“There’s a more serious side to it, too; but I am going into that with my eyes open. I am going ashore with the wife and child of a man who is wanted by the government, and I may easily be mistaken for him and be arrested. But that would be too good to be true. Wouldn’t the New York boys be jealous if I should walk right into a Mexican prison the minute I landed? The story of the arrest would be worth at least two columns, and the court proceedings ought to make at least two fine articles. Then there might be some English-speaking prisoners in the jail who could tell me a lot of capital stories, and after a few days the American minister would have me out with great éclat, and my liberation would make another article. But that’s too good luck even to think about.” It required the largest of the rowboats to carry Dick’s party and their trunks ashore, and when they landed at the mole the boatmen shouldered the trunks and took them to the open gallery in which they were to be examined by the Custom House officers. Dick opened his own trunk first to give Señora Comacho time to get out her keys, and the inspector gave its contents hardly more than a glance. But the Mexican lady did not understand, and Dick explained to her, by holding up the key of his own trunk, that he must have her keys. He began to unlock her trunks when she produced them, but the inspector stopped him. “Oh, it’s all right, is it?” Dick said. What the inspector said was all Greek to him, but he understood the meaning of the motions the man made toward the big gate. “Don’t care to look at them, don’t you? That’s because they belong to a good-looking young lady. You Custom House fellows are all alike, whether you speak English or Spanish.” They were at liberty now to take their trunks to the hotel, but how to get them there was more than Dick could see. He wanted a dray; but he could see the street through the broad arch, and there was no wheeled vehicle in sight. He did not know, of course, that all such carrying is done on porters’ shoulders in Vera Cruz. When he stepped through the arch to look up and down the street a dozen porters followed him back to the trunks. “These porters will carry your trunks to the hotel,” said the inspector, not in so many words, but by pointing first to the porters, then to the trunks. Those little porters! Some of them looked like boys of twelve or fourteen. All were bare-headed and bare-legged, and their tawny little legs did not look strong enough to carry much of a load. “Si! si!” said Dick. He had learned that much Spanish on the steamer. “Hotel Veracruzana.” The undersized porters shouldered the heavy trunks with ease and filed out into the street, seven of them, one after another, Dick and Señora Comacho, the latter with the baby in her arms, bringing up the rear.