"I always wanted to be a pirate," he acknowledged gravely, "up to fifteen. Then I thought I'd rather run a candy store." "The ships of Sir Henry Morgan and the galleons of His Catholic Majesty Philip of Spain sailed these waters. Over yonder"--she waved a graceful hand to the north and east--"are the haunts where the adventurers of old England used to lie in wait for their prey. Ahead of us is the land that Pizarro soaked with blood. We're coming into the oldest country on this side of the globe, Mr. Anthony, where men lived in peace and plenty when most of Europe was a wilderness. I suppose such things appeal more to a woman's fancy than to a man's, but to me they're mightily alluring." Kirk wagged his head admiringly, as he said: "I wish I could make language behave like that," and Edith Cortlandt laughed like a young girl. "Oh, I'm not a perfervid poet," she disclaimed, "but everything down here is so full of association I can't help feeling it." "I'm beginning to notice it myself. Maybe it's the climate." "Perhaps. Anyhow, it is all very vivid to me. Did you ever stop to think how brave those men must have been who first went venturing into unknown seas in their little wooden boats?" "They were looking for a short cut to the East Indies, weren't they?" "Yes, to Cathay. And then the people they found and conquered! The spoils they exacted! They were men--those conquistadores--whatever else they were--big, cruel, heroic fellows like Bastida, Nicuesa, Balboa, Pedrarias the Assassin, and the rest. They oppressed the natives terribly, yet they paved the way for civilization, after all. The Spaniards did try to uplift the Indians, you know. And the life in the colonies was like that in old Spain, only more romantic and picturesque. Why, whenever I pass through these Latin-American cities I see, in place of the crumbling ruins, grand cathedrals and palaces; in place of the squalid beggars idling about the market-places I see velvet-clad dons and high-born ladies." "Aren't there any beautiful ladies left?" "A few, perhaps." "What happened to the cathedrals and the velvet fellows and all that?"