Page:A Mainsail Haul - Masefield - 1913.djvu/17

 rum. And lower away your dinghy, for I'm going in for a drink. You can take her in, mister, with two of the hands, and then lay aboard till I whistle." So they lower the dinghy, and Don Alfonso takes some cigarellers, and ashore he goes for that there licker.

Now when he sets foot ashore, and the boat was gone off, Don Alfonso he walks up the quay in search of a pulperia. And it was a strange land he was in, and that's the truth. Quiet it was, and the little white houses still as corfins, and only a lamp or two burning, and never a sound nor a song. Oh, a glad lad was Don Alfonso when he sees a nice little calaboosa lying to leeward, with a red lamp burning in the stoop. So in he goes for a dram—into the grog-house, into a little room with a fire lit and a little red man behind the bar. Now it was a caution was that there room, for instead of there bein' casks like beer or vino casks, there was only corfins. And the little red man he gives a grin, and he gives the glad hand to Don Alfonso, and he sets them up along the bar, and Alfonso lights a cigareller. So then the Don drinks, and the little red man says, "Salue."