"Hullo, Cospatric! you're looking as black as a Soudanese stoker with the stomach-ache. Did ye think I'd been tampering with the interests of the firm? Not a bit of it, man. Thanks to his own natural cussedness, I've just fixed your schoolmaster beautifully. The stars in their courses are backing up our stupendous luck. Some gentlemen of the anarchist persuasion have been blowing up men and women and marble seats in the Plaza Real at Barcelona. Indiscriminate shooting on the part of the troops followed, and cables were sent to all parts to watch for escaping assassins. The affair happened after the _Antiguo Mahones_ sailed, so far as I can make out; but, of course, to the Spanish official mind that is a mere matter of detail. In these cases Spain expects that every man this day will exceed his duty. Weems being the only foreigner on board, and having the looks of a man who would not steal a potato, was naturally spotted at once, and a sub-officer of Carabineros demanded his passport. Weems, not knowing a word of Catalan, looked helpless. An interested mob collected, and stared and made suggestions. None of them could speak a word of English. Weems got pale, and offered the Carabinero half a peseta. Had the bribe been a big one and tendered privately, it might have carried weight; but as it was, the offer was an insult. "At this point I pushed through the crowd, and offered my services as an interpreter. I can imagine the little worm was never so humbly grateful in his life; but when I told him that his passport was wanted, he was the cocksure schoolmaster ape in a moment. Such a thing was not requisite for travelling in Spain; it was utterly superfluous; I might be ignorant of the fact, as so many people were, but he could assure me it was so. A clerk at a tourist agency (in some provincial town at home) had told him all about the matter. And so he had got no passport. Would I explain these matters to the person in uniform, and inform him that he would be pilloried in the _Times_ if he did not take great care of what he was about. "As this couldn't well be improved upon, I put it into Spanish, verbatim, and the Carabinero's suspicion grew to certainty. 'Did I know the senor?' 'No, never clapped eyes on him before.' 'But he was a countryman of mine?' With a suggestive shrug of the shoulders, 'I devoutly hoped not.' 'Then it was his duty to make the senor his prisoner.'