing about him; and often his wife used to take her knitting and the newest baby, and the family goat and a big earthenware pan of amber-tinted rice, and make quite a picnic under the trees near his watch-box.
Another consumero had a stripling vine that he was carefully training up the trellis over his shed. We sometimes saw him watering it. And one, a tall silent man, whose station abutted on a piece of vacant ground, had gradually erected quite a long range of hen-coops along the base of a warm wall; and there he would stroll in the sunshine attended by a flock of flourishing poultry, chiefly of the Plymouth Rock breed.
But these were exceptions. The majority of the consumeros seemed content to lazy away their days and doze away their nights as comfortably as possible. When the early winter darkness had fallen, it was picturesque to see them lighting a brazier, or sitting huddled up in their warm brown blankets beside its glowing embers fast asleep.
When we had been spending the evening in town and were coming home late, we sometimes enjoyed waiting until we were close upon one of these muffled figures, and then, in chorus, saying politely "Buenas noches."
Then we would see the comatose form galvanize into a semblance of life, and hear a drowsy voice from the midst of the enwrappings reply "Buenas noches tengan."
The discovery that the monetary recompense for the sixteen hours that the consumero worked or played was only two pesetas—or about eighteenpence of English money—showed that if he was not overwrought neither was he overpaid.
At nightfall these guardians of our district were reinforced by the addition of two active young carabineros who carried loaded rifles. So between the police, the armed soldiers, the sleepy consumeros, the elusive sereno and the ornamental vigilante, the residents of Son Españolet ought to have gone to bed with a feeling of security.