Again the young man smiled charmingly. He shook his head and laughed. “Oh dear no,” he said.
The laugh struck the Governor as impertinent.
“Then you must leave by the next mail-steamer, if you have any money to pay your passage, or, if you have no money, you must go to work on the roads. Have you any money?”
“If I had, I wouldn’t—be a vagrant,” the young man answered. His voice was low and singularly sweet. It seemed to suit the indolence of his attitude and the lazy, inconsequent smile. “I called on our consular agent here,” he continued, leisurely, “to write a letter home for money, but he was disgracefully drunk, so I used his official note-paper to write to the State Department about him, instead.”
The Governor’s deepest interest was aroused. The American consular agent was one of the severest trials he was forced to endure.
“You are not a British subject, then? Ah, I see—and—er—your representative was unable to assist you?”
“He was drunk,” the young man repeated, placidly. “He has been drunk ever since I have been here, particularly in the mornings.”
He halted, as though the subject had lost interest for him, and gazed pleasantly at the sunny bay and up at the moving palms.
“Then,” said the Governor, as though he had not been interrupted, “as you have no means of support, you will help support the colony until you can earn money to leave it. That will do, sergeant.”
The young man placed his hat upon his head and turned to move away, but at the first step he swayed suddenly and caught at the negro’s shoulder, clasping his other hand across his eyes. The sergeant held him by the waist, and looked up at the Governor with some embarrassment.