To this I agreed, begging my lady to have a care for her safety, for these creatures have tusks like any jack-knife; and so we separated, going about to get a fair shot with our arrows at the beast. Now, to get to the further side of the thicket, I must either cross an open space, or round a growth of high shrubs; and as, for lack of provisions, I feared greatly to startle our quarry before getting aim, I chose the latter. Scarce had I got beyond the thicket when I heard a scream that I knew at once no boar could make, and, fearing my lady had startled some savage Inga or jagoarete and stood in peril, I drew the sword from my belt in a twinkling, and leaping out of the scrub into the open rushed towards the thicket, shouting lustily. But ere I was half across the open I heard a voice cry out therefrom:
"Lord love you, master, do me no mischief. 'Tis but your humble servant, Matthew Pennyfarden." And with this, out from the thicket leaps my faithful friend; but a sight to see, for the rags of clothes that covered his nakedness all fastened together with strings of grass in lack of buttons, and a great bush of hair about his head, so that but for his voice I might not have known him.
Before I could recover of my astonishment he seizes my hand, and cries he: "Quick, master, behind these brambles for a refuge, though I fear never a Portugal in the world now I have you at hand."
"There be no Portugals here, friend Matthew," says I.
"There you are wrong," says he; "for I do assure you I spied one of 'em creeping upon me with a bow, when I sang out in the hope of alarming my mates, and had the good chance to bring you forth. Nay, look you, master; there is the young villain!"
Then I burst into a good, hearty laugh, for the "young villain" to whom he pointed was none but my dear lady, who was now running towards us. Then discerning who it was, on spying more closely, my friend Matthew slaps his leg, and cries he:
"Zookers! 'tis her ladyship, as I might have seen if my eyes had not been dimmed with a fever. I beg your pardon a thousand times, madam, in having mistaken you for a Portugal. 'Tis not the first time I have fled from a female, but 'twould be the last if every one wore the breeches—saving your presence—to such advantage."
"Tell me, good friend," says she, cutting short this pleasantry on her costume, "have you happily found my uncle?"
"Ay, madam," he replies. "That I did by such good fortune as I shall relate to you at our leisure; and, sure, I was no happier to find him than he to be found. I left him hale and hearty at the mouth of the Oronoque, where he guards his two ships against the accursed pirates that practice their villainous calling in those latitudes. His loving messages to your ladyship and to your master I can but ill express at this moment for my own delight in seeing you once more."
And therewith, as if unable to restrain his affection any longer, he threw himself upon my neck, declaring this was the happiest day of his life. "For Lord love you, master," says he, "I thought never to have seen you again; and but for the strategy I have learned of the Portugals, I could not have persuaded my company to persevere in this search for you."