"Don Pedro Zuares de Barradas," said Bartelot.
"I remember now. I have his Spanish cross below," said Morley. "Good Heavens! if these should be his sons! The names are the same. How singular!"
"And they were comrades of Hawkshaw, you say, Captain Phillips?"
"Comrades, or shipmates, or something—nothing good, you may be assured."
And now Morley, just as Dr. Heriot joined them, recalled Hawkshaw's strange story of how the one named Zuares committed—unwittingly, however—the awful crime of matricide, in the Barranca Secca—that savage story which he related on a summer evening in Acton Chase, to the Bassets and Pages; and now, by a strange fatality, their lot was all cast together within the narrow compass of a single ship, upon the wide and lonely sea.
"These are most calamitous tidings," said Morley, in a low and troubled voice, as he passed his arm through Heriot's, and drew him aside; "love, they say, laughs at danger; but here, Dr. Heriot, love may weep," he added, almost with a groan.
"Hang it, man, call me Heriot—Leslie Heriot, or whatever you like; but drop the doctor, it sounds so precious stiff, especially when—when we both love these two girls."
"Well," said Morley, who, as an Englishman, had his local or national prejudices, but meant to be complimentary, "for a Scotchman, you are a nice fellow, Heriot; but—but Ethel and Rose, what are we to do now?"
"Fight to the last gasp for them, that is all," replied Heriot, stoutly.
While they were conversing thus, Noah Gawthrop approached Captain Bartelot, and, in his own fashion, began to state that he had heard some strange hints dropped by the watch at night, by others that lounged about the windlass-bitts and forecastle; that some of the crew had been whetting their knives on the carpenter's grindstone, that all were on the alert, and were, he added, "sartainly up to summut that looked like squalls, or mischief."