“Going to Havana, señor?” he was asked as he stood leaning over the forward rail watching the graceful movements of the fish; and looking up he saw that the speaker was a tall young Spaniard, perhaps two or three years older than himself, handsomely dressed, but with a look in his face that Dick did not particularly like. “Yes,” he replied; “to Havana first, then on to Vera Cruz and Mexico.” “Good!” the Spaniard exclaimed. “I too am going to Mexico; we shall be friends. It is my native city--Mexico--and I am going home.” Dick brought his interviewing powers to bear, and in five minutes he learned that the Mexican was Señor don Manuel de Comacho, a lieutenant in the Mexican navy, who had been spending a year in Paris, and who was now going home with his young wife and an infant two or three months old. “But we are not in favor there now,” Comacho laughed; “my father was Secretary of the Treasury before Diaz became President, but now he is out. Perhaps I may get into trouble by going back.” “You are very free in telling your affairs to a stranger,” Dick thought; but he answered pleasantly, glad to have some English-speaking person to talk to. At the dinner table he was surprised to find the lieutenant’s wife as fair as a lily; a pretty young woman enough but proud, particularly of her complexion, for in Mexico a white skin is thought the perfection of beauty. She spoke nothing but Spanish, however, so Dick could only bow when he was introduced. “To-morrow we shall be in Havana,” Comacho said. “We might go about the city together. I shall be a useful guide,” he added, laughing, “for you speak no Spanish, and you would lose yourself.” Dick ridiculed the idea of his losing himself anywhere, but it suited him very well to go ashore with some one who knew the place. Forty-eight hours the Alameda was to lie there before continuing her voyage across the Gulf of Mexico to Vera Cruz. It was just as the sun was rising that the vessel steamed into Havana harbor, saluting with her brass cannon as she passed the Morro Castle. The scene filled Dick with rapture, as it does every one who is not too familiar with it. The pink and blue and yellow houses of the city, the fleet of vessels at anchor, the church bells ringing with a tone so different from the bells at home; the fort on one side of the entrance and the oldtime castle on the other; and better than all, to Dick’s mind, a man on the opposite shore leading a flock of sheep down to the water to bathe, with a long crook in his hand, just like the biblical shepherds. It was fairyland under a hot sun; and by the time that he and Comacho had visited neighboring sugar estates and tobacco plantations, and had seen the great Tacon Theatre, and eaten cooling ices in the Café da Louvre, and driven through the Prado, Dick declared that he had enough to write about for six months. “But I do not see you taking any notes,” said Comacho; for Dick had told him that he was a newspaper man.