We go back to our comfortable quarters and enjoy a siesta as well as we can for the fleas, whose name is legion. We sally out again towards night and drop in at the dance hall; two violins are tuning up, and the seamen gathering to a focus, while pretty women pass in and out with an easy grace, peculiar, so far as my observation has extended, to females with more or less admixture of Castilian blood. Truly has Benjie Brail remarked in that fascinating sea-story, "The Cruise of the Midge," that though females of other nationalities may have various methods of locomotion to be called by various impertinent names, no woman but a Spaniard can walk. The crowd increases after the hall is lighted, and the fun grows fast and furious. The bar, of course, does a rushing business; officers of all grades drop in, and even captains honor us with their presence. Vigilantes are near at hand to preserve order, but every one is in good-humor now, and there is little fear of any outbreak. The dancers enjoy themselves, and the admiring lookers-on drink and applaud. Mr. Grafton is near me, thoughtful and observant as usual.
"Well, Blacksmith, what do you think of Chilian women?"
"I admire them very much," said I, "and yet I can hardly tell why. Perhaps because I am partial to brunettes."
"Simplicity of toilet has much to do with it," said the mate. "You see no elaborate fashion of 'doing up' the hair, to torture and disfigure that which nature has made so beautiful. Then when they go out, you observe their heads are either exposed or else covered with a shawl or mantle falling gracefully over the shoulders. No such abomination as a bonnet disfigures them. Then again, their walk is the 'poetry of motion.' No Spanish woman ever cultivates a slight stoop of the shoulders and considers it graceful, but walks 'erect and free,' and yet without stiffness."
I could not help smiling at the worthy mate's enthusiasm on the subject, and suggested that perhaps the practice of carrying burdens on the head might have some effect in producing this erect and easy carriage.
"Of course it has much to do with it," said the mate. "But, though it would improve the carriage and walk of any woman, or man either, for that matter, it cannot create that grace of movement which is essentially Spanish, and which is to be found in ladies whose position and wealth place them above the necessity of carrying burdens at all, and, in fact, render it unlikely that they would do so. Again, the same practice prevails to a great extent all over South America, and in many of the South Sea Islands; yet who ever saw a Portuguese woman of Brazil, or a Kanaka woman of any island in the Pacific, whose walk would compare with that of a Chilian or Mexican girl?"
My attention was again directed to Farrell, who was "setting" to a pretty, black-eyed girl in the dance, his step having more of the Irish jig in it than of the "chengana," as it called here, a dance in which certain coquettish movements of a handkerchief in the hand play an important part. He was armed with an immense red cotton one which he flourished with far more vigor than grace, and, as the dance ended, he obeyed the figurative order from the first fiddler to "Square the mainyard and let the jibs run down!" by leading his pretty partner up to the bar. "I say, darlin'," said Farrell, "would ye tell me what's yer sweet name, now?"
"My name? Juanita," answered the girl.
"Whon-eater? an' is that yer name indade; an' sure your lingo is for all the warld like pourin' music out of a jug. Whon-eater—an' what can be sweeter?—I'll take her up and treat her—I will, by the houly St. Pether!" said Farrell, by way of climax; for he was now in his poetical stage of inebriation—in which he would "rhyme you" like a very Touchstone.