PART TWO
CHAPTER I.
THE UNSUSPECTED CITY
Hemming happened upon the city of Pernamba on the evening of a sultry day in April. He manifested no surprise beyond straightening his monocle in his eye.
"Hope they have some English soda-water down there," he said to the heavy foliage about him, "but I suppose it would be hardly fair to expect an ice factory so far from the coast." For a second a vision of tall glasses and ice that clinked came to his mind's eye. He remembered the cool dining-rooms of his friends in Pernambuco. He spurred his native-bred steed to a hesitating trot along the narrow, hoof-worn path that led down to the valley. At a mud and timber hut set beneath banana-trees, and backed by a tiny field, he drew rein. A woman sat before the door, looking cool and at ease in her scanty cotton dress. A naked child chased a pig among the bananas. Hemming greeted the woman in Portuguese. She gave him humble greeting in return. The pig and the baby came near to listen. Hemming swung his feet free from the stirrups, to straighten the kink out of his knees. He pushed back his pith helmet, and lit a cigarette.
"What is the name of the town?" he asked, smiling reassuringly.
The woman told him, standing respectfully on the earthen threshold. Such square shoulders and clear eyes as this Englishman's were not every-day sights in Pernamba.
"May a stranger find entertainment there?" he inquired.
"Yes," she replied, "and the great man who owns it is generous to strangers. He is a big man, full of wisdom, smoking eternally a yellow cigar not of this country."
Hemming dismounted, the better to rest his horse. Although he had ridden all that day and the day before, he felt no fatigue himself. The tropical sun, the narrow water-cut paths, and the clambering vines held in the heated air and luring him with strange flowers, brought him no terror. But he polished his monocle and sighed uneasily, for his store of milreis had dwindled since leaving Pernambuco a week before to a sum equalling about eleven pounds in English money.
"Has this man an army?" he asked.