“One night I came home after a successful journey. I had been as far as Buceita with a train of five mules--a clear run. When I opened the door Lorenza was gone. Mother of God! gone--gone without a word! I went and fetched Nino--Nino, whose father had been my partner until he was shot by the Guardia Civile one night in the mountain behind Gaucin. There was no one like Nino for mule work in the mountains or for the handling of a boat when the west wind blew across the Bay. Nino, whom I wanted for a son-in-law, having no Nino of my own. I told him. He said nothing, but followed me to the quay and we got the boat out. In half an hour I was at the office of the Chief of the Police at Gibraltar. We sat there all night, Nino and I. By ten o'clock the next morning we knew that it was not one of the English officers--nor any civilian living on the Rock. 'It may,' said the Chief of Police, who seemed to know every one in his little district, 'be a passing stranger or--or a Scorpion. We do not know so much about them. We cannot penetrate to their houses.' I gave him a description of Lorenza; he undertook to communicate with England and with the Spanish police. And Nino and I went back to our work. It is thus with us poor people. Our hearts break--all that is worth having goes from our lives, and the end of it is the same; we go back to our work.”
The old man paused. His cigarette had gone out long ago. He relighted it and smoked fiercely in silence for some moments. Cartoner made a sign to the waiter, who, with the intelligence of his race, brought a decanter of the wine which he knew the Spaniard preferred.
During all the above relation Cartoner had never uttered a syllable. At the more violent points he had given a sympathetic little nod of the head--nothing more.
“It was from that moment that I began to learn the difference between Englishmen and Scorpions,” Pedro Roldos went on. “Up to then I had not known that it made a difference being born on the Rock or in England. I did not know what a Scorpion was--with all the vices of England and Spain in one undersized body. I haunted the Rock. I learnt English. All to no avail. Lorenza was gone. Nino never said anything--he merely stayed by my side--but I think that something--some fibre had broken within him while he held the sheet that first night, sailing across the Bay in a gale of wind.