“Oh yes it will. The cowardly rowers down there won’t give me any trouble. You know I learnt the Spanish lingo in Hispaniola, and speak it so well that I almost despise myself for it. I shall go as a Spanish officer, under the name used by me in my former visits to Antwerp, Capitan Guido Amati. I shall pose as the rescuer of that lady in the boat alongside; that is, if things turn out as I expect. Have the cutter off the nearest dyke down the river below Fort Lillo to meet me by to-morrow noon.”
“You are taking your life in your hands. You’re doing more than this, you are throwing it away,” objects the first officer very anxiously.
“I’d do both for my bonny Queen Bess, whose hand I kissed before leaving England,” whispers the young man. “Now I will see my prisoner.”
Seizing a rope he swings himself over the low gunwale and a moment after is standing among his men, who are still on guard in the Spanish pleasure galley—one second later Guy Chester hears the softest, sweetest, most coquettishly alluring voice he has ever heard since his ears opened to the sounds of man—or woman.
CHAPTER II.
THE LADY OF THE BARGE.
No tones have ever thrilled Guy Chester so before, though in the almost impenetrable gloom of the night its witchery has no assistance from graceful figure, fascinating face, nor flashing eyes. It is the voice alone that charms him. It says: “Señor, are you an officer? Have you authority among these wild men?”
The speaking figure has risen at the commotion made by Chester’s springing into the boat. Perhaps even in the darkness the lady notes the salute from his men by which he is received. The tongue in which the lady [[17]]speaks is Spanish, pure, refined; the exquisite Spanish of the Castilian.
“I have, señorita,” replies Guy, answering in the same language, though his accent and diction are almost barbarous beside her liquid idiom. The sound of the Spanish language seems to reassure the lady, who, stepping from beneath the awning that adorns and protects the stern of the boat, confronts Chester, and in tones that are part pleading and part commanding, says: “Tell me who you are?”