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On a brilliant May morning of the year 1690 a gentleman stepped ashore at Santiago de Porto Rico, followed by a negro servant shouldering a valise. He had been brought to the mole in a cock-boat from the yellow galleon standing in the roadstead, with the flag of Spain floating from her maintruck. Having landed him, the cock-boat went smartly about, and was pulled back to the ship, from which circumstances the gaping idlers on the mole assumed that this gentleman had come to stay.
They stared at him with interest, as they would have stared at any stranger. This, however, was a man whose exterior repaid their attention, a man to take the eye. Even the wretched white slaves toiling half-naked on the fortifications, and the Spanish soldiery guarding them, stood at gaze.