"No," answered the other. "My duty is to you--I could not pay my debt if I strove forever and a day. You are my captain,--when you order I obey."
A silence followed, during which Sir Mortimer stood at the window and Sir John paced the floor. At last the former spoke, lightly: "There will be a storm to-night.... I must go comfort that knave of mine. At times he doth naught but babble of things at home--at Ferne House. This morn it was winter to him, and in this burning land he talked of snowflakes falling beneath the Yule-tide stars; yea! and when he has spoken pertly to the sexton he needs must go a-carolling:
"'There comes a ship far sailing then,--
St. Michael was the steersman;
St. John sate in the horn;
Our Lord harped; Our Lady sang,
And all the bells of heaven rang.'"
He sang the verse lightly, as simply and sweetly as Robin had sung it, then with a smile turned to go; and in passing Nevil laid a slight caressing touch upon his shoulder. "Until to-night then, John!--and, by'r Lady! seeing that you will be at the top of the board and I at the bottom, I do think that I may hear nothing worth betraying!"
Sir John uttered an ejaculation, and would have taken again the folded paper, but the other withstood him, and quietly went his way to kneel beside Robin-a-dale, give up his hand to tears and kisses (for Robin was very weak, and thought his master cruel to leave him so long alone), to the youth's unchecked babble of all things that in his short life appertained to Ferne House and to its master.
Sir Francis Drake and Alonzo Brava had come to a mind in regard to the ransom for the town. If the English gained not so large a sum as they had hoped for, yet theirs was the glory of the enterprise, and Drake's eye was yet upon Nombre de Diòs. If the Spaniards had lost money and men and had looked on day by day at the slow dilapidation of their city, yet they had riches left, and the life of the Spanish soldier was cheap, and that ruined portion of the town might be built again. Agreements had been drawn as to the ransom of the city of Cartagena and signed by each leader,--by Brava with the pious (but silent) wish that the fleet might be miraculously destroyed before the drying of the ink; and by Drake with one of his curious mental reservations, concerning in this case the block-house and the great priory just without the city. Matters being thus settled and the next morning named for the British evacuation of Christendom, needs must pass the usual courtesies between the then stateliest people of Cartagena and the bluntest. Alonzo Brava, in all honesty, invited to supper with him in his dismantled citadel Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Nevil, and all officers and gentlemen within the English forces. Drake as frankly accepted the courtesy for himself and all who might be spared from the final labors of the night.
In the late evening, by a stormy light which, seen through the high, wide, and open windows, seemed to pit itself against the approaching darkness, Brava, motioning to right and left, seated himself with his principal guests at the head of the table, while his chamberlains busied themselves with serving the turn of lesser names. Captains and officers, gentlemen and volunteers of wealth and birth, fell into place, while the end of the table left was for needier adventurers, scapegrace and out-at-elbow volunteers. Noiseless attendants went to and fro. Great numbers of candles, large as torches, were lighted, but the prolonged orange glare which entered the western windows seemed to have some quality distinct from light, by virtue of which men's features were not clearly seen. Distant thunder rolled, but when it passed one heard from the gallery above the hall Spanish music. The feast marched on in triumph, much as it might have done in any camp (where Famine was not King) beneath any flag of truce. Here the viands were in quantity, and there was wine to spill even after friend and foe had been loudly pledged. Free men, sea-rovers, and soldiers of fortune, it was for them no courtier's banquet. Only the presence at table of their leaders kept the wassail down. Now and again the thunder shook the hall, making all sounds beneath its own as the shrilling of a cicada; then, the long roll past, the music took new heart, while below it went on the laughter and the soldier wit, babble of sore wounds, of camp-fires, and high-decked ships--tales wild and grim or broadly humorous. At the cross-table opposite and a little below Sir John Nevil, who was seated at Brava's left hand, was a vacant seat. It awaited (the Governor explained) the envoy whom he had sent out to hardly gather the remainder of the ransom of Cartagena. The length, the heat, and danger of the journey had outwearied the envoy, who was a gentleman of as great a girth as spirit. Later, despite his indisposition, he would join them.
He came, and it was Pedro Mexia. From Nevil and Arden and several of Sir John's old officers of the Mere Honour burst more or less suppressed exclamations. Nevil, from his vantage-point, sent a lightning glance far down the table, where were gathered those whose rank or station barely brought them within this hall, but what with the massed fruit, the candles, this or that outstretched hand and shoulder, he could not see to the lowest at the table, and he heard no sound to match his own or Arden's ejaculation. Mexia, who had lingered with his own wine-cup and associates, now, after the moment of general welcome, seated himself heavily. His first gaze had been naturally for Francis Drake, the man whose name was waxing ever louder in Spanish ears, but now in the act of raising his tankard his eyes and those of the sometime conqueror of Nueva Cordoba came together. For a second his hand shook, then he tossed off the wine, and putting down his tankard with some noise, leaned half-way across the table.
"Ha! we meet again, Sir John Nevil--and after four years of mortal life we be a-ransoming yet! You see I have not lost your tongue--although I lost my teachers!" He laughed at the tag to his speech, being drunk enough to make utter mischief, out of sheer good nature.
"Doth Master Francis Sark still teach you English?" asked Nevil, coldly.