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Updated: September 22, 2025
Shops?" repeated Noll, with a smile of mild disgust. "Did we ever stand that sort of life, Hal?" "Once upon a time, Noll." "Thank goodness that day has gone by." "Here we are," announced Sergeant Hal, reaching for the rear door and opening it. "I'll pay the cochero this time, Noll; you paid for our last ride."
Placido did not answer, so Simoun threw back his head, smiled his cold, silent smile and said, "All right! Come with me. To Calle Iris!" he directed the cochero. Simoun remained silent throughout the whole drive, apparently absorbed in meditation of a very important nature.
This student occupied in that house, by himself, two rooms, luxuriously furnished, and had his servant and a cochero to look after his carriage and horses. He was of robust carriage, of refined manners, fastidiously dressed, and very rich.
Our command to the cochero upon his mounting, was a la Balsa, trusting to be able to direct him on the way, but as we depended somewhat upon the fellow's knowledge of the proper place to turn off, found ourselves again disappointed, for the confounded postillion either could not or would not find the road, and out to the ferry again he drove us, in spite of my teeth, and all the Spanish I could get through them.
"I may be that, but I'm hanged if I'll sit here and see that poor miserable mule tortured. Here, Cospatric, stand by to grab this elderly person if he interferes. And now, Mr. Cochero, pull 'em up in their tracks or I'll do it for you." The driver did as he was bade willingly enough, and Haigh nipped down and levered out the stone with his knife. I stayed where I was. I had my arms full.
Then, observing that the negro wore a crown and was a king, like the other two, the Spaniards, his thoughts naturally turned to the king of the Indians, and he sighed. "Do you know, sir," he asked Basilio respectfully, "if his right foot is loose yet?" Basilio had him repeat the question. "Whose right foot?" "The King's!" whispered the cochero mysteriously. "What King's?"
But a fearfully vivid flash of tropical lightning caused Sergeant Hal Overton to step further back into the little shed and close his eyes for an instant. Right after the flash came a prolonged, heavy roll of thunder that made the earth shake. "Cochero, para!" shouted Noll right after that, and a fareless quilez stopped near the door of the shed. "No, señor."
It is a sound to move the pity of more than a horse; until you are thoroughly accustomed to it it leaves you under the apprehension that the cochero has been stricken with the plague. This habit of grunting at horses seems to be disappearing at the present time, the haughty customs of livery carromatas perhaps being responsible. Also English is spreading.
"No, there couldn't have been any civil-guards," decided the cochero, secretly envying those fortunate times, "because if there had been, that negro who is cutting up such capers beside those two Spaniards" Gaspar and Bathazar "would have gone to jail."
After the sixth performance of this kind, one being at a street crossing where some raw cocoa beans were drying on a petate in the sun, and the three others at the different outposts, we decided among ourselves that we had best dismiss our cochero and return to the ship, since it had taken us more than two hours to drive where we might have walked in thirty minutes.
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