It is so long since I set my hand to paper that I am grown rusty! I
did not write you from Madeira--that is true. One cannot write from
Madeira when "Madeira" means a plunging vortex of coal-dust, a blazing
sun, and the unending roar of the winches as they fish up ton after
ton of coal. Moreover, I was boarded by a battalion of fleas from the
Spanish labourers in my vicinity--fleas that had evidently been
apprenticed to their trade, and had been allowed free scope for the
development of their ubiquitous genius. I looked at the old rascal who
tallied the bags with me, envisaged in parchment, and clothed in
picturesque remnants, and heard his croaking "_Cincuo saco, Senor_,"
or "_Cuarro saco, Senor_," as he bade me note the varying numbers on
the hook, and I wondered inwardly whether the Holy Office had
experimented during the sixteenth century with Spanish fleas, and so
brought them to such an astonishing perfection in the administration
of slow torture. Breeding, I take it, holds good with fleas as with
horses, dogs, etc. Those born of parents with thicker mail, longer
springs, harder proboscis, and greater daring in initiative, would
doubtless be selected and encouraged, if I may say so, to go farther.
It is possible that many famous recantations could be accounted for by
this hypothesis. Galileo, for instance, probably had a sensitive
epidermis which afforded an unlimited field for the exploitation of
Spanish fleas, which formed, according to my theory, an indispensable
item in the torture chest carried by the fraternity in Tuscany.
Giordano Bruno, on the other hand, I imagine to have been a XXXX
dark-skinned heretic, tanned by travel and hardship, and regarding the
aphanipterous insect with the sardonic contempt of one who had lived
in England in the sixteenth century. His own gown probably
contained....
I was roused from these musings by observing four bags come up on the
hook, and hearing them saluted by my picturesque _vis-a vis_ with
"_Cincuo saco, Senor!_" I deserted my theory and hastened to point out
the error of fact. He bowed his head in submission with all the
haughty grace of Old Castile. When out at sea once more, I looked back
along his ancestral line; I saw him in the days of old, marching
through Italy with the Great Emperor, taking part in some murderous
deed that cried to the law for vengeance, flying from Spain in a tall
galleon to still more desperate work upon the high seas, settling in
these pleasant islands with bloody booty in pieces of eight, drifting
down and down to an adobe hut, and an occasional job as sub-deputy
assistant stevedore to a British coal factor. Then he faded from my
sight, and the life of an ocean tramp closed round me once more.