England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, English
I slept until the morning light filled the cabin, and I was roused by
the cheery voice of the steward, bidding me "Buenos dias." The ship
was moving on an even keel. Overhead the deck was being swabbed. I
opened my little window and looked out--and the night's doings rose in
my memory. But who could think of dreams of midnight assassins with
the sea air in his nostrils, and before his eyes that vignette of blue
sea and grey rocks--grey, but sparkling, gemlike, ethereal under the
sun of Spain? Not I. I was gay as a lark, hungry as a hunter. Sallying
out before I was dressed, I satisfied myself that the opposite cabin
was empty, and came back laughing at my folly.
But when I found that something else was empty, I thought it no
laughing matter. I wanted a snack to stay my appetite until the
steward should bring my _café complet_, and I turned to the little
shelf over my berth where I had placed the biscuits. They were not
there. Curious! And I had not eaten them. Then it flashed upon my mind
that it was with this shelf my visitor had meddled.
After that I did not lose a moment. I examined my luggage and the
pockets of my clothes; the result relieved as much as it astonished
me; nothing was missing. My armed apparition had carried off two
captain's biscuits, and nothing else!
I passed the morning puzzling over it. Sleigh did not come near me.
Was he conscious of guilt, I wondered, or offended by the abruptness
of my leave-taking the night before? Or was he engaged about his work?
About noon we came to our moorings at Alicante. The sky was unclouded.
The shabby town and the barren hills that rose behind it--barren to
the eye, since the vines were not in leaf--looked baking hot. I had
found a cool corner of the ship, and was amusing myself with a copy of
"Don Quixote" and a dictionary, when the engineer approached.
"Not going ashore?" he said.
For the twentieth time I wondered what it was in his manner that made
everything he said a gibe. Whatever it was, I hated him for it; and I
gave my feelings vent by answering sullenly, "No, I am not." And
forthwith I turned to my books again.
"I thought you travellers for pleasure wanted to see everything," he
said. "Maybe you know Alicante?"
"No," I answered snappishly. "And in this heat I don't want to know
it!"
"All right, governor, all right!" he replied. "Think it might be too
hot for you, perhaps?" And with a hoarse laugh that lasted him from
stem to stern, and brought the blood to my cheeks, he left me. But I
could see that he did not lose sight of me, and at intervals I heard
him chuckling at his own wit for fully half an hour afterwards. But
where the joke came in I could not determine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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