They did not reach Caspe in three hours, but went lazily, being weary; for however long a man defies fatigue the hour comes when it claims him. The knowledge that Caspe lay near with sure lodging for the night, soothed Rodriguez' impatience. And as they loitered they talked, and they decided that la Garda must now be too far behind to pursue any longer. They came in four hours to the bank of the Ebro and there saw Caspe near them; but they dined once more on the grass, sitting beside the river, rather than enter the town at once, for there had grown in both travellers a liking for the wanderers' green table of earth.
It was a time to make plans. The country of romance was far away and they were without horses.
"Will you buy horses, master?" said Morano.
"We might not get them over the Pyrenees," said Rodriguez, though he had a better reason, which was that three gold pieces did not buy two saddled horses. There were no more friends to hire from. Morano grew thoughtful. He sat with his feet dangling over the bank of the Ebro.
"Master," he said after a while, "this river goes our way. Let us come by boat, master, and drift down to France at our ease."
To get a river over a range of mountains is harder than to get horses. Some such difficulty Rodriguez implied to him; but Morano, having come slowly by an idea, parted not so easily with it.
"It goes our way, master," he repeated, and pointed a finger at the Ebro.
At this moment a certain song that boatmen sing on that river, when the current is with them and they have nothing to do but be idle and their lazy thoughts run to lascivious things, came to the ears of Rodriguez and Morano; and a man with a bright blue sash steered down the Ebro. He had been fishing and was returning home.
"Master," Morano said, "that knave shall row us there."
Rodriguez seeing that the idea was fixed in Morano's mind determined that events would move it sooner than argument, and so made no reply.