Carlos, however, used to declare with affectionate cynicism that the arm had been broken by the cudgel of a Polish peasant while Castro was trying to filch a pig from a stable.... “I cut his throat out, though,” Castro would grumble darkly; “so, like that, and it matters very little--it is even an improvement. See, I put on my blade. See, I transfix you that fly there.... See how astonished he was. He did never expect that.” He had actually impaled a crawling cockroach. He spent his days cooking extraordinary messes, crouching for hours over a little charcoal brazier that he lit surreptitiously in the back of his bunk, making substitutes for eternal _gaspachos_. All these things, if they deepened the romance of Carlos’ career, enhanced, also, the mystery. I asked him one day, “But why do you go to Jamaica at all if you are bound for Cuba?” He looked at me, smiling a little mournfully. “Ah, Juan mio,” he said, “Spain is not like your England, unchanging and stable. The party who reign to-day do not love me, and they are masters in Cuba as in Spain. But in his province my uncle rules alone. There I shall be safe.” He was condescending to roll some cigarettes for Tomas, whose wooden hand incommoded him, and he tossed a fragment of tobacco to the wind with a laugh. “In Jamaica there is a merchant, a Señor Ramon; I have letters to him, and he shall find me a conveyance to Rio Medio, my uncle’s town. He is an _afiliado_.” He laughed again. “It is not easy to enter that place, Juanino.” There was certainly some mystery about that town of his uncle’s. One night I overheard him say to Castro: “Tell me, O my Tomas, would it be safe to take this _caballero_, my cousin, to Rio Medio?” Castro paused, and then murmured gruffly: “Señor, unless that Irishman is consulted beforehand, or the English lord would undertake to join with the picaroons, it is very assuredly not safe.” Carlos made a little exclamation of mild astonishment. “_Pero?_ Is it so bad as that in my uncle’s own town?” Tomas muttered something that I did not catch, and then: “If the English _caballero_ committed indiscretions, or quarrelled--and all these people quarrel, why, God knows--that Irish devil could hang many persons, even myself, or take vengeance on your worship.” Carlos was silent as if in a reverie. At last he said: “But if affairs are like this, it would be well to have one more with us. The _caballero_, my cousin, is very strong and of great courage.” Castro grunted, “Oh, of a courage! But as the proverb says, ‘If you set an Englishman by a hornets’ nest they shall not remain long within.”: