But long years of exile had only served to make John Bard more resolutely British. An uncompromising bachelor, abstemious in his habits and puritanical in his outlook, his mental attitude towards his fellow-man in this tiny republic of the Spanish Main was exactly what it would have been had he been a London suburbanite suddenly translated from his native Brixton to these distant shores. He was an eminently common-sensible person who was generally reputed to run the miniature republic of Rodriguez in which he had elected to settle down after his adventurous life.
His unshakable phlegm lent him a reposeful air which I believe was the first thing that drew me to him when, a few months before, for the first time for many years, I had met him again in a New York hotel. Six months' leave, unexpectedly offered, found me at a loose end and I gladly accepted his invitation to travel down by one of his ships and visit him in his Central American home. His cheery self-possession, as he stepped through the open doors of the verandah, seemed to put to flight the unpleasant shape which my mind's eye had seen rising from the little piece of oilsilk.
Bard crossed the room without speaking and filled himself a glass of soda-water from a syphon on the side-table. He tossed his soft panama hat on a chair and brushed back his closely cut crop of iron-grey hair from his temples. With his glass in his hand he dropped into a seat at my side.
"There's a yacht in the harbour," he said. "That's what made me late. She's called for some stuff they've got waiting for her at the Consulate. Fordwich—that's the Consul, you know—is down with a go of fever so I went round with his clerk to see about this consignment. Whew! But it's warm walking!"
"What's the yacht?" I asked.
"Name of Naomi. She's come through the Canal".... "the Canal" in these parts is, of course, the Panama Canal.... "and is going across to Hawaii, I believe!"
He yawned and stretched his big frame. He drained his glass and stood up.
"Heigho," he said, "it's after two. I'm for bed!"
Now between John Bard and me exists that sort of uncommunicative friendship which is often found between two men who have knocked about the world a good deal. Though I could tell by Bard's elaborate affection of nonchalance that he noticed I was preoccupied, I knew he would never demand the cause of this. If I wanted his advice I should have to ask for it.
"John," said I, "just a minute. Who's El Cojo?"