You must know that Ratona is an island twenty miles off the south of
a South American republic. It is a port of that republic; and it
sleeps sweetly in a smiling sea, toiling not nor spinning; fed by the
abundant tropics where all things "ripen, cease and fall toward the
grave."
Eight hundred people dream life away in a green-embowered village
that follows the horseshoe curve of its bijou harbour. They are
mostly Spanish and Indian _mestizos_, with a shading of San Domingo
Negroes, a lightening of pure-blood Spanish officials and a slight
leavening of the froth of three or four pioneering white races. No
steamers touch at Ratona save the fruit steamers which take on their
banana inspectors there on their way to the coast. They leave Sunday
newspapers, ice, quinine, bacon, watermelons and vaccine matter at
the island and that is about all the touch Ratona gets with the
world.
The _Pajaro_ paused at the mouth of the harbour, rolling heavily in
the swell that sent the whitecaps racing beyond the smooth water
inside. Already two dories from the village--one conveying fruit
inspectors, the other going for what it could get--were halfway out
to the steamer.
The inspectors' dory was taken on board with them, and the _Pajaro_
steamed away for the mainland for its load of fruit.
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