“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m not busy now. That bumboat pirate queered the only business I had. Where are you going to stop? There is only one place,” he explained; “that’s Pulido’s. He’ll knife you if he thinks you have five dollars in your belt, and the bar-room is half under water anyway. Or you can take a cot in my shack, if you like, and I’ll board and lodge you for two pesos a day--that’s one dollar in our money. And if you are going up country,” he went on, “I can fit you out with mules and mozos and everything you want, from canned meats to an escort of soldiers. You’re sure to be robbed anyway,” he urged, pleasantly, “and you might as well give the job to a fellow-countryman. I’d hate to have one of these greasers get it.” “You’re welcome to try,” I said, laughing. In spite of his manner, which was much too familiar and patronizing, the young man amused me, and I must confess moreover that at that moment I felt very far from home and was glad to meet an American, and one not so much older than myself. The fact that he was our consul struck me as a most fortunate circumstance. He clapped his hands and directed one of the negroes to carry my trunk to the consulate, and I walked with him up the pier, the native soldiers saluting him awkwardly as he passed. He returned their salute with a flourish, and more to impress me I guessed than from any regard for them. “That’s because I’m Consul,” he said, with satisfaction. “There’s only eight white men in Porto Cortez,” he explained, “and we’re all consular agents. The Italian consular agent is a Frenchman, and an Italian, Guessippi--the Banana King, they call him--is consular agent for both Germany and England, and the only German here is consular agent for France and Holland. You see, each of ‘em has to represent some other country than his own, because his country knows why he left it.” He threw back his head and laughed at this with great delight. Apparently he had already forgotten the rebuff from Captain Leeds. But it had made a deep impression upon me. I had heard Leeds virtually accuse the consul of being an agent of General Laguerre, and I suspected that the articles he had refused to deliver were more likely to be machine guns than sewing-machines. If this were true, Mr. Aiken was a person in whom I could confide with safety. The consulate was a one-story building of corrugated iron, hot, unpainted, and unlovely. It was set on wooden logs to lift it from the reach of “sand jiggers” and the surf, which at high tide ran up the beach, under and beyond it. Inside it was rude and bare, and the heat and the smell of the harbor, and of the swamp on which the town was built, passed freely through the open doors.