Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/79



night Las Palmas much resembles almost any other Spanish colonial city in a semi-tropical land; select at random a city of equal size from any of the Spanish-American countries, transplant it bodily to an island of volcanic origin and with sparse vegetation, and you have Las Palmas of the Gran Canaria.

There is the inevitable plaza, with its despondent garden and its iron railings; there is the inevitable palatial residence of the governor; there are the cafés and restaurants, the municipal band that executes by night, the señoritas with their immense, fanlike tortoise-shell combs and their mantillas, the señors adorned in white ducks and cigarettes, the heat, the languor, the spirit of manana and .

The nights are long, warm and sticky, and sickly sweet; the darkness is so soft and so thick as to seem well-nigh palpable; the sky hangs low, and velvety, sewn thick with huge stars.

It was on such a night that O'Rourke arrived. On the way to his hotel he kept his eyes open for members of his corps, but saw none of them.

He was disturbed; Las Palmas is not a metropolis so great that forty fighting men can be set down within its boundaries without creating comment.

Nor is it so puritanical in atmosphere that forty fighting men with graduated thirsts and eruptive dispositions are like to become childlike once under its influence—to content