Henry Seton Merriman

“ The whole Café Carmona lay before him, and through the smoke of his cigarette he looked with quiet, unobtrusive eyes, studying ... studying.
Presently an old man entered. This little table was his by right of precedence. He had been sitting at it the night before when the Englishman had elected to sit beside him; bowing as he did so in the Spanish manner, and clapping his hands in the way of Spain, to call the waiter when he was seated. ”

“ But he was not large, this one—the Rock does not breed a large race. They are mean little men, with small white hands and women's feet. Ah, God! how I hate them all!”
The Englishman took a fresh cigarette from a Russia leather case, and pushed the remainder across the table for his companion to help himself when he had finished mashing the crooked paper between his lips.
“I know your language,” the Spaniard went on, “as well almost as you know mine. But I do not speak it now. It burns my throat—it hurts.”
Cartoner lighted his cigarette. He betrayed not the smallest feeling of curiosity. ”

“ For we are a simple people, except when we love or hate!”
“Yes,” said Cartoner, speaking for the first time. “I know.”
“In an hour I knew where he lived. His father was an English groom who had set up large breeding stables in Gibraltar, and was a rich man. The son had the pretension of being a gentleman. He had been in England they told me for a year, buying stud-horses—and—and something else. He was married. Ah-ha! He had been married three years before he ever saw Lorenza, and the ceremony which had been observed in the English Church at Seville was a farce. My heart was hot within me ”

“ The woman (his wife) , it appeared, was the daughter of a merchant at Gibraltar. They were a whole nest of Scorpions. I went back to Algeciras, and said nothing then to Lorenza. The next night I heard by chance that he and his wife and children had taken passage in a steamer that sailed for England in two days. Madre de Dio! he nearly slipped through our fingers. It was not a P. and O. ship: the passengers had to take a boat from the Old Mole, which is always crowded with Algeciras boats and others. ”

“ That man died a hundred times in the ten minutes wherein we ballasted him. We tied heavy stones upon his body—we filled his pockets with smaller ones. We left his arms free, but to the palm of each hand we bound a stone as large as my head. The same to each foot. ”