"Will you allow me to write an article about that?" asked Ben-Zayb. "In
this country there is so little thinking done--"

"But, Don Custodio," exclaimed Doña Victorina with smirks and grimaces,
"if everybody takes to raising ducks the _balot_ [5] eggs will become
abundant. Ugh, how nasty! Rather, let the bar close up entirely!"





CHAPTER II

ON THE LOWER DECK


There, below, other scenes were being enacted. Seated on benches
or small wooden stools among valises, boxes, and baskets, a few
feet from the engines, in the heat of the boilers, amid the human
smells and the pestilential odor of oil, were to be seen the great
majority of the passengers. Some were silently gazing at the changing
scenes along the banks, others were playing cards or conversing in the
midst of the scraping of shovels, the roar of the engine, the hiss of
escaping steam, the swash of disturbed waters, and the shrieks of the
whistle. In one corner, heaped up like corpses, slept, or tried to
sleep, a number of Chinese pedlers, seasick, pale, frothing through
half-opened lips, and bathed in their copious perspiration. Only
a few youths, students for the most part, easily recognizable from
their white garments and their confident bearing, made bold to move
about from stern to bow, leaping over baskets and boxes, happy in