The Fray heard and saw with a quiet smile.  He was one of those excellent men whom the cruelties of his countrymen had stirred up (as the darkness, by mere contrast, makes the light more bright), as they did Las Casas, Gasca, and many another noble name which is written in the book of life, to deeds of love and pious daring worthy of any creed or age.  True Protestants, they protested, even before kings, against the evil which lay nearest them, the sin which really beset them; true liberals, they did not disdain to call the dark-skinned heathen their brothers; and asserted in terms which astonish us, when we recollect the age in which they were spoken, the inherent freedom of every being who wore the flesh and blood which their Lord wore; true martyrs, they bore witness of Christ, and received too often the rewards of such, in slander and contempt.  Such an one was Fray Gerundio; a poor, mean, clumsy-tongued peasant’s son, who never could put three sentences together, save when he waxed eloquent, crucifix in hand, amid some group of Indians or negroes.  He was accustomed to such rebuffs as the bishop’s; he took them for what they were worth, and sipped his wine in silence; while the talk went on.

“They say,” observed the commandant, “that a very small Plate-fleet will go to Spain this year.”

“What else?” says the intendant.  “What have we to send, in the name of all saints, since these accursed English Lutherans have swept us out clean?”

“And if we had anything to send,” says the sea-captain, “what have we to send it in?  That fiend incarnate, Drake—­”

“Ah!” said his holiness; “spare my ears!  Don Pedro, you will oblige my weakness by not mentioning that man;—­his name is Tartarean, unfit for polite lips.  Draco—­a dragon—­serpent—­the emblem of Diabolus himself—­ah!  And the guardian of the golden apples of the West, who would fain devour our new Hercules, his most Catholic majesty.  Deceived Eve, too, with one of those same apples—­a very evil name, senors—­a Tartarean name,—­Tita!”

“Um!”

“Fill my glass.”

“Nay,” cried the colonel, with a great oath, “this English fellow is of another breed of serpent from that, I warrant.”

“Your reason, senor; your reason?”

“Because this one would have seen Eve at the bottom of the sea, before he let her, or any one but himself, taste aught which looked like gold.”

“Ah, ah!—­very good!  But—­we laugh, valiant senors, while the Church weeps.  Alas for my sheep!”

“And alas for their sheepfold!  It will be four years before we can get Cartagena rebuilt again.  And as for the blockhouse, when we shall get that rebuilt, Heaven only knows, while his majesty goes on draining the Indies for his English Armada.  The town is as naked now as an Indian’s back.”

“Baptista Antonio, the surveyor, has sent home by me a relation to the king, setting forth our defenceless state.  But to read a relation and to act on it are two cocks of very different hackles, bishop, as all statesmen know.  Heaven grant we may have orders by the next fleet to fortify, or we shall be at the mercy of every English pirate!”