The performance which they had just been watching would fix the name of Ojeda very firmly in the minds of those who saw.  Queen Ysabel, happening to ascend the tower of the cathedral at Seville with her courtiers and ladies, remarked upon the daring and skill of the Moorish builders.  Everywhere in the newly conquered cities of Granada were their magnificent domes and lofty muezzin towers, often seeming like the airy minarets of a mirage.  The next instant Alonso de Ojeda had walked out upon a twenty-foot timber projecting into space two hundred feet above the pavement, and at the very end he stood on one leg and waved the other in the air.  Returning, he rested one foot against the wall and flung an orange clean over the top of the tower.  He was small, though handsome and well-made, and he had now shown a muscular strength of which few had suspected him.

It was natural that the sailor should be interested in the people of the court, for he had business there.  The Admiral of the Indies was making his arrangements for his second voyage, and he had desired Juan de la Cosa to meet him at Seville.  As the pilot stood waiting for the Admiral to come out from an interview with Fonseca he had a good look at many of the persons who were to join in this second expedition.

“There will be no unlocking the jail doors to scrape together crews for this fleet, I warrant you,” thought the old sailor exultantly as he stood in the shadow of the Giralda watching Castile parade itself before the new hero.  Here were Diego Colon, a quiet-looking youth, the youngest brother of the Admiral; Antonio de Marchena the astronomer, a learned monk; Juan Ponce de Leon, a nobleman from the neighborhood of Cadiz with a brilliant military record; Francisco de las Casas with his son Bartolome; and the valiant young courtier whom all Seville had seen flirting with death in mid-air.

“Oh, it was nothing,” La Cosa heard Ojeda say when Las Casas made some kindly compliment on his daring.  “I will tell you,” he added in a lower voice, pulling something small out of his doublet, “I have a sure talisman in this little picture of the Virgin.  The Bishop gave it to me, and I always carry it.  In all the dangers one naturally must encounter in the service of such a master as mine, it has kept me safe.  I have never even been wounded.”

The Duke of Medina Coeli was in fact a stern master in the school of arms.  He was always at the front in the wars just concluded between Spaniard and Moor, and where he was, there he expected his squires to be.  There was no place among the youths whose fathers had given him charge of their military training, for a lad with a grain of physical cowardice.  Ojeda moreover had a quick temper and a fiery sense of honor, and it really seemed to savor of the miraculous that he had escaped all harm.  At any rate he had reached the age of twenty-one with unabated faith in the little Flemish painting.

“These youngsters—­” the veteran seaman said to himself as he looked at the straight, proud, keen-faced squires and youthful knights marching along the streets of the temporary capital, “now that the Moors are vanquished what won’t they do in the Indies!  I think the golden days must be come for Christians.  And shall you be a soldier also, my lad?” he asked of the sharp-faced boy, who still stood near him.