“Ah, could I but find a harder penance!” sighed Enrique; but he allowed Joao to help him back to his couch, and began to tell him how it had all chanced, and to ask what had brought him there in such good time.
“Duarte has troubled much about Fernando,” said Joao; “how was it with him when you left him?”
But the attempt to speak of Fernando threw Enrique into such an agony of weeping that Joao was obliged to cease questioning him, beginning to perceive how terrible must have been the experience that had thus prostrated one of such resolute will and power of endurance.
“Courage!” he said; “a better day must dawn. Fernando will soon be restored to us; and though we yield Ceuta nominally, it shall go hard but we will soon win it back again. For that object a war will cause no difference of opinion.”
Enrique made no answer. He lay silent for some moments, then turned and looked up at his brother. “We were eating our horses before we yielded, and there was no water, and no hope. That must soon have killed him and all the poor fellows whom we have led to ruin.”
“You would have been fools to hold out,” said Joao, bluntly. “But what is to be done now? Here am I, with six thousand at my back—”
“Here? Fresh troops?” cried Enrique, starting into animation. “Then what is to hinder one more effort? Let us go back to Tangier, and win it, or die!”
“But the treaty?” said Joao.
“The treaty! That does but hold Fernando fast. We gave no pledge not to continue the war on another footing. And they harassed our rear enough as we retreated to show how far they care to keep their word. I am another man, now you give me hope.”
Joao was not altogether averse to the proposal, and Enrique, with reviving spirits, recovered his natural ascendency; and arrangements were made for Joao to return home with the sick and wounded, while Enrique, with the fresh troops, marched again on Tangier. No second brother, he said, should be thus risked. His first care, however, was to put Ceuta into a complete state of defence; and while he was thus engaged came first the news that the fleet which he had sent home immediately after the retreat from Tangier had met with a violent storm and been wrecked on the coast of Andalusia, where the Castilians had showed great kindness to the distressed sailors. Next arrived a peremptory despatch from the king, ordering both his brothers to return at once, and to make no further effort to continue the war for the present. Enrique was bitterly disappointed, though he felt that he could not wonder at the king’s doubt of his judgment.