“‘My boy,’ said Carmen to me, ’you’ll have to do something.  Now that the king won’t give you either rice or haddock* you’ll have to think of earning your livelihood.  You’re too stupid for stealing a pastesas.** But you are brave and active.  If you have the pluck, take yourself off to the coast and turn smuggler.  Haven’t I promised to get you hanged?  That’s better than being shot, and besides, if you set about it properly, you’ll live like a prince as long as the minons*** and the coast-guard don’t lay their hands on your collar.’

     * The ordinary food of a Spanish soldier.

     ** Ustilar a pastesas, to steal cleverly, to purloin
     without violence.

     *** A sort of volunteer corps.

“In this attractive guise did this fiend of a girl describe the new career she was suggesting to me,—­the only one, indeed, remaining, now I had incurred the penalty of death.  Shall I confess it, sir?  She persuaded me without much difficulty.  This wild and dangerous life, it seemed to me, would bind her and me more closely together.  In future, I thought, I should be able to make sure of her love.

“I had often heard talk of certain smugglers who travelled about Andalusia, each riding a good horse, with his mistress behind him and his blunderbuss in his fist.  Already I saw myself trotting up and down the world, with a pretty gipsy behind me.  When I mentioned that notion to her, she laughed till she had to hold her sides, and vowed there was nothing in the world so delightful as a night spent camping in the open air, when each rom retired with his romi beneath their little tent, made of three hoops with a blanket thrown across them.

“‘If I take to the mountains,’ said I to her, ’I shall be sure of you.  There’ll be no lieutenant there to go shares with me.’

“‘Ha! ha! you’re jealous!’ she retorted, ’so much the worse for you.  How can you be such a fool as that?  Don’t you see I must love you, because I have never asked you for money?’

“When she said that sort to thing I could have strangled her.

“To shorten the story, sir, Carmen procured me civilian clothes, disguised in which I got out of Seville without being recognised.  I went to Jerez, with a letter from Pastia to a dealer in anisette whose house was the smugglers’ meeting-place.  I was introduced to them, and their leader, surnamed El Dancaire, enrolled me in his gang.  We started for Gaucin, where I found Carmen, who had told me she would meet me there.  In all these expeditions she acted as spy for our gang, and she was the best that ever was seen.  She had now just returned from Gibraltar, and had already arranged with the captain of a ship for a cargo of English goods which we were to receive on the coast.  We went to meet it near Estepona.  We hid part in the mountains, and laden with the rest, we proceeded to Ronda.  Carmen had gone there before us.