“I’m going to be roasted and broiled and frizzled here,” he said to himself, “under this sun. But I can stand it if these fellows can. And when there’s no lighter in sight I can get into the shade there beside the warehouse.”
He soon found that he was to have company in the hot sun; for as the agent had to receipt for the goods, he sent one of his own clerks to check them off on one of the manifests that Kit had copied. The clerk was a slender young man in a broad-brimmed Panama hat; and Kit was greatly amused when he touched his hat to him, and called him “Señor.” But the young man spoke a little English, and they soon became acquainted.
“You are young for a supercargo, Señor,” the clerk said, in a lull in the work.
“‘YOU ARE YOUNG FOR A SUPERCARGO, SEÑOR.’”
Kit had read enough sea stories to know something about supercargoes, though he did not know that he was doing the work of one at that minute.
“I’m not the supercargo, sir,” he replied; “I’m the cabin boy; we have no supercargo.”
“Ah!” said the clerk; and it was still more amusing to see how dignified he immediately became, and what a superior air he assumed. But another trifling incident soon made him friendly again, for the agent himself came down to the mole to inquire about something, and he, too, touched his hat to Kit and called him Señor, whereupon the clerk said something in Spanish that must have explained that Kit was only the cabin boy, for the agent immediately replied, “Oh, cabin boy is he? Well, he must be a good one, or he wouldn’t be put at this work. Bring him up to the house to breakfast.”
Kit was under the impression that he had had his breakfast several hours before, on board ship; but he followed Tom Haines’s advice to “keep his eyes open and his mouth shut,” and before long he learned that the southern custom is to take only a cup of coffee and a roll in the early morning, and to wait till midday for the full breakfast, which is really an early dinner.
About twelve o’clock there were no lighters in sight, for the boatmen were eating their breakfast too, and the clerk took Kit through a narrow street to a big one-story stone warehouse, the agent’s business place, where, on a shady rear verandah, a long table was spread. This was “the house” the agent had referred to; and by keeping both eyes and ears open, Kit learned that it is the custom in Yucatan for the proprietors and all the employees of large business houses to eat together in the warehouses, a cook and waiters being kept on the premises.