163 The pearl of the antilles? 



unarmed, and with a falsely cheerful mien. "Hello, old boy!" I 

 greeted him in my strange foreign tongue, not slacking my pace. 

 By this time he was twenty feet away and the hackles on his 

 neck and back were standing straight up. "Nice doggy," I mur- 

 mured. Now I was alongside him and he hadn't budged an inch. 

 Suddenly, with a deep-throated growl he leaped at me and buried 

 his teeth in the calf of my right leg! I have no recollection of 

 what I said to him then, but I know that I was shouting at him 

 and trying to kick at him with my free foot. He let go, quite as 

 suddenly as he had attacked, and still growling in an unfriendly 

 fashion, ran off through the brush. "Foreigners get out" seemed 

 to be the general idea. 



I was now in a sweat of anger and apprehension, and the pit 

 of my stomach was doing flip-flops. The bite did not appear to 

 be very deep and it was not bleeding very much, but what if the 

 dog had been mad? I hurried on to the highway, stopped a 

 passing car, and was driven to the company hospital. It was too 

 early for the doctor but I showed my wound to a Spanish-speaking 

 colored gentleman who was wearing a white coat and appeared to 

 be some kind of attendant. He merely stared at the tiny punc- 

 tures in my calf and said nothing. I got out my indispensable 

 Spanish-English dictionary and leafed through it for the proper 

 words. With appropriate gestures and facial grimaces I showed 

 how Fido had clamped his jaws on my leg. "Perro!" I said, growling 

 deeply and snatching at my injured limb. "Si," said my friend, 

 without much interest. I went back to my dictionary. On page 

 170 I found "rabies (rebiz) s. rabia, hidrofobia." This I showed 

 to him, repeating my pantomime, baring my teeth, growling, 

 etc. Still he was unimpressed, simply staring at me as if trying 

 to decide whether I might not be dangerous. Finally, in despera- 

 tion, I pointed to some bottles on a shelf and then to my leg. 

 With a shrug he took down one of them and, finding some cotton, 

 did a reasonably good job of cleansing the wounds. With that I 

 departed, glad to escape. 



I did spend an anxious day or two, but the dog hadn't been 

 rabid. He just didn't like strangers. 



It was past noon that same day when we got off for the Rio 



