"Manca!" cried she, in a voice like an ill-conditioned trumpet, and gazing around her as she spoke. "Manca!" she repeated in a yet harsher tone; and then throwing her right foot and leg over the side of the hammock, she, by a tremendous kick, knocked the drowsy Manca off her perch. By this exertion there was communicated to the hammock a swinging motion which seemed highly pleasing to the Spanish lady, who allowed her left foot to follow her right, neither of them being protected by stockings or any other covering; and then, holding on with both hands to the cords of the hammock, she rocked herself to and from with infinite satisfaction, her sole garment being her chemise. For the third time did the Spaniard utter his lamentable Oh! Ah! "Don Matanzas!" screamed the senora, "it is impossible to shut one's eye for your groans. Can one have no quiet; not even for the siesta? _C--jo!_" And again she jerked herself into her hammock, which Manca now kept in a state of vibration, creating a cool breeze in the room, but at the same time raising clouds of dust. About two minutes elapsed, during which not a word was spoken; the Spaniard had lighted a cigar, and was puffing forth volumes of smoke. On a sudden he took the cigar from his mouth, apparently in a great rage. "_Muerte y infiernos!_" he exclaimed. A twinge interrupted him, and he relapsed into his groanings, while his greenish-brown physiognomy was horribly distorted. "_Muerte y infiernos!_" he resumed, as the pangs diminished in violence. "No quiet, say you? And whose fault is it? Who brought us up here from Acapulco?" "Would you have stopped there to be made minced meat of by the rebels?" retorted his wife. "_Maldito mal pais_," growled the Spaniard. "Would that I had remained in the Madre Patria!" The lady cast a glance of the most supreme contempt upon her shadow of a husband, took a cigar from the Indian girl, and beckoned the mulatto to bring her a light. It was only when her cigar was in full puff that she vouchsafed a reply. "Remain in the Madre Patria, say you? To dine with St Antonio,[18] I suppose. To feast upon garlic soup, with six-and-thirty garbanzos in it, and as many drops of oil swimming on the hot water. _Porquerias! No hablas como Cristiano._" "Not speak like a Christian, say you?" cried the Spaniard with a sort of comical shudder. "Jesus, Maria, y Jose! _Nosotros!_ We, who descend from the oldest Christians of whom Castile can boast--we, whose ancestors were at the fight by Roncesvalles"---- "Pshaw! the man talks nonsense. Did we not come all the way from Acapulco to get him cured of his consumption? And now we are here, the fool will not see the doctor, because he would be obliged to call the Zambo Don, or Senor. Cursed folly!"