54 THE PEARL TRADER
bluchers,
reaching almost to his thighs, a cowboy sombrero of the most generous
size, set at an acute angle, while from his belt swung an army gun,
carried in such a way that every bad hombre in town or on the trail saw
in it a deadly challenge. Such was my publicity agent.
To
Pedro's mess there came many others, fixtures in the place or merely
drifters. I remember Cole, the Governor's secretary, a raw youth
straight from an Illinois college, ginger-haired, with the stomach of
an ostrich and always ready to guffaw at anything that was said;
Sonson, the sub-collector of customs, a collector of fighting-cocks too
and a great authority on the finer points of the cruel senseless sport;
Hasmere, ex-lieutenant of constabulary, now lending his name and his
brains to a Chink-financed lumber concern, who had a fine practical
taste for good books and a theoretical taste for French cooking;
Sutrisso, the Chino-Filipino mestizo, Justice of the Peace, a little
yellow-faced rat of a man, in stature the exact length of the words "Juez Del Paz." He
held his head to one side so that it should not obstruct his view, and
flapped his ears out of sheer delight whenever they brought him a case
to try.
These
and myself were the permanent messers, but every now and then a
steamship or launch would bring us the welcome diversion of strangers.
One day I found the seat next to mine at table occupied by a
benevolent-looking middle-aged man. He spoke with subdued voice and
kindly manner of men and topical matters, and ate with a hearty
appetite, but I particularly noticed that he lifted a fly most
tenderly out of his glass to save it from drowning.
When
he had left the table I said to Don Pedro, "Now, present company
excepted, Seiior, this was the most courtly gentleman I've met since
coming to this island. I wonder who he might be?"
"I
can put you wise to that," said Pedro as he helped himself to a glass
of tinto. "He's the chief Americano hangman and travels from island to
island wherever there's a hanging
