PART SECOND -- THE GIRL WITH THE LIZARD




CHAPTER ONE

"Rio Medio?" Señor Ramon said to me nearly two years afterwards. "The
_caballero_ is pleased to give me credit for a very great knowledge.
What should I know of that town? There are doubtless good men there and
very wicked, as in other towns. Who knows? Your worship must ask the
boats' crews that the admiral has sent to burn the town. They will be
back very soon now."

He looked at me, inscrutably and attentively, through his gold
spectacles.

It was on the arcade before his store in Spanish Town. Long sunblinds
flapped slightly. Before the next door a large sign proclaimed
"Office of the _Buchatoro Journal_" It was, as I have said, after two
years--years which, as Carlos had predicted, I had found to be of hard
work, and long, hot sameness. I had come down from Horton Pen to Spanish
Town, expecting a letter from Veronica, and, the stage not being in,
had dropped in to chat with Ramon over a consignment of Yankee notions,
which he was prepared to sell at an extravagantly cheap price. It was
just at the time when Admiral Rowley was understood to be going to make