By a stroke of fortune Sir Richard Pendragon and the Count of Nullepart were familiar with Madrid, and were able to point a fair course to the southern gate of the city. However, no sooner had we come before it, with our pursuers well in the rear, than we had to encounter a new peril. The gate was locked for the night.
The urgency of our cries, and loud bawling of “In the name of the King!” drew the porter out of his hut. In one hand he bore a lanthorn and in the other a key, which was strapped to his girdle. He was an old man, very querulous and apparently very sleepy.
“Who are ye that ride forth at this hour?” he demanded. “Where are your passports signed by the constable of the city?”
“It is here, father,” said Sir Richard Pendragon, leaning a little forward from the saddle and knocking the old man senseless with the hilt of his sword.
Leaping down from his horse, Sir Richard tore the key from the porter’s girdle. In the next instant he had thrown back the gate, and our horses were through. Yet brief as this delay was, it was almost too much. Hardly had we crossed the boundary of the city ere the hue and cry was upon us.
The Englishman, however, was in nowise daunted by the necessity for haste. With that self mastery and high instinct for action which a little time before had saved his life, he pulled the gate after him, and turned the key almost against the very noses of our pursuers.
While some of them screamed oaths and shouted curses and administered to the senseless porter, and others attacked the staunch iron barrier, we rode into the darkness at a pace which was calculated not unduly to distress our already fatigued horses.
When we had made a league and the shouts of our foes were no longer in our ears, my excitement, which I confess had been very great, abated sufficiently to enable me to remember that my friends had suffered scathe in the inn. To my inquiry they returned the answer that they had never felt happier in any situation; and further, I received their commendation upon the part I had played.
“My young companion,” said the Englishman, “I make you my service. Your behaviour was so worthy in the hour of trial that I regret that I abused your nation. I never ask to see a young springald bear his sword better; and as for your five wits, they are those of a good boy. You have pleased me well, good Don; and I allow that your mother was an excellent person. And the same applies to your father.”
A speech of this flattering civility, which I was happy to feel was my desert, gave me such pleasure that for the time I forgot that he who made it was undoubtedly a desperate and bloodthirsty character. Yet, in serving one to whom I was under the pledge of loyalty, I was committed to the interest of this bold and ruthless foreigner; besides the events of the night had given me a taste for the life of a soldier, which had bred a high intoxication in my veins. And the effect of this delightful madness was singular. At this hour I seemed to care little for the righteousness of my cause or the integrity of my company. My soul was possessed with the knowledge that I had killed a fellow creature in an open quarrel; and now, riding in the summer darkness, it asked no more than the opportunity to kill another.