"No, sir; not a word of it," though he understood the question.
"We must have two chambers for one, two, t'ree day."
"All right; we have two that were vacated this morning," replied the clerk, as he led the way to the office, where the Frenchman registered his name, and his residence as in Paris.
Christy wrote the name of Christophe Poireau, also from Paris. Then they chatted together in French for a moment, in order to impress the clerk and others who were standing near with the fact that they spoke the polite language. They were shown to two small chambers, well up in the air, for the hotel seemed to be as full as the clerk had suggested that it was. The blockade business made the town and the hotel very lively.
The newly arrived guests did not waste any time in their rooms, but entered at once upon the work of their mission. On the piazza they halted to size up the other visitors at the hotel. From this high point of view they could see the harbor, crowded with vessels.
[CHAPTER XVIII]
AN AFFRAY IN NASSAU
Christy's first care was to look about among the guests of the hotel gathered on the piazza, in order to ascertain if there was any person there whom he had ever met before. Very few of them were what could be classed as genteel people, and some of them were such people as one would not expect to see at a first-class hotel. They were dressed in seaman's garments for the most part, though not as common sailors; and doubtless many of them were commanders or officers of the vessels in the harbor.
Putting on an indifferent air he walked about the veranda, observing every person he encountered, as well as those who were seated in groups, engaged in rather noisy conversation, intermixed with a great deal of profanity. He breathed easier when he had made the circuit of the piazzas on the first floor, though there were two others on the stories above it, for he found no one he could identify as a person he had seen before.
There were quite a number of steamers in the harbor, or in that part of it which lies inside of the bar and in front of the town, with at least three times as many sailing craft. No doubt many of the latter, as well as the former, had brought cargoes of cotton from Confederate ports; for though the blockade was regarded as effective, and treated as such by foreign nations, many small vessels contrived to escape from obscure harbors on the Southern coast. Christy had been concerned in the capture of a considerable number of such. On the wharves were stacks of cotton which had been landed from these vessels, and several of them were engaged in transferring it to small steamers, for large ones were unable to cross the bar. But the visitors had no business with the vessels thus engaged, for they had completed their voyages, and were exempt from capture.