"Go on."
"Oh! It will not be long, Excellency."
"All the worse."
"But I believe that it will be interesting."
"All the better then, make haste."
"These ladrones are English and French adventurers, whose courage exceeds all belief; lying in ambush among the rocks in the straits through which our vessels must pass, for they have vowed a war of extermination against our nation, they dart out in wretched canoes half full of water, leap on board the ship they have surprised, capture it and carry it off. The injury done our marine by these ladrones is immense; any ship attacked by them, with but few exceptions, may be regarded as lost."
"Confusion! That is very serious; has nothing been done to clear the seas from these daring pirates?"
"Pardon me, Excellency; Don Fernando de Toledo, admiral of the fleet, sacked, by the king's orders, the island of St. Christopher, the refuge of the ladrones, carried off all he could seize, and did not leave one stone on the other in the colony they had founded."
"Ah, ah!" said the Count, rubbing his hands, "That was well done, it appears to me."
"No, Excellency, and for this reason. These ladrones, scattered but not destroyed, spread over the other islands; some of them, it is true, returned to St. Christopher, but the greater part of them had the audacity to seek a refuge in Hispaniola itself."