I reckoned I should probably hear all about it when I went to the consul’s office at Buenos Ayres. Either my mother, or Ham, would write me the particulars of Paul’s running away from home. The Bayne Liner was no mailboat; I expected that my letters had been awaiting me for some time at the port; and the money could have been cabled nearly a month before this date.
Well, we got into Buenos Ayres in good season, and I noted where the Peveril was docked. We moored outside a raft of small sailing crafts and had the dickens of a time taking Ben Gibson ashore on his mattress. A couple of blacks helped us, and after sending in a telephone message to the hospital, a very modern and up-to-date motor ambulance came down and whisked us all off to that institution. I couldn’t speak Spanish, nor could Ben; but those medicos could talk English after a fashion, and soon Ben was fixed fine in a private room and the doctors declared he’d be fit as a fiddle in six weeks.
Then it was up to old Tom and me to find a place to camp. The sailor was for going back to the sloop where board and lodging wouldn’t cost us much; but I confess I was hungry for something more civilized. I wanted bed-sheets and ham and eggs for breakfast—or whatever the Buenos Ayres equivalent was for those viands!
We made some inquiries—of course along the water-front—and found a decent sailors’ boarding house kept by a withered old Mestizo woman (the Mestizoes are the native population of Argentina) who had some idea of cleanliness and could cook beans and fish in more ways than you could shake a stick at; only, as Tom objected very soon, all her culinary results tasted alike because of the pepper!
It was after breakfast the morning following our arrival that Tom uttered this criticism. We were on our way to the hospital. We found Ben feeling “bully” as he weakly told us, when we were allowed to go up to his private room. Captain Rogers had given him drafts on a local banker and he was fixed right at that hospital. The doctors had examined him again and pronounced him coming on fine. So, with my mind at rest about him, I tacked away for the little dobe building down toward the water-front which at that day flew the American flag from the staff upon its roof.
It was a busy place and most of the clerks I saw were Mestizoes, or Spaniards, or the several shades of color between the two races. Spanish seemed to be spoken for the most part; but finally a man came out of a rear office and asked me abruptly what I wanted.
“I’d like to see Mr. Hefferan,” I said.
“He’s busy. Can’t see him. What do you want?” snapped this man.
“I’m an American, and I’d like to see him,” I began, but the fellow, who had been looking me over pretty scornfully broke in:
“That’s impossible, I tell you. Tell me what you want? Had trouble with your captain? Overstayed your leave? Or have you just got out of jail?”