My Master lifted his cap to her; and she lifted her eyes to him, but never a word did she utter, though but a moment since she had been using excellent English. Only she stood, slight and helpless and (I swear) most pitiful, as one saying, "Here is my judge. I am content."
My Master turned to the prisoner and questioned him in the Portuguese. But the fellow (a man taller than the rest and passably straight-looking) would confess nothing but that his name was Gil Perez of Lagos, the boatswain of the wrecked ship. Questioned of the assault, he shook his head merely and shrugged his shoulders. His face was white: it seemed to me unaccountably, until glancing down I took note of a torn wound above his right knee on the inside, where the hound's teeth had fastened.
"But who is the captain of the ship?" my Master demanded in Portuguese; and they thrust forward a small man who seemed not over-willing. Indeed his face had nothing to commend him, being sharp and yellow, with small eyes set too near against the nose.
"Your name?" my Master demanded of him too.
"Affonzo Cabral," he answered, and plunged into a long tale of the loss of his ship and how it happened. Cut short in this and asked concerning the lady, he shrugged his shoulders and replied with an oath he knew nothing about her beyond this, that she had taken passage with him at Dunquerque for Lisbon, paying him beforehand and bearing him a letter from the Bishop of Cambrai, which conveyed to him that she was bound on some secret mission of politics to the Court of Lisbon.
As I thought, two or three of the men would have murmured something here, but for a look from her, who, turning to my Master, said quietly in good English:
"That man is a villain. My name is Alicia of Bohemia, and my mission not to be told here in public. But he best knows why he took me for passenger, and how he has behaved towards me. Yourselves may see how I have saved his freight. And for the rest, sir"—here she bent her eyes on my Master very frankly—"I have proved these men, and claim to be delivered from them."
At this my Master knit his brows: and albeit he was a young man (scarce past thirty) and a handsome, the deep wedge-mark showed between them as I had often seen it show over the nose of the old man his father.
"I think," said he to Mr. Saint Aubyn, "this should be inquired into at greater leisure. With your leave my men shall take the prisoner to Pengersick and have him there in safe keeping. And if"—with a bow—" the Lady Alicia will accept my poor shelter it will be the handier for our examining of him. For the rest, cannot we be of service in rescuing yet more of the cargo?"
But this for the while was out of question: the Saint Andrew lying well out upon the strand, with never fewer than four or five ugly breakers between her and shore; and so balanced that every sea worked her to and fro. Moreover, her mizzen mast yet stood, as by a miracle, and the weight of it so strained at her seams that (thought I) there could be very little left of her by the next ebb.