“Well, I guess we’ll get breakfast to‐morrow, if we’re alive,” he said. “I’ve lived on some kind of curious things in Cuba, including fricassee of mule, but onions, bad guavas, and half‐ripe mangoes, as a mixture for fighting on, doesn’t suit my taste at all. No, sir. I want to lie down nice and quiet, and not worry anybody, when I’ve got dysentery.” His companions, however, did not complain. Perhaps they were accustomed to scarcity, though the Sin Verguenza lived well when they could do so at other men’s expense; and there is a capacity for patient endurance in most of the peoples of Spain. They lay smoking cigarettes instead, while a little cool breeze came down out of the soft darkness that now veiled the hills above. Beneath them lights twinkled dimly like clustering fireflies in the misty plain, and once a faint elfin ringing of bugles came up. The Sin Verguenza answered it with a hoarse murmur, and then lay still, patiently biding their time. The dew settled heavily as the rocks grew cooler; Appleby’s alpaca jacket grew clammy, but he lay motionless beside the embers, once more grappling with the question what was he, an Englishman of education, doing there? Violet Wayne’s eyes seemed to ask it of him reproachfully, and he could not find a fitting answer. The plea that he was there because he could not help it did not occur to him, for he was young, and believed that a determined man can shape his own destiny. Instead, he admitted vaguely that the reckless life, the testing of his bodily strength, the close touch with human nature stripped of its veneer, and the brief taste of command, all appealed to him. This, he knew, was no defence; but he felt that he at least owed the Sin Verguenza something, for they had come upon him while he hid from the troops of Spain, and, finding that he had nothing but his life to part with, had incontinently given him what they had, which was just then very little.