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with more water.

    He was sweating a lot, so after I caught on to what he was doing I followed him back inside. I found him in the patio, sitting in the shade and fanning himself with his big hat. "Padre," I said in Spanish, "why don't you rest here awhile and let me do that?"

    "Would you, my son? It would be a most noble work of charity."

    I said sure and that I was a sailor, and I gave him the name of my ship. After that, he showed me how to hook his jug to the well rope. You could not give it too much rope, because it would float and come unhooked until it got quite a bit of water in it.

    When I went out with the jug I saw a scrap of rope, so I pulled off a strand and stuck it in my pocket. After that I climbed the scaffolding to where the slaves who got the stones in place were. I let them drink until my jug was empty, and talked to them a little, and went back inside. When I went to the well the priest wanted to know what I was doing, and I showed him how I could close the hook with a couple of half hitches. He shook the hook to see if the jug would come off. Naturally it did not, so we lowered it and pulled it back up when it was full.

    "My son," he said, "you are an angel of God, but I should not have permitted you to do my work even once. It is my duty to bring the knowledge of Christ to those poor souls."

    I said, "Well, I tried to do that too, Padre. I know I'm probably not as good as you at it, but I told them that God loved them so much that He had sent Jesus so they could be His friends again."

    After that we sat in the shade and talked awhile. Then he took the jug out again. When he came back, he shut the hook the same way I had. It took him longer, but he did it. While the jug was filling, we sat down and talked some more. I said the slaves ought to be free, that nobody ought to be a slave.

    "I agree, my son. But what benefit would they have from their freedom if they did not know God? They would not save their souls, because they could not."

    "Maybe they could find God better if they were free to look for Him," I argued. "Besides, they wouldn't have to work as hard, and they could eat better."

    "That last would certainly be true, my son, if they enslaved others as they themselves have been enslaved. The men who own them are free to look for God, I would say. Do you think they have found Him?"

    I shrugged.

    "Answer, my son. Do you?"

    I had to admit that it did not seem like it.

    "Can you free their slaves, my son?"

    I shook my head. "It would take a cartload of reales, Padre, and I don't have any."

    "No more can I, my son. But I can show the overseers and the guards, and the slaves themselves, how a Christian ought to act toward his fellow men."

    After that he told me about another church a few streets away, and I went over and had a look at it. I did what I could there, and when I went back to the ship I was pretty tired.

    Señor had stayed on board, with the bosun and Zavala, one of the old guys from the larboard watch. They made me come over and sit with them so they could kid me about girls and so on. I just grinned and shook my head, saying I had not even met any. Which was the truth.

    When they saw they could not get me mad, they talked about other things. That was how I learned that Veracruz was a treasure port. A galleon would be coming to take the treasure back to Spain, and we were going to wait for it and sail back with it.

    "To have the kindness of fifty guns" was how Señor said it. I wanted to hear more about the treasure house and find out where it was. I knew nobody would tell me if I asked, so I just kept quiet and kept my ears open.

    A few more sailors came back, all pretty drunk. Señor let them sleep on deck or go into the forecastle, which was fine with me. After a while, I just lay down on the deck myself, and went to sleep listening to them talk.

    Way too soon, the bosun shook me awake. I remember I did not feel like I had slept long at all, but the moon was up and