“I know him; we were messmates,” cried a gruff voice. “Halt! avast there! don't fire! I say, my lad, crawl over to leeward of the fire. There, that will do. Dash a bucket of water over him, Perez.”
Perez obeyed with a vengeance, for I was soaked to the skin, and at the same time exposed to the scorching glare of the great fire, where I steamed away like a swamp at sundown.
“A'n't you Cregan, I say?” cried the same English voice which spoke before; “a'n't you little Con, as we used to call you?”
“Yes,” said I, overjoyed by the recognition, without knowing by whom it was made, “I am the little Con you speak of.”
“Ah, I remembered your voice the moment I heard it,” said he. “Don't you remember me?”
“Caramba!” broke in a savage-looking Spaniard; “we 're not going to catch a leprosy for the sake of your reminiscences. Tell the fellow to move off, or I'll send a bullet through him.”
“And I 'll follow you.”
“And I; and I,” cried two or three more, who, suiting the action to the speech, threw back the pan of the flint-muskets to examine the priming.
“And shall I tell you what I 'll do?” said the Englishman. “I'll lay the first fellow's skull open with this hanger that fires a shot at him.”
“Will you so?” said a thin, athletic fellow, springing to his legs, and drawing a long, narrow-bladed knife from his girdle.