“What!” cried Martin Alonzo, with a grimace, “have you the gift of language, too, and can hold an argument?”
“I did but justify myself,” answered Juan, sensitive to anything like injustice.
“So,” said Martin Alonzo, shortly. “Well, tell me, then, was it a fair fight? It seemed to me strange, indeed, to see such a fighting-cock as Diego yonder coming out of the wood only half-whipped, and yet with no fight left in him. Construe me that, since you have the gift of language; for it was more than Diego would do.”
Juan shifted uneasily from one foot to another, looked sidewise at Diego, glanced over at the islands, and then traced some pattern on the deck with his foot.
“Well-a-mercy!” exclaimed Martin Alonzo, impatiently, “if there be not more mystery over this puppy fight than over a great battle! What is there in this that ties your two tongues? Come, speak out, boy!”
“Why,” answered Juan, almost as impatiently as the captain, “I don’t half understand it myself. That is—well, I know why he would not fight any more; though his nice points of honor are beyond me. But I am only a jail-bird,” he added, sullenly.
“Tut, tut!” said Martin Alonzo, with a touch of sympathy showing through his impatience. “I have not said so, and I shall forget where you came from, so you behave yourself. Why would Diego fight no more?”
“Well, it was like this,” said Juan, plunging into it, since there seemed no escape from it; “at first he had the best of it, and gave me this eye that you see. Then we wrestled, and neither got the better of the other, until his foot tripped over a root and he fell, with me atop of him. Then I pounded him, as you can see by his face.”
“Ay, and then?” said Martin Alonzo, impatiently.
“I asked him to give up, and he said, not if I killed him.”