Tom was out somewhere seeing the sights. He had not gone with me to the consul’s office. Supper time came before the old man showed up and I sat down among the first of the boarders. They were a cosmopolitan lot, rough seamen from several quarters of the globe. They spoke half a dozen different languages and dialects.
I sat with my back to the door, and was only aware of the entrance of another party of men by the noise and stir behind me.
“Will you pass down a dish of those beans mate?” I had just called above the hubbub, speaking to a man across the table.
Instantly somebody stepped quickly behind my chair. A hand came down heavily on my shoulder.
“By all the e-tar-nal snakes!” ejaculated a nasal voice. “I knew I couldn’t be mistaken about that back. But the voice convinced me. By the e-tar-nal snakes! Professor, how came you here?”
I turned slowly to see who had thus addressed me. It was a tall individual at my side—long legged, very lean, and when he laughed it sounded like a horse neighing. He was so very tall that I had not raised my eyes far enough to see his face before he spoke again.
“Professor! ye sartainly give me a start. By the e-tar-nal snakes! I could have taken my dying oath you wasn’t north o’ the cape o’ the Virgins. What you doin’ yere in Maria Debora’s?”
It began to be impressed on my mind with force that I was a good deal like the little old woman of the nursery rhyme. I wondered whether this was really me, or was it not me? My identity as Clinton Webb had been denied at the consul’s, and here a perfect stranger was calling me out of my name—and he seemed insistent upon it, too!