Entertainment was not lacking there at the Mission. It was a hearty place. One evening Tich, the pride of the _Bonadventure_, who in his uniform cut a most splendid figure, went into the ring and laid about him magnificently. Or there might be a concert, local talent obliging. A passenger ship's varieties drew a large attendance both from the ships and the shore; there was much funny man, much jazz band, much conjuring, much sentimental singing--in fact plenty of everything which is expected at popular concerts, and every one departed with reflected pride. Mead and myself, however, quarrelled over the amount which I subscribed to the whip-round. It was that or nothing--I had but one coin; and its removal robbed us of our wonted refreshment. We walked somewhat moodily down the road to the docks, unsoothed by their thick coarse greenery, which the night filled with the incessant buzzing of crickets and a loud piping whistle perhaps from a sort of cricket also, while here and there a fire-fly went along with his glow-worm light.
We tried the cinematograph's recreations, once or twice. How strong is habit! We could not settle down to these performances of single films; nor to the box-like halls. A cowboy film of eight acts comes back to my recollection from those evenings. It was full of miracles. The operator believed, like the hero, in lightning speed. The hero on horseback was far too speedy for the villain who dragged off the heroine into his car and did his best to break records. These heroes will one day assume the proportions, in the dark world, of the pleiosaurus in natural history.
But we had our reward. In a more expensive theatre, we found _The Kid_. We had come out to see a much trumpeted film of a bullfight--Mead for one set of reasons, I for another; but it was of yesterday, and we had no difficulty in consoling ourselves. One Chaplin, we acknowledged, was better than many toreadors.
And then, we had a glimpse of the Carnival. In our wonted quarter of the town, that where the seafaring man mostly rested, it took the form of some processions of hobbledehoys and urchins, beating as their kind do on drums and things like drums. The next evening we took the same dreary cobblestone walk as usual, but did not limit ourselves to that. We took a tram, indeed, to more fashionable haunts and at last came into the great Avenida and all its garish illuminations; its paper ribbons were as multi-coloured as the lights, and, flung from the upper storeys of the hotels, in some places they were thick enough to form a fantastic and absurd cascade. Here the Carnival was in mid sprout. We got what we came for--a diversion.