“When I am knighted,” said Fernando, “I will go and fight the Moors in Africa, and destroy the castles where they make good Christians to toil as slaves. Would it not be joy to open the prisons and set them free?”
“Ay,” said Enrique, looking straight out of his wide-opened eyes as if he saw far away. “Then, too, should we see what lies behind—behind Tangiers and Ceuta, beyond the sands. There might we spread the Cross.”
“And there maybe are the two-headed giants and the dragons like the one Saint George of England killed; and magic castles, and fiery pits, the very entrance of hell. You used to say so.”
“Ah, maybe,” said Enrique, smiling. “Anyway there is the wide earth, the world that we do not know.”
“Then you do not think all the countries are discovered yet?” looking up in his face.
“Nay, surely not,” said Enrique, with gathering eagerness. “There,” pointing to the sparkling bay before them, “does that go on for ever, and for ever. Well is the Atlantic called the Sea of Darkness, blue and bright as it may be! But the lost path to the Indies, where is it? Where is that island the Englishman saw in mid-ocean? Where, where?” Enrique paused, his face one unanswered question. “Some day I will know.”
“But in the meantime,” said Fernando, “the enemies of the Blessed Saviour are here close by, killing and destroying good Christians?”
“Well,” said Enrique, coming out of the clouds, “we will deal first with them, sooner maybe than you think for! But there are more ways than one of subduing the world for Christ. You can win your knighthood in Barbary by and by, while I look for the fiery dragons beyond.”
He pulled a roughly-drawn map towards him, and began to study it.
“Ah, but not all alone,” said Fernando, vehemently; “the fiery dragons might kill you, and I could not fight the infidels by myself.”