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It was a pretty place: in all its arrangements partly South
American and partly English, and very agreeable to look at on that
account, being like a bit of home that had got chipped off and had
floated away to that spot, accommodating itself to circumstances as
it drifted along. The huts of the Sambos, to the number of five-and-twenty,
perhaps, were down by the beach to the left of the
anchorage. On the right was a sort of barrack, with a South
American Flag and the Union Jack, flying from the same staff, where
the little English colony could all come together, if they saw
occasion. It was a walled square of building, with a sort of
pleasure-ground inside, and inside that again a sunken block like a
powder magazine, with a little square trench round it, and steps
down to the door. Charker and I were looking in at the gate, which
was not guarded; and I had said to Charker, in reference to the bit
like a powder magazine, "That's where they keep the silver you see;"
and Charker had said to me, after thinking it over, "And silver
ain't gold. Is it, Gill?" when the beautiful young English lady I
had been so bilious about, looked out of a door, or a window--at all
events looked out, from under a bright awning. She no sooner saw us
two in uniform, than she came out so quickly that she was still
putting on her broad Mexican hat of plaited straw when we saluted.
"Would you like to come in," she said, "and see the place? It is
rather a curious place."
We thanked the young lady, and said we didn't wish to be
troublesome; but, she said it could be no trouble to an English
soldier's daughter, to show English soldiers how their countrymen
and country-women fared, so far away from England; and consequently
we saluted again, and went in. Then, as we stood in the shade, she
showed us (being as affable as beautiful), how the different
families lived in their separate houses, and how there was a general
house for stores, and a general reading-room, and a general room for
music and dancing, and a room for Church; and how there were other
houses on the rising ground called the Signal Hill, where they lived
in the hotter weather.
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