“Oh, you are the man who lived out of all your fort?  How did you manage it?”

“I had a friend among these friendly Indians who rescued me.”

“Yes!  It is excellent warfare to have friends.—­You have seen no knight nor men-at-arms, nor heard of such?”

“Not under those names.”

“How far do you think we may be from true houses and cities, castles, fortresses?”

“I haven’t the least idea.  By the looks of it, pretty far.”

“It seems to me that you speak truth,” he answered.  “Well, it isn’t what we looked for, but it’s something!  Room yet to dare!” Off he went, half Mercury, half Mars, and a sprig of youth to draw the eyes.

“Was there nothing ever heard,” I asked Luis, “of the Pinta and Martin Pinzon?”

“He is dead.”

“You saw the wreck?”

“No, not that way, though true it is that he wrecked himself!  I forget that you know nothing.  We met the Pinta last January, not a day from here, with Monte Cristi there yet in sight.  When he came aboard and sat in the great cabin I do not know what he said, except that it was of separation by that storm, and the feeling that two parties discovering would thereby discover the more, and the better serve their Majesties.  The Admiral made no quarrel with him.  He had some gold and some news of coasts that we had not seen.  And he did not seem to think it necessary to seem penitent or anything but just naturally Martin Pinzon.  So on we sailed together, he on the Pinta and the Admiral on the Nina.  But that was a rough voyage home over Ocean-Sea!  Had we had such weather coming, might have been mutiny and throat-cutting and putting back, Cathay and India being of no aid to dead men!  Six times at least we thought we were drowned, and made vows, kneeling all together and the Admiral praying for us, Fray Ignatio not being there.  Then came clear, but beyond Canaries a three days’, three nights’ weather that truly drove us apart, the Pinta and the Nina.  We lost each other in the darkness and never found again.  We were beaten into the Tagus, the Pinta on to Bayonne.  Then, mid-March, we came to Palos, landed and the wonder began.  And in three days who should come limping in but the Pinta?  But she missed the triumph, and Martin Pinzon was sick, and there was some coldness shown.  He went ashore to his own house, and his illness growing worse he died there.  Well, he had qualities.”

“Aye,” I answered, with a vision of the big, bluff, golden-haired man.

“Vicente Pinzon is here; his ship the Cordera yonder.  What’s the stir now?  The Admiral will go to see Guacanagari?”

That, it seemed, was what it was, and presently came word that Juan Lepe should go with him.  A body of cavaliers sumptuously clad, some even wearing shining corselet, greaves and helm, was forming about him who was himself in a magnificent dress.  Besides these were fifty of the plainer sort, and there lacked not crossbow, lance and arquebus.  And there were banners and music.  We were going like an army to be brotherly with Guacanagari.  Father Buil was going also, and his twelve gowned men.  “Who,” I asked Luis, “is the man beside the Admiral?  He seems his kin.”