"My name is Diego. What is your name?"
Lee told him.
| "I came from Havana. Where did you come from?" Lee related his story in a few words. "Just the same with me," said Diego, when he had finished. "I've got no father, no mother; but I'll not stop here. The captain treats me like a slave. When we get to Havana, we go ashore, eh?" Lee had for some time thought he had better get out of the Traveler, if he could only see his way to do so. But he said: |
"Where would we go, and what would we do, Diego? I have to get a living, and would only have to look for another vessel to take me home, and that might not be so easy to get."
Diego smiled knowingly.
"You see, I've got an aunt, and she lives at Regla," he said. "She's a good old woman, but very poor. We can sleep in her house, though, till we find something to do."
Lee did not promise, although Diego returned to the subject several times. But on the morning that the vessel entered Havana the captain gave him a violent blow with his fist, because he was not quick enough in bringing him his spyglass from the cabin, and this determined Lee finally, and he went forward and told Diego he was ready to go at the first chance.
"All right," replied the Cuban; "I'll keep my eyes open and mouth shut."
It was a lovely morning as Lee stood forward and entered the first foreign port in which he had ever been, glancing up at the frowning Morro Castle at the entrance, close to which all vessels must pass, and seeing the great guns pointing at them from the embrasures in the old walls, the quaint turrets or sentry-boxes, painted in red and yellow, with the sentinels pacing up and down, with polished muskets and bayonets, and dressed in uniforms of white linen.
Then opened the view of the great harbor within, filled with shipping, and the town beyond, with houses having no chimneys and painted in white and red, and green and pink, with nodding palms and other tropical foliage growing—all strange enough to a lad who had been all his life north of Cape Cod.