'It is given,' says Miamo Don Severiano with the supremest indifference.
Being in the country, and moreover tired, we retire for the night at a reasonable hour. We have to make the best of our extemporised couches, for our luggage and furniture are yet on their way, and probably will not put in an appearance before morning. Some of the guests, therefore, betake themselves to swinging hammocks, while others occupy the mayoral Don José's catres—a species of folding bedstead not unlike an open apple-stall with a canvas tray.
Not until we have fairly taken possession of our temporary couches, do we fully appreciate Doña Belen's fore-thought in providing many yards of mosquito netting. I have always dreaded a country life, no matter in what part of the world, on account of strange vermin. A shudder runs through me at the mention of earwigs and caterpillars; but give me a hatful of those interesting creatures for bedfellows in preference to a cot in Cuba without a mosquito net!
What is that sweet creature crawling cautiously towards me along the brick floor, looking like a black star-fish with a round body?
'Oh, it is nothing, massa,' says my black valet 'I kill him in a minute, massa.' Which he does with his naked heel. Only an 'araña peluda;' in plain English, a spider of gigantic proportions, whose lightest touch will draw you like a poultice. I let the 'cucurrachos' pass, for I recognise in them my old familiar friend the cockroach, whose worst crime is to leave an offensive smell on every object he touches. Neither do I object to the 'grillo,' a green thing which hops all over the room; for I know it to be but a specimen of magnified grasshopper, who will surely cease its evening gambols as soon as the light is extinguished. But oh, by Santiago or any other saint you please, I would have you crush, mangle, kill, and utterly exterminate that dark brown long-tailed brute, from whose body branch all kinds of horrible limbs, the most conspicuous of which are a pair of claws that resemble the handles of a jeweller's nippers. Only an 'alacran,' is it? Son of the tropics, it may sound mildly to thee in thy romantic dialect, but in the language of Miamo Darwin, let me tell you, it is nothing more nor less than a scurrilous scorpion, whose gentlest sting is worse than the stings of twenty wasps. If the brother of that now squashed brute should drop upon me, during my repose, from that roof (which I perceive is of 'guano' leaf, and admirably adapted for scorpion gymnastics), my appearance at the breakfast-table to-morrow, and for days after, will be hideous; to say nothing of personal discomfort and fever. Now, a mosquito net stretched over you on its frame, effectually insures you against such midnight visitors; and, if well secured on every side, will even serve to ward off the yard and a half of 'culebra' or snake, which at certain seasons is wont to invade your bedroom floor at night.
I am awakened at an early hour by Don Severiano's live stock, who hold their musical matinée in the big yard exactly under my open window. The bloated and presumptuous turkey-cock, 'guanajo,' is leading tenor in the poultry programme. First fiddle is the 'gallo Inglés,' or English rooster. Then come the double-bass pigs, who have free access to the balcony and parlour. A chorus of hens, chickens, and guinea-fowls, varies the entertainment; while the majestic 'perjuil,' or peacock, perched on his regal box, the guano roof, applauds the performance below in plaintive and heart-rending tones. Before I am up and stirring, a dark domestic brings me a tiny cup of boiling coffee and a paper cigarette, and waits for further orders. Don Severiano proposes a stroll (he tells me) through his grounds. Our horses are soon led out, and we bestride them, with an empty sack for a saddle and a bit of rope for a bridle. Better riders than the Cubans I never saw in an equestrian circus, and steadier and easier-going animals than Cuban horses I have never ridden on a 'roundabout' at a country fair.
We come upon a sorry sight at one of the 'secaderos,' or coffee-drying platforms. A young mulatto woman is undergoing 'veinte cinco' on a short ladder: in other words, is being flogged. They have tied her, face downwards, by her wrists and ankles, to a slanting ladder, while an overseer and a muscular assistant in turn administer two dozen lashes with a knotted thong. She receives her punishment with low groans; when she catches a glimpse of the spectators, she craves our intercession.
'Perdona, miamo!'
The overseer laughs, and, turning to his visitors, offers his weapon with a polite invitation that one of us will try our skill. We all appeal to Don Severiano, and, at our earnest request, that humane gentleman orders his mayoral to let the culprit off. Smarting salt and aguardiente are then rubbed in for healing purposes, and the wretched girl is conducted to a dark chamber, where her baby, five months old, is shortly afterwards brought her for solace and aliment. I venture to inquire the nature of her crime, and am assured that it is ungovernable temper and general insubordination of more than a month's standing.
Our horses are halting on one of the four secaderos, or 'barbacués'—smooth platforms on which the ripe coffee-berry is laid and raked out to be blackened and baked by the sun. Near the secaderos is a circle of ground, hedged in like a bull-ring and containing a horizontal fluted roller, turned by a crank. This roller, or pulping-mill, is made to gyrate by a mule, crushing in its perpetual journey the already baked coffee-berry, until the crisp husk peels off and exposes a couple of whity-brown, hard, oval seeds, upon which are inscribed two straight furrows. There are winnowing-machines, for separating the chaff from the already milled grain. In that outhouse a group of dark divinities are engaged in the difficult process of sieving and sorting. See with what exceeding dexterity Alicia, Ernestina, and Constancia—the black workers have the whitest of Christian names—handle their big sieves. Alicia, cigar in mouth, takes an armful of the winnowed seed from the sack at her side, and transfers it to her sieve, which she shakes until the dust and remaining particles of husk fall like floating feathers to the ground. Then, by an expert turn of the wrist, she separates the smaller and better quality of seed from the larger and coarser; and by another remarkable sleight of hand, tilts the former into its corresponding heap on the ground, and pours the latter into a sack. Constancia is scarcely as expert as Alicia though. The sieve's perforations are wide enough to admit the small seed of the 'caracol,' and she separates the two qualities by the ordinary process of sieving the small and retaining the great.