"Wherein I am mightily favoured," said I. "Marvellously, too, I have forgotten your name, mon Capitaine."
"My name!" he said, in manifest puzzlement. "My name!" And then, smiling once more, he said, "I cannot tell. It is so long, so long since I heard it. My children called me Captain, but that was before the storm. I forget many things; my children left me; they were reft from me by the storm; they died—all but you; and I cannot remember your name! They called me Captain; and in truth I am Captain, by the choice and election of the great Condé. Yes, the great Condé made me Captain, a stripling from Quimperlé."
"Captain Q," said I, on the spur of the moment.
He looked puzzled; then the same smile, like the empty smile of a babe, beamed upon his face, and he said—
"Captain Q; and thou shalt be Corporal R. Is it not so?"
"And so it is," I said. "My name is Rudd; I am an Englishman."
"And we will fight the Spaniards together, shall we not? They must never get my gold—never!"
"Indeed they shall not!" I replied. "And now let us go out into the open, and I will bathe your arm at a brook. 'Tis pity we did not remember each other sooner."
"Ah, but it is such a long time!" said Captain Q.
We went out together, and after I had bathed his arm ('twas bruised from elbow to wrist) the Captain invited me to his hut, and to a share of his dinner of herbs.