STEAMER _Olivette_, BETWEEN HAVANA AND KEY WEST, _December 31st_.
One learns to rise early in these tropical lands. The midday _siesta_ here affords the rest which we are wont to claim for the early morning hours. I have readily acquired the habit. To lie abed is become a burden. I stir abroad betimes as do all others. And I am sleepy also toward midday, and quite inclined to take a nap when the heat is most intense. I recall that two years ago when coming home from France, the only stateroom I could obtain upon the _Wilhelm der Grosse_, was already partly taken by a gentleman from Mexico. I doubted whether it would be pleasant to chum with a stranger, but I had no choice, so made the best of it. He had the upper berth, I slept below. But although we were a week upon the sea, I never saw him, and I do not to-day know who he was. I was asleep before he turned in. I was still asleep when, at break of dawn, he passed out to pace the decks. He took his midday _siesta_ when I was enjoying the midday sun, or resting upon my sea-chair. I then wondered at the persistent habit which drove him from a comfortable bed almost before the night was spent. Now I comprehend his ways, and if I were to voyage seaward to-morrow, I should be rising with the dawn. Yesterday morning I had risen at four o’clock, and had taken my _desayuno_ at an hour when those at home are sunk in sleep.
[Illustration: THE WRECK OF THE ALFONSO XII]
Overnight a great storm has arisen. I tried to find out at the hotel about the weather, but in Havana weather reports are unknown. The Spanish clerk at the hotel smiled at me most condescendingly for asking so silly a question as, “Is a storm likely to be coming from the North or the South, or anywhere; and what sort of a day are we likely to have to-morrow?” Bowing politely, he spoke in sneering undertone to his Spanish companion, and then in broken English said to me, “I never hear even an American ask a question like that, _Señor_. How we know what the weather is to be? God makes the weather _Señor_, not you or I.” And they both smiled upon me with supercilious contempt. They took me for a fool. Only a fool would pretend to ask what Providence might have in store. So much for the Weather Bureau and the yet mediæval Spaniard!