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pretty high, too. The captain had come back, there were more sailors sitting around talking, and Señor, the bosun, old Zavala, and I were going ashore to round up as many as we could.

    So I ended up going to all the cantinas and talking with a few girls there,too. Some of them were pretty nice, and some were the pits. And just about all of them kidded me more and worse than Señor and the bosun had. "You come back alone, and we'll show you things you've never seen." "Sit with me and I'll straighten out that crooked nose."

    "Yes! It will stand tall and proud." With a whole lot more, some of it pretty dirty. Italian is a real good language to talk dirty in, but sometimes I think Spanish must be the best in the whole world. Those girls had a great time teasing me, laughing at me and anything I happened to say, and enjoyed themselves so much that I told them, "Listen up! You owe me, all of you, and one of these days I'm coming to collect."

    The next day the captain put me back on starboard watch. We worked until it got hot, cleaning up the ship and replacing some of the rigging that was getting worn, and then we got to go ashore again. This time I knew that most of the men who promised they would come back did not mean a word of it and would not come back until somebody came and got them.

    Which I was not about to do again. At first I thought I would just find a place on shore where I could get some sleep, maybe in the church where I had gotten to know the priest. Then I decided that the thing for me to do was to sneak back on board without Señor's seeing me. If I could do that, I could come back early, sling my hammock in the forecastle the way I always did, and crash. That would be a lot better than sleeping in a hiding place in some alley—I had done that a lot before I joined the crew—and I would not be breaking my word. I had not promised to report back to Señor, or any such thing. Just that I would come back to the ship that night.

    The first thing I did, though, was to strike up a conversation with somebody in the market and find out where the treasure house was. It turned out it was behind where the fort was being built, and I had been pretty close to it without knowing when I had watched the slaves work there.

    I went there to see it and hung around looking at it, and pretty soon I had a real piece of luck. Mules and soldiers came—there must have been a hundred mules—and the big doors were opened. Those mules had been carrying silver bars, each bar heavy enough to make a pretty good load for one man, and I got to see the soldiers unload them and carry them inside.

    The treasure house was not very big, or very high either—not even as high as our little chapel at the monastery. The walls were thick just the same, the doors were big and heavy and bound with iron, and the top of it looked like the top of a castle, with openings between the big stones for soldiers to shoot through. I was not thinking of getting the silver or anything like thatthen. But I saw right away that if somebody was, the thing to do was to get it while it was still on the mules.

    After that, I went back to the harbor for a look at the
Santa Charita
before sunset. There I got lucky again. A big galleon was making port, and I got to watch the whole thing. It was about five times the size of our ship, with crosses on all the sails and a lot of carving and gilding on the stern.

    It tied up at a different pier, and I went over there for a closer look and so I could see who got off. It was a pretty good show, too, with trumpets blowing and soldiers with red pants and polished armor escorting the captain. I jumped up and touched my forehead the way you are supposed to, and nobody said a word to me.

    Walking back to the quay, I could see the starboard side of the
Santa Charita
, and I got an idea. If I could get something that would float that I could stand on, I could reach up and grab the edge of the anchor hawse, pull myself up, and