Above the rattle of the train sounded the deep bellow of a steamer’s throttle.  Lewis turned to the window.  Night had fallen.

“Oh, look, sir!” he cried.  “We’re almost there!”

Leighton joined him.  Before them were spangled, in a great crescent, a hundred thousand lights.  Along the water-front the lights clustered thickly.  They climbed a cliff in long zigzags.  At the top they clustered again.  Out on the bay they swayed from halyards, their reflections glimmering back from the rippling water like so many agitated moons.

“Right you are—­Bahia,” said Leighton.  “We’re almost there, and it’s no fishing-hamlet, either.”

CHAPTER XIV

The next morning, as they were sitting, after their coffee and rolls, at a little iron table on the esplanade of the Sul Americano, Leighton said:  “It takes a man five years to learn how to travel in a hurry and fifteen more to learn how not to hurry.  You may consider that you’ve been a traveler for twenty years.”  He stretched and yawned.  “Let’s take a walk, slowly.”

They started down the broad incline which, in long, descending zigzags, cut the cliff that divided lower town from upper.  The closely laid cobblestones were slippery with age.

“It took a thousand slaves a century to pave these streets,” said Leighton.  “Do you know anything about this town, Bahia?”

“It was once the capital of the empire,” said Lewis.

“Yes,” said Leighton.  “Capital of the empire, seat of learning, citadel of the church, last and greatest of the great slave-marts.  That’s a history.  Never bother your mind about a man, a woman, or a town that hasn’t got a history.  They may be happy, but they’re stupid.”

The principal street of the lower town was swarming with a strange mixture of humanity.  Here and there hurried a foreigner in whites, his flushed cheeks and nose flying the banner of John Barleycorn.

Along the sidewalks passed leisurely the doctorated product of the universities—­doctors of law, doctors of medicine, embryo doctors still in the making—­each swinging a light cane.  Their black hats and cutaway coats, in the fashion of a temperate clime, would have looked exotic were it not for the serene dignity with which they were worn.  With them, merchants lazed along, making a deal as they walked.  Clerks, under their masters’ eyes, hurried hither and thither.

These were all white or near-white.  The middle of the street, which held the great throng, was black.  Slaves with nothing on but a loin-cloth staggered under two bags of coffee or under a single monster sack of cocoa.  Their sweating torsos gleamed where the slanting sun struck them.  Other slaves bore other burdens:  a basket of chickens or a bundle of sugar-cane on the way to market; a case of goods headed for the stores of some importer; now and then a sedan-chair, with curtains drawn; and finally a piano, unboxed, on a pilgrimage.