"Nay, for I should not then have to fear your scowl," was the answer ending with a laugh. But Nando added the next moment with a good-natured smile—
"Even the Admiral himself was not afraid of your wrath anent those doggies, when you were safe out of the way, for he fed them with his own hands."
As those last words were uttered Montoro turned sharply away and brushed his sleeve across his eyes. He turned back again almost as quickly, and laid a tolerably hard grip of his strong fingers on his companion's arm as he muttered huskily—
"You'll never let me get a hold over my temper, Nando, if you torment me thus. But did—did thy noble father in very truth think upon the wants of the poor doggies?"
Ferdinand's eyes were glistening too as he replied—
"Ay, that he did indeed. And know'st thou, Toro, half I feel jealous of thee, for verily I believe that it was as much on thy account as for the dogs' sake that my father did them so much honour. But hark to the storm they are making. They have found out thou art on board. Come away, and let them loose."
The next minute the two dogs of Master Pedro, the spice and curiosity dealer of El Cuevo, were bounding up on deck, giving vent to a succession of excited hurrahs in their own especial tongue.
Those half-unconscious caresses bestowed upon the hounds by Doña Rachel Diego at the hour of parting, those tears with which, in trying to conceal them, she had bedewed the dogs' heads, had so endeared the animals to her son, that from the outset of his long journeyings he ever considered their comfort before his own, and reaped the just reward in their fidelity and strong attachment to himself. But that evening he was destined to pay a somewhat heavy penalty for the friendship.
"Toro, you never give the dogs a swim," said Ferdinand suddenly, when, after a regular romping match, boys and animals had tumbled themselves down together in a promiscuous heap, to get back breath and energy for further proceedings. The dogs were so enormously strong that playing with them was not easy work like playing with kittens.
"I feel as if I had been engaged in a pretty stiff wrestling match," said Montoro, laughing, and stretching his arms, "and oh! how warm it's become, or I."