My flower of Spain, my Juanetta,
Away, away to gay Jota!
Come forth, my sweet, away, my queen,
Though daybreak scorns, the night's between.
The Fete's afoot--ah! ah! ah! ah!
De la Jota Ar'gonesa.
Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!
De la Jota Ar'gonesa."
Before he had finished, the captain was more than ready to go, for he had
no patience with such credulity, simplicity and sentimentalism. He was
Basque, and to be Basque is to lack sentiment and feel none, to play ever
for the safe thing, to get without giving, and to mind your own business.
It had only been an excessive sense of duty which had made the captain
move in this, for he liked Jean Jacques as everyone aboard his Antoine
did; and he was convinced that the Spaniards would play the "Seigneur" to
the brink of disaster at least, though it would have been hard to detect
any element of intrigue or coquetry in Carmen Dolores.
That was due partly to the fact that she was still in grief for her
Gonzales, whose heart had been perforated by almost as many bullets as
the arrows of Cupid had perforated it in his short, gay life of adventure
and anarchy; also partly because there was no coquetry needed to interest
Jean Jacques. If he was interested it was not necessary to interest
anyone else, nor was it expedient to do so, for the biggest fish in the
net on the Antoine was the money-master of St.
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