Part 34

"Did you get your share of the plunder, my son?"

The lad shook his head a trifle impatiently. "I be no beggar," he answered. "I be a ship's boy."

"Ay," said the man, "and you seek not the Golden Fleece?"

His eyes laughed, and his long fingers played with a strange jewel that glowed like Mars in the midnight of his breast. It was of gold enamel, with a splendid ruby in the center, and hanging from it a tiny golden ram. Could he mean that? But the crowd surged between them and left the boy wondering. He had never spoken to a Spaniard before.

As the fluttering pulse grew stronger and the man roused from his stupor, disjointed phrases of sinister meaning fell from his lips. No names were used, and much of his talk was in Spanish, but it suggested a foul undercurrent of bribery, falsehood and conspiracy hidden by the bright magnificence of the young Queen's court. The queer fact seemed to be that the speaker appeared himself to be the victim of some Spanish plot. Now why should that be, and he a Spaniard?

The young captain turned from the window, into which through the clearing air the moon was shining, to find the stranger looking at him with sane though troubled eyes.

"The Golden Fleece?" he asked in English. Drake shook his head.

"You've had a bad hurt, sir," he said, and briefly explained the circumstances.

"Ah," said the man frowning, and was silent.

"If you would wish to send any word to your friends,--" Drake began, and hesitated.

"I have no friends here, save my servant Sancho. The Golden Fleece will sail on Saint James's Eve for Coruna, and he was to meet me at Dover and return with me to our own country. In Alcala they know what to expect of a Saavedra."

The last words were spoken with a proud assurance that gave the listener a tingling sense of something high and indomitable. Saavedra's dark eyes were searching his face.

"I fear I trespass on your kindness," he added courteously, "and that I have talked some nonsense before I came to myself."

"Nothing of any account, sir," answered the lad quickly. "Mostly it was Spanish--and I don't know much o' that. You'll miss your ship if she sails so soon, but you're welcome here so long as you like to stay."

"I thank you," said the Spaniard in a relieved tone, adding half to himself, "No friends--but one cannot break faith--even with an enemy."

He dropped asleep almost at once after swallowing the cordial which Drake held to his lips. The moon came up over the flooded meadows that were all silvery lights and black shadow like a fairy realm. The lad had never spent a night like this, even when he had seen his master die.

When the pearl and rose of a July morning overspread the sky he descended, to splash and spatter and souse his rough brown head in a bucket of fresh-drawn water, and wheedle the old dame into a good humor.

"What ye hate and fear's bound to come to ye, sooner or later," Granny Toothacre grumbled as she stirred her savory broth, "My old man said so and I never beleft it--here be I at my time o' life harborin' a Spanisher."

"Ah, now, mother,"--Drake laid a brown hand coaxingly on her old withered one,--"you'll take good care of him for me, and we'll share the ransom."

"Ransom," the old woman muttered, looking after the straight, sturdy young figure as it strode down to the wharf, "not much hope o' that. Not but what he's a grand gentleman," she admitted, turning the contents of her saucepan into her best porringer. "He don't give me a rough word no more than if I was a lady."

Drake spent all his leisure during the next fortnight with the Spaniard, whose recovery was slow but steady. It was tacitly understood that the less said of the incident which had left him stunned and half-drowned the better. If those who had sought to kill him knew him to be alive, they might try again.

The young seaman had never known a man like this before. In his guest's casual talk of his young days one could see as in a mirror the Spain of a half-century since, with its audacious daring, its extravagant chivalry and its bulldog ferocity.

"They have outgrown us altogether, these young fellows," he said once with his quaint half-melancholy smile. "When the King and Queen rode in armor at the head of their troops in Granada, our cavaliers dreamed of conquering the world--now it has all been conquered."

"Not England," Drake put in quickly.

"Not England--I beg your pardon, my friend. But we have grown heavy with gold in these days--and gold makes cowards."

"It never made a coward o' me," laughed the lad. "Belike it'll never have the chance."

Through the shadows the old ship's-lantern cast in the rude half-timbered room seemed to move the wild figures of that marvellous pageant of conquest which began in 1492. Saavedra spoke little of himself but much of others--Ojeda, Nicuesa, Balboa, Cortes, Alvarado, Pizarro. In his soft slow speech they lived again, while by the stars outside, unknown uncharted realms revealed themselves. This man used words as a master mariner would use compass and astrolabe.

"Those days when we followed Balboa in his quest for the South Sea," he ended, "were worth it all. Gold is nothing if it blinds a man to the heavens. You too, my son, may seek the Golden Fleece in good time. May the high planets fortify you!"