Outside the bar were two men
with English-looking faces. One was a handsome young fellow with a
somewhat worn and dissipated look on his bronzed face; he was leaning
against the counter, cigar in mouth, looking slightly tipsy, I thought,
and wore a large revolver slung ostentatiously at his waist. His
companion was a big, heavy man, with immense whiskers sprinkled with
grey, who was evidently very drunk, for he was lying full-length on a
bench, his face purple and swollen, snoring loudly. I asked for bread,
sardines, and wine, and, careful to observe the custom of the country I
was in, duly invited the tipsy young man to join in the repast. An
omission of this courtesy might, amongst proud and sensitive Orientals,
involve one in a sanguinary quarrel, and of quarrelling I had just then
had enough.
He declined with thanks, and entered into conversation with me; then
the discovery, quickly made, that we were compatriots gave us both
great pleasure. He at once offered to take me to his house with him,
and gave a glowing account of the free, jovial life he led in company
with several other Englishmen--sons of gentlemen, every one of them,
he assured me--who had bought a piece of land and settled down to
sheep-farming in this lonely district. I gladly accepted the invitation,
and when we had finished our glasses he proceeded to wake the sleeper.
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