“Why,” said Diego, “let us get more ourselves, first.”
“Tut!” said Martin Alonzo, and laughed like a man drunk with expectation, “be not so grudging, boy; there will be enough to load the Pinta to the rail. Come! Ah, this looks well, indeed.”
So he led the way to where the admiral sat, trying to extract some sort of information from the natives.
“My lord admiral,” said he, joyously, “this boy here, or the two of them together, for they run in couples now, though they were for flying at each other’s throats a while since—this boy, I say, has found the thing we have sought.”
“And what is that?” asked the admiral, looking kindly at the flushed, eager faces of the two lads.
“Show him, Diego. A shrewd lad and a cousin of mine, admiral,” said Martin Alonzo.
Diego, for the better showing of his shrewdness and his good fortune, drew out all of the gold nose-rings he had obtained, and Juan turned all he had into the same pile, Diego holding his two hands together to accommodate them all.
The admiral took some of them in his hand, eagerly, too, and examined them carefully before he spoke.
“Gold; and without alloy. Pure,” he said. “This is well. How came you by them, my boy?”
So Diego told the story, looking to Juan for confirmation now and again, and the latter responding loyally, giving Diego all the credit that was his.