“I have told you my name.  It is Thomas d’Arfet, and I come from Bristol.  You have heard my name before?”

I nodded, keeping my eyes on his.

“I also have heard of you, and of the two captains in whose company you discovered these islands.”

I nodded again.  “Their names,” said I, “are John Gonsalvez Zarco and Tristram Vaz.  You may visit them, if you please, on the greater island, which they govern between them.”

He bent his head.  “The fame of your discovery, Sir, reached England some years ago.  I heard at the time, and paid it just so much heed as one does pay to the like news—­just so much and no more.  The manner of your discovery of the greater island came to my ears less than a twelvemonth ago, and then but in rumours and broken hints.  Yet here am I, close on my eightieth year, voyaging more than half across the world to put those broken hints together and resolve my doubts.  Tell me”—­he leaned forward over the table, peering eagerly into my eyes—­“there was a tale concerning the island—­concerning a former discovery—­”

“Yes,” said I, as he broke off, his eyes still searching mine, “there was a tale concerning the island.”

“Brought to you by a Spanish pilot, who had picked it up on the Barbary coast?”

“You have heard correctly,” said I.  “The pilot’s name was Morales.”

“Well, it is to hear that tale that I have travelled across the world to visit you.”

“Ah, but forgive me, Sir!” I poured out another glassful of wine, drew up my chair, rested both elbows on the table, and looked at him over my folded hands.  “You must first satisfy me what reason you have for asking.”

“My name is Thomas d’Arfet,” he said.

“I do not forget it:  but maybe I should rather have said—­What aim you have in asking.  I ought first to know that, methinks.”

In his impatience he would have leapt from his chair had his old limbs allowed.  Pressing the table with white finger-tips, he sputtered some angry words of English, and then fell back on the interpreter Martin, who from first to last wore a countenance fixed like a mask.

“Mother of Heaven, Sir!  You see me here, a man of eighty, broken of wind and limb, palsied, with one foot in the grave:  you know what it costs to fit out and victual a ship for a voyage:  you know as well as any man, and far better than I, the perils of these infernal seas.  I brave those perils, undergo those charges, drag my old limbs these thousands of miles from the vault where they are due to rest—­and you ask me if I have any reason for coming!”

“Not at all,” I answered.  “I perceive rather that you must have an extraordinarily strong reason—­a reason or a purpose clean beyond my power of guessing.  And that is just why I wish to hear it.”

“Men of my age—­” he began, but I stopped Martin’s translation midway.