Teresa went and knocked at the stateroom door. A querulous voice said, “Come in.” The woman curled up on the divan, under the electric fan, was not much older than Teresa, but she looked faded and unlovely. Rouge and lip-stick simulated a vanished bloom. An empty cocktail glass was at her elbow. An ash tray reeked with dead cigarettes.
“For God’s sake, Miss Fernandez, is the ship ever going to leave this beastly hole?” she complained. “I’m dying with the heat and bored sick. Rub some of that bay rum on my head. It feels as if the top would fly off.”
“Yes, madam. It will be cooler soon, when we get out of the harbor. Cartagena is always hot in the middle of the day.”
“Hot? You said something. And stupid! I didn’t mind the cruise until we tied up to this dump. A fool doctor shoved me off on a sea voyage, and my husband couldn’t leave his business. It was wished on me, all right.”
“Cartagena is very beautiful, so many people think,” ventured Teresa.
“Huh, they must be dead ones. Nothing has happened here in three hundred years. I’ll bet you couldn’t wake it up with a ton of dynamite. How did you ever stand living here? You seem to have some pep. Got it in little old New York, I’ll bet.”
“Perhaps, madam. New York is a live one.”
“Right-o. That’s where you get action. No Rip Van Winkle stuff. You can always start something. These Colombians? Dead on their feet—asleep at the switch.”
“I am a Colombian, madam,” smiled Teresa, an absent look in her eyes. “Yes, nothing ever happens in Cartagena. It is stupid and asleep. Nobody could start anything at all.”
Deftly the stewardess ministered to the aching head of the woman in seventeen, soothing her with a murmurous, agreeable flow of talk. The steamer blew three long, strident blasts. Teresa excused herself and hastened on deck. The Tarragona was moving slowly away from the wharf. Presently she swung to traverse the wide lagoon and so reach the open sea through the narrow fairway of the Boca Chica.