"Galleons! Galleons about!" he repeated--shrieked, almost. "Nay! Nay! Nay! The galleons are safe in Cadiz by now."
"Are they?" I said, shrugging of my shoulders.
"Are they not?" And now his face was death itself.
"We spoke a ship last night which did not say so," I answered. "No galleons have passed this way, gone in yet."
I almost regretted my words, seeing, a moment later, their effect on him. For that effect was great--I had nigh written terrible.
He staggered back from the port-hole by which he had been standing, gazing out at the Pembroke and her consorts, his face waxy now from the absence of blood; his lips a bluish purple, so that I could see the cracks in them; his coarse white hands twitching; and his eyes roving round my cabin lighted on my washing commode, on which stood the water ewer; then he seized it and the glass, poured out from one to the other--his hand shook so that the neck of the vessel clinked a tune upon the rim of the glass--and drank, yet not without some sort of a murmured apology for doing so--an apology that became almost a whine.
"Not passed this way--not gone in yet? My God! Where are they? And--and--with that fleet here--here--here--'twixt here and Cape St. Vincent! Where are they?"
"Probably coming in now--on their way," I made answer. "Or very near." Then next said, quietly: "You seem concerned about this?"
"Concerned!" he wailed. "Concerned! I have my fortune, my all--'tis not much, yet much to me--on board two of the galleons, and--and--ah!" and he clutched at his ruffled shirt front. "The English fleet is there--across their path! My God!"