I did not see the umbrella-man again until the next day, when I passed him on the hurricane deck.  He was looking at the coast through a pair of binoculars.  We were running to the north, in perfect Pacific weather, under a soft blue sky that was patrolled by little soft white clouds.  The land lay broad to starboard, a land of yellow hills with surf-beaten outliers of black reef.  Here and there we passed villages in the watered valleys, each with its whitewashed church and copper smeltry.  The umbrella-man was looking beyond these, at the hills.

He was a little man, this man who had prodded me, with a long, pale face and pale eyes, a long reddish beard, and hair rather darker, both hair and beard being sparse.  He was a fidgety person, always twitching with his hands, and he walked with something of a strut, as though the earth belonged to him.  He snapped-to the case of his binoculars as though he had sheathed a sword.

Later in the day, after supper, in the second dog-watch, as I sat smoking on the fore-coamings, he came up to me and spoke to me.  “You know zees coas’?” he asked.  Yes, I knew the coast.  “What you zink?” he asked; “you like ’eem?” No, I didn’t like ’eem.  “Ah,” he said, “You ’ave been wizzin?” I asked him what he meant.  “Wizzin,” he repeated, “wizzen, in ze contry.  You ’ave know ze land, ze peoples?” I growled that I had been within, to Lima, and to Santiago, and that I had been ashore at the Chincha Islands.  “Ah,” he said, with a strange quickening of interest, “you ’ave been to Lima; you like ’eem?” No, I had not.  “I go wizzen,” he said proudly.  “It is because I go; zat is why I ask.  Zere is few ’ave gone wizzen.”  An old quartermaster walked up to us.  “There’s very few come back, sir,” he said.  “Them Indians——­” “Ah, ze Indians,” said the little man scornfully, “ze Indians; I zeenk nozzin of ze Indians.”  “Beg pardon, sir,” said the old sailor, “They’re a tough crowd, them copper fellers.”  “I no understan’;” said the Frenchman.  “They pickle people’s heads,” said the old sailor, “in the sand or somethin’.  They keep for ever pretty near when once they’re pickled.  They pickle every one’s head and sell ’em in Lima:  I’ve knowed ’em get a matter of three pound for a good head.”  “Heads?” said another sailor.  “I had one myself once.  I got it at Tacna, but it wasn’t properly pickled or something—­it was a red-headed beggar the chap as owned it—­I had to throw it away.  It got too strong for the crowd,” he explained.  “Ah zose Indians,” said the Frenchman.  “I ’ave ’eard; zey tell me, zey tell me at Valparaiso.  But ah, it ees a fool; it ees a fool; zere is no Indians.”  “Beg pardon, sir,” said the old sailor, “but if you go up among them jokers, you’ll have to look slippy with a gun, sir,” “Ah, a gon,” he answered, “a gon.  I was not to be bozzered wiz a gon.  I ’ave what you call ’eem—­peestol.”  He produced a boy’s derringer, which might have cost about ten dollars, Spanish dollars, in the pawnshops of Santiago.  “Peestol,” murmured a sailor, gasping, as he shambled forward to laugh, “peestol, the gawdem Dago’s balmy.”