“Ay! is it so? And you are so nice that you must choose your company, eh?”
“I am a Pinzon,” said Diego, with a touch of offended pride.
“A Pinzon! Ay, to be sure!” said Martin Alonzo, scornfully. “And, prithee, why are you going this voyage?”
“Because you forced me, and no other why,” said Diego.
“Tut! will you quibble with me as if I were a fray at the convent? Why, then, did I force you? Speak up like a Pinzon, now!”
“Because I gave the good brothers so much trouble.”
“You stole a melon, did you not?”
“Among other things, I did.”
“And if you stole a melon, in what are you better than these men who stole purses, perhaps? You did it for mischief and to satisfy your gluttony, and how do you know what bitter temptations these men had? Now, let me hear no more of your superiority. The men who are here are sailors, and I know nothing else of them until they force me to. As for you, your watch has been assigned, and your place is where you have been put. Now go forward, where you belong.”
Well, there was that in Martin Alonzo’s tone and manner that kept Diego’s ready tongue in check, and made him turn and go forward very meekly; though not without a tingling sense of shame at having been likened in so public a manner to the convicts he had so despised.