Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/570

562 “Hang it, man, you haven’t forgotten Dick Musgrave!”

Then, indeed, I heartily grasped the proffered hand, and warmly declared how glad I was to see my old friend again, the Dick Musgrave of early days at Sandhurst, now captain, unattached, and a Ganymede of the Foreign Office.

“Where are you from now, Dick?” I asked, as we moved along the pier together, followed by a porter carrying my friend’s valise and bags.

“Vienna. Tiresome work, that travelling by slow Austrian trains. I came by Prague, and shirked the regular Breslau and Berlin business. How did you like Australia? Any monster nuggets?”

By this time we were clear of the blocks of stone, the concrete, cranes, trucks, cables, and the other stumbling-blocks which the unfinished pier presents, and were close to the railway terminus, on the one hand, and the lofty hotel on the other.

“Where to, sir?” said the porter, touching his cap.

“The station,” said Musgrave. “You can put that portmanteau in the cloak-room; the bags I must keep. Come to the telegraph-office first. I must send a word or two to London. They’ll be glad in our shop to know the papers have arrived.”

“You have lost the train by half-an-hour,” observed I, consulting my watch. “I suppose you won’t take a special?”

Dick laughed drily.

“No, no; those days are gone. Swell the estimates too much, in these cheese-paring times. I shall wait for the mail, and send word to the sub’s private residence that I have done so.”

So saying, he dashed into the telegraph-office, wrote what he had to say, listened to the rapid click! click! of the instrument as the message was flashed off to town, and then came back and took my arm.

“Plenty of time, so let’s go together to the Lord Warden and dine, and have a good chat over old times.”

So we did, and it was in the course of conversation that I drew from my friend the following story.

It’s six years, now, since they sent me for the first time to Mexico. At that time, as I daresay you are aware, our salaries depended, as to amount, upon the number of our journeys, and we were naturally anxious to be as much employed as possible. I was then a raw member of the guild, and thought myself singularly lucky in being selected for this Mexican trip, especially as I had been hardly two years a messenger, and had been occupied in repeated expeditions during nearly the whole of that period.

“You speak Spanish, I believe, Captain Musgrave?” asked the under-secretary, when he gave me my instructions; “but this is, if I am not mistaken, your first visit to America?”

I modestly answered, that I spoke a little Spanish, which I had picked up during the months that they kept me hanging about the Legation at Madrid, but that I had not yet crossed the Atlantic.

“I need not tell you that the country is in a disturbed state, or that travelling requires caution and forethought,” rejoined the secretary, in his official manner; then relaxed into good nature, and added, “you are going among great scoundrels; don’t let them double upon you,” and the interview ended.

I was a younger man then by six years, and much more confident of my knowledge of the world than a longer experience has rendered me. I had been all over Europe, among some of its most roguish races, and through semi-savage provinces, without taking harm. In consequence, I made light of my chief’s warning, and prepared to traverse Mexico as unconcernedly as I should have scampered to Paris or Dresden. I had a very good passage to Vera Cruz, and there my troubles began. The diligences between the coast and the capital, as you probably know, are about on a par with the English stage-coach in the reigns of the later Stuarts. Besides being comfortless and ungainly machines, dragged by any number of mules and lean horses, they are irregular as to departure and arrival, slow of speed, and, what is worse, liable to be continually stopped by highwaymen. On the average, only fifty per cent. of the journeys are quite free from, at least, attempted robbery; and weeks often elapse before the caravan can venture to start, if civil war bar the road. All this, I am aware, Tom, is very stale intelligence. You can pick for yourself, out of the columns of the Times, as many lawless onslaughts and hair-breadth escapes as may satisfy you. I promise, for my part, not to inflict a banditti tale upon your friendship. Well, I had to wait some days before the diligence was ready to set forth, and when it did start, we had an escort of shabby soldiers on account of the disturbed condition of the country. Just then the eternal war which gnaws at the vitals of Mexico was raging somewhere else, but large bands of broken soldiers were roaming through the state of Puebla, and the native element of brigandage had been strongly reinforced. We were a motley company: French traders going back to their shops in the metropolis; a spectacled German who collected plants and insects, and who almost cried when he espied some rare cacti or curious heaths among the rocks and the conductor refused to stop; some English and Americans, all engaged in commerce; and a sprinkling of Mexicans, male and female. Beside our lumbering ark on wheels rode the lean Lancers in their threadbare blue jackets, but with an amount of martial swagger that amused me very much. It was a pleasure to see them twist their wiry moustaches, shake their red-pennoned spears, and amble alongside of us, curvetting, prancing, and taking a great deal out of their meagre but gallant little horses by the combined effect of a powerful bit and the terrible long-rowelled spur. All this show of exuberant valour and efficiency was designed, as I pretty well guessed, to draw forth a present at parting; but what mettle our protectors would have shown, had they been put to the test, can only be guessed. It so happened, however, that not a brigand came near us during the short journey which the old machine accomplished.