Brandon of the Engineers

The glare of the big arc-lights flooded the broad, white plaza when Dick

crossed it on his way to the Hotel Magellan. The inhabitants of Santa

Brigida had finished their evening meal and, as was their custom, were

taking the air and listening to the military band. They were of many

shades of color and different styles of dress, for dark-skinned peons in

plain white cotton, chattering negroes, and grave, blue-clad Chinamen

mingled with the citizens who claimed to spring from European stock.

These, however, for the most part, were by no means white, and though

some derived their sallow skin from Andalusian and Catalan ancestors,

others showed traces of Carib origin.

The men were marked by Southern grace; the younger women had a dark,

languorous beauty, and although their dress was, as a rule, an out of

date copy of Parisian modes, their color taste was good, and the creamy

white and soft yellow became them well. A number of the men wore white

duck, with black or red sashes and Panama hats, but some had Spanish

cloaks and Mexican sombreros.

Flat-topped houses, colored white and pink and lemon, with almost

unbroken fronts, ran round the square. A few had green lattices and

handsome iron gates to the arched entrances that ran like a tunnel

through the house, but many showed no opening except a narrow slit of

barred window. Santa Brigida was old, and the part near the plaza had

been built four hundred years ago.

Dick glanced carelessly at the crowd as he crossed the square. He liked

the music, and there was something interesting and exotic in the play of

moving color, but his mind was on his work and he wondered whether he

would find a man he wanted at the hotel. One could enter it by a Moorish

arch that harmonized with the Eastern style of its front; but this had

been added, and he went in by the older tunnel and across the patio to

the open-fronted American bar that occupied a space between the balcony

pillars.

He did not find his man, and after ordering some wine, lighted a

cigarette and looked about while he waited to see if the fellow would

come in. One or two steamship officers occupied a table close by, a

Frenchman was talking excitedly to a handsome Spanish half-breed, and a

fat, red-faced German with spectacles sat opposite a big glass of

pale-colored beer. Dick was not interested in these, but his glance grew

keener as it rested on a Spaniard, who had a contract at the irrigation

works, sitting with one of Fuller's storekeepers at the other end of the

room. Though there was no reason the Spaniard should not meet the man in

town, Dick wondered what they were talking about, particularly since they

had chosen a table away from everybody else.