“But,” exclaimed de Sancerre, springing to his feet, “there may be peril for the girl in this. ’Tis best we go alone.”
“I am amazed, Monsieur le Comte,” remarked La Salle, sternly. “Obey my orders! ’Tis not for you to question what I plan. Whatever comes of this, the blame shall rest with me.”
De Tonti, Membré, and de Sancerre had turned to make their way hurriedly back to the camp.
“De Sancerre,” called La Salle, ere they had gone beyond ear-shot. The French nobleman returned hurriedly to his leader’s side.
“There is no danger to Katonah in all this,” said La Salle, meaningly, his eyes reading de Sancerre’s face. “No harm can come to her, for Chatémuc is ever by her side. No nobleman in Spain or France is prouder, de Sancerre, than Chatémuc. You understand me?”
“Ma foi, I am not dull, monsieur!” exclaimed the Count, a note of anger in his voice. Then he turned on his heel and strode rapidly toward the camp.
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH A DAUGHTER GRANTS A FATHER’S WISH
Late in the afternoon of a day in April, just one year before the date of the occurrences recorded in the foregoing chapters of this tale, Don Rodrigo de Aquilar, statesman, soldier, scholar, devout Catholic, sat at a curiously-carved table in the library of his ancestral house in the street of Las Palmas, Seville. His gray hair and pointed beard, his keen, dark eyes and lofty brow, the simple elegance of his attire, and the artistic luxury of his surroundings combined to form a striking picture in the half-lights of the waning day. Upon the table before him lay pompous tomes, quaint old manuscripts, and several crude maps and charts.
Copies of the letters of Menendez to Philip II. of Spain, made by Don Rodrigo in the archives of Seville; a transcript of the bull “by the authority whereof Pope Alexander, the sixth of that name, gave and granted to the Kings of Castile and their successors the regions and islands found in the west ocean sea by the navigations of the Spaniards:” a reproduction of a map of the western world, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney by Michael Lok; a volume entitled Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages, hot with hatred of the Spanish, and other misleading data concerning a misunderstood continent confronted the Castilian aristocrat, and by their united efforts cast upon him a spell which had brought to his thin cheeks a hectic flush, and to his haughty lips lines of determination.
It was, however, with a much later manuscript than any one of those above mentioned that Don Rodrigo was engaged at the moment of which we write. Bending eagerly forward from a quaintly-cut, high-backed chair, the aged Spaniard was scanning attentively a parchment upon which a recent explorer, with artistic tendencies, had inscribed a pictorial outline of his discoveries. Ports, harbors, islands, and rivers competed for the attention of the observer with rudely outlined birds, beasts, and fishes. Indians feasting and dancing, Indians flogged by priests. Indians burning alive for heresy, gave grim testimony to the fact that the eccentric cartographer had witnessed sympathetically the saving of souls in the New World. It was not upon these, however, nor upon the chameleon with two legs confronting a bat-winged griffin having the tail of an alligator—a weird product, according to the map-maker, of Mexico—that Don Rodrigo de Aquilar was squandering the retreating light of day. His eyes and mind rested upon a sketch representing a group of Indians working silver mines.