"You were going to tell us, Señor," Johnnie said, "something of the Holy Office, and why, when you leave Seville, you leave Spain for ever."
Don Perez nodded. He rose to his feet and peered round the wooden tower of the forecastle, which nearly filled the bow-deck.
"There is nobody there," he said, with a little sigh of relief. "That fellow we took aboard at Lisbon is down in the waist with the mariners."
"But why do you fear him?" Johnnie answered in surprise.
The little yellow man plucked at his pointed black beard, hesitated for a moment, and then spoke.
"Have you noticed his hands, Señor?" he asked.
"Since you say so," Johnnie replied, with wonder in his voice, "I have noticed them. He is a proper young man of his inches, strong and an athlete, though I like not his face. But his hands are out of all proportion. They are too large, and the thumbs too broad—indeed, I have never seen thumbs like them upon a hand before."
Don Pedro Perez nodded significantly. "Ciertamenta," he answered dryly. "It is hereditary; it comes of his class. He is a sworn torturer of the Holy Office."
Johnnie shuddered. They had been speaking in Spanish. Now he exclaimed in his own tongue. "Good God!" he said, "how horrible!"
Perez grinned sadly and cynically as the moonlight fell upon his yellow face. "You may well start, Señor," he said, "but you know little of the land to which you are going yet."