“Pardon me:––you are about to say no others escaped, are you not? Have you forgotten De Vaca’s own statement as to two other men who went ashore before the sinking of the vessels, and who were never heard of again?”
“I have heard of it with great special interest,” announced Don Ruy––“heard it in the monastery on the island of Rhodes where the white man you speak of (for one of the lost ones was a negro) had as a boy been trained in godly ways by the Knights of St. John. There the good fathers also educated me as might be and tried with all zeal to make a monk of me! Ever before my mind was held the evil end of the other youth who fled from the consecrated robe,––for he had made a scandal for a pretty nun ere he became a free lance and joined hands with Solyman the Magnificent against Christendom,––oh––many and long were the discourses I had to listen to of that heretic adventurer! He was a Greek of a devout and exalted Christian family, and his name was Don Teodore.”
Juan Gonzalvo––called Capitan Gonzalvo in favor of his wide experience and wise management of 84 camp, had been resting idly on the sands, but sat up, alert at that name.
“Holy name of God:––” and his words were low and keen as though bitten off between his teeth––“is he then alive? Good Father––was it he? and is he still alive?”
While one might count ten, Padre Vicente looked in silence at the tense, eager face of his questioner, and the others stared also, and felt that a spark had touched powder there.
“Yes:––it is true. It was that man,” said the priest at last. “But why do you, my son, wake up at the name? May it be that the Greek was dear to you?”
“He should be dear should I find him, or any of his blood!” But the voice of the careless adventurer was changed and was not nice to hear. “All the gold the new land could give me would I barter but to look on the face of Don Teo, the renegade Greek!”
“But not in friendship?”
Juan Gonzalvo laughed, and Don Diego crossed himself at that laugh,––it had the mockery of hell in it, and the priest turned and gave the heretofore careless fellow a keener attention than had previously occurred to him. By so little a thing as a laugh had the adventurer lifted himself from the level where he had been idly assigned.
“You will not look on his face in this world, my son,” said the priest, “and enmities should cease at the grave. The man is dead. You could have been but a child when he left Spain, what evil could have given him your hate?”