Yes indeed and such miserable towns are ever dotted with the dens where a man of your melancholy might drown his sorrows in drink.

Yes, man, just find a place to sink forever into a bottomless glass of port while you drift aimlessly into Kismet’s open maw.

The puddles were so numerous he was soon soaking his ankles, nullifying the efforts of the louts that had borne him to shore. As the acrid stench of coal and the sea-salted air gave way to the deeper reeks of the city ahead he twitched his nose in disgust, as his new partner directed him fawningly to the liquid abyss of his mind’s desire.

To the casual—or even prying—eye he seemed aloof and unconcerned with his surroundings, but within...

Blast the reek of it! The gutters are overflowing with human feces, fouler by far than the manure around which you shall soon step.

He persevered though, giving off the air of superiority natural to men of his race and class, rather than sulking like some inconvenienced Yankee merchant, as he marched through the milling stevedores and merchants before his nameless, immigrant Italian bearer, bent beneath the weight of his books. Alongside him chattered—what was his name?

Yes, My Good man Cook!

The mindless blather continued as he pondered deeper questions than his facilitator could possibly fathom.

Yaas, out of my way, you mongrel, colonial sots!

Not far up the street he was shown into a place to begin his drinking, or, as Kismet would have it, encounter his very own confessor, in the guise of that fawning twit Wilfrid Blunt, who appeared like a flesh-sculpted ode to sissydom in the doorway, as Cook ushered Richard into the smoky, lamp-lit interior and departed with the stevedore to the choicest hotel to arrange for his accommodations.

Ah, so here I fall in with Isabel’s dear, sissy Wilfrid, with narrow shoulders and weepy eyes to bear witness to my descent.

Blunt was a younger man, who had served as attaché in Sao Paulo and had befriended Burton’s dear wife. As much woman as man, Wilfrid was of the type to identify and comfort the ladies of real men—who must be diligently neglected if they are to show proper appreciation for their virile master—not amorously, but with an understanding ear that was all the more infuriating for it being genuine. Wanting the physicality of a real man, Blunt had always been openly intimidated by the ultra-masculine Burton. Still possessing something of the mischievous streak that had so confounded his nurse as a boy, Burton would ever fan the flames of Wilfrid’s shocking indignation by telling tale after barbarous tale, in which he often committed atrocious acts. Some of these tales were true, though always embroidered, and some were woven into a whole fictional cloth by the tireless loom of Burton’s rampant mind.

“Captain Burton, such a figure to lend resolve to a fellow Englishman!” exclaimed Wilfrid, wanting to believe his own words, but failing miserably, half afraid, it seemed, that he would be asked to stay and drink, as he had just been leaving after a single sissy glass of port.

Yes, how might I horrify him today?

Make the sissy sense his frailty.

Yes, tales of cannibalism and bloody fornication among the West Coast Negroes shall do.

Richard placed one brawny arm around those narrow shoulders and said in a voice that would not tolerate an excuse as he muscled Wilfrid about and fairly dragged him along in the crook of his arm to a table being hastily cleared by a fetching dark-eyed wench.

“Yaas, Wilfrid, so good to see you again, young fellow. Have a drink with me, will you?”

“I would, truly, Richard, but my dear wife—”

Placing a fine Cuban cigar between his teeth, and striking a match had from a real American cowboy on Wilfrid’s starched collar to light the measure of delight, and puffing the fumes of paradise in his friend’s face, Richard dutifully trammeled Wilfrid's weak words, “Yaas, Wilfrid, a deep-drinking man is best served by such a wife when he stumbles through her door in the wee hours. Worry not, she shall blame your host—Dick the Rogue, John Company’s goddamned, white niցցer!”

He drank with Wilfrid long into the night, having forwarded his bags—keeping only his coat, hat and revolver—with, whoever had been assigned the toilsome task.

At last, after sissy Wilfrid finally recoiled to the point of silence after some story or other of bibi fornication, he downed the last contents of their decanter—an outwardly rude act—hefted his heavy revolver, gifted him by Captain Londrina, and staggered off up the street in the cool rain of early spring, as it turned to a river of feces through which he slogged with boots now as sullied as his soul.

Is this, after all, my River Styx?