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Bedraggled women sat on the cobbles with aprons spread out and on them little piles of six nuts each, sold at a centavo.
One centavo bought far more than any person would be likely to eat; even after having been stewed in sugar, they were bitter, and had a foul smell that was most unpleasant; they appeared to be roots or tubers of some plant. Naturally, our work had attracted much attention in Chilchota.
The messengers ran back to the square, made an excited appeal to the populace, scratched the required sum together in penny subscriptions, paid the innkeeper every centavo that the king owed him, woke up the sheriff and the magistrate, and before noon King Congo was a free man, in the same old uniform, riding the same old mule, and stiffly bowing to the admiring populace as he passed.
"We embarked at Havre," continued Don Alonso, "on a vessel called the Navarre, and we were in Havana for about eight months; while we were performing there we struck it big, Perez and I, and won twenty thousand gold pesos in the lottery." "Twenty thousand duros!" exclaimed Manuel. "Right-o! The next week we had lost it all, and Perez and I were left without a centavo.
They would go for the airship, and they would return with it, and of the fifty pesos that was the full price he asked, not one centavo would he accept until the señor had seen that all was as he had left it. Look! That very night they would go, and by noon to-morrow they would be there. And under the great wings would they rest.
Your proposition is O. K. You're a good fellow, Goodwin; and I let you off light. I'll agree to everything. But in the meantime I've a devil of a thirst on, old man " "Not a centavo," said Goodwin, firmly, "until you are on board the Ariel. You would be drunk in thirty minutes if you had money now."
A man often carries his gamecock with him as a negro would carry a dog, and he is as ready to back his judgment with his last centavo as was the owner of Mark Twain's "Jumping Frog" before that ill-fated creature dined too heartily on buckshot. Sundays and saints' days are the days for cock-fighting and both come pretty often.
Little food remained in the hut, barely enough for Asensio and the women, and inasmuch as O'Reilly had spent his last centavo for candles he and Jacket were forced to go hungry again. Late that evening, after the wretched prison quarters had grown quiet, the three treasure-hunters stole out of their hovel and wound up the hill.
The single candy shop under the arches beside the plaza did a lively business with our party while we remained, its members having suddenly developed a marvelous appetite for dulces. Bright-eyed boys and girls, with a paucity of clothing and any amount of good looks, met us at each turn with hands extended, and a cry of "Centavo, centavo!"
Coming again on to the street you hear the deafening noises of the cow horns blown by the streetcar drivers, or the pescador shrilly inviting housekeepers to buy the repulsive-looking red fish, carried over his shoulder, slung on a thick bamboo. This steed-riding fraternity all use invariably the same words: "Por el amor de Dios dame un centavo!"