lay counterplots, to bide their time, to solicit funds, to enlist
filibusterers, to smuggle out arms and ammunitions, to play the game at
long taw. In El Refugio, they find the atmosphere in which they thrive.

In the restaurant of El Refugio are served compounds delightful to the
palate of the man from Capricorn or Cancer. Altruism must halt the story
thus long. On, diner, weary of the culinary subterfuges of the Gallic
chef, hie thee to El Refugio! There only will you find a fish--bluefish,
shad or pompano from the Gulf--baked after the Spanish method. Tomatoes
give it color, individuality and soul; chili colorado bestows upon
it zest, originality and fervor; unknown herbs furnish piquancy and
mystery, and--but its crowning glory deserves a new sentence. Around
it, above it, beneath it, in its vicinity--but never in it--hovers an
ethereal aura, an effluvium so rarefied and delicate that only the
Society for Psychical Research could note its origin. Do not say that
garlic is in the fish at El Refugio. It is not otherwise than as if the
spirit of Garlic, flitting past, has wafted one kiss that lingers in the
parsley-crowned dish as haunting as those kisses in life, "by hopeless
fancy feigned on lips that are for others." And then, when Conchito, the
waiter, brings you a plate of brown frijoles and a carafe of wine that
has never stood still between Oporto and El Refugio--ah, Dios!

One day a Hamburg-American liner deposited upon Pier No. 55 Gen. Perrico
Ximenes Villablanca Falcon, a passenger from Cartagena. The General
was between a claybank and a bay in complexion, had a 42-inch waist
and stood 5 feet 4 with his Du Barry heels. He had the mustache of
a shooting-gallery proprietor, he wore the full dress of a Texas
congressman and had the important aspect of an uninstructed delegate.

Gen. Falcon had enough English under his hat to enable him to inquire