“And my father is the master of those roaring engines,” thought Rafael with a thrill of pride, as Capitana started on again with a lunge that nearly dismounted Tia Marta, taken off her guard as she was. Falling back to the end of the train, the boy gave his red cap an impatient twirl, but its magic did not avail to show him what he so yearned to see,--Cadiz, the white city rising like a crystal castle at the end of the eight-mile rope of sand; Cadiz, the Silver Cup into which America, once upon a time, had poured such wealth of gold and gems and marvels; Cadiz, that its lovers liken to a pearl clasped between the parted turquoise shells of sea and sky, or to a nest of sea-gulls in the hollow of a rock. Just then--could Rafael’s hungry gaze have reached so far--a grim battleship was lying like a stain upon those azure waters and from her turret a stern-faced officer, with the stripes of a Chief Engineer, was watching through a spy glass a herd of conscripts, driven like cattle down the wharf to the waiting transports. Don Quixote began to droop as the midday heats came on, and Pedrillo, still trudging along on foot, swung Pilarica up to Peregrina’s back. “And how does our little lady like the open road?” asked the muleteer. Pilarica had not words to tell him how much she liked it,--how strange and how enchanting every league of the way, rough or smooth, was to her senses. Under that violet sky all the world, except for the snowy mountain-tops, was green with spring,--the emerald green of the fig trees, the bluish green of the aloes, the ashen green of the olives. Every fruit orchard, every vineyard, the shepherds on the hills with flocks whose fleeces shone like silver in the sun, the gleam of the whitewashed villages, all these made the child’s heart leap with a buoyant happiness she knew not how to utter. The stranger it all was, the more she felt at home. As here and there, for instance, they passed an unfamiliar tree, it became at once a friend, and almost a member of their caravan. The hoary sycamores were so many grandfathers reaching out their arms to Pilarica; the locusts clapped their little round hands like playmates, and the pepper-trees, festooned with red berries, seemed to rival the gaudy trappings of the mules. Every turn in the road was an adventure. But the child could find no better language for her thoughts than the demure question: “Do you think, Don Pedrillo, that we shall meet a bear?”