“Nay, nay!” quoth Grace O’Malley, “no more of that, I beg.”
The glance of the two men swept past her, de Vilela’s to fasten on Eva O’Malley, Fitzgerald’s on me, while my mistress made us known to each other. Then they entreated her to say what was her will in regard to them, and what ransom she demanded for their release. But she replied that she had not yet determined, and so put them off.
She conversed for some minutes with de Vilela, speaking to him of the West Indies, whither, it appeared, he had been in one of the very ships for which Tibbot the Pilot was watching—the San Millan de Simancas.
I now had had leisure to observe him more closely, and he gave me the impression of a man of high breeding. He discoursed with a tongue of winning sweetness, more like a woman’s than a man’s, and yet one had only to examine with a little carefulness the lines of his face to be convinced that these soft tones were like the fur over claws, and that there was nothing else of the feminine about him.
His companion, Fitzgerald, was of a very different type, although he, too, was of knightly birth—rash, unstable, easily swayed, but generous and warm of heart, with quick, unstudied manners, and no capacity for much besides the wielding of his sword.
Ever as the Spaniard spoke his dark, eloquent eyes wandered from one to another of us, resting with an absorbed intensity longest on Eva—a thing in no wise to be wondered at, but which I did not care to see, although I had no right to be jealous.
And then there broke upon the hush of the night, now grown still and calm, the zip-zap-swish, zip-zap-swish of the oars of a galley, quickly driven by its rowers through the water; there was the low, clear call of Tibbot as The Winged Horse came up towards us, while at his word the oars hung motionless and glistening in the pale moonlight, and I went out to hear what tidings he brought.
He reported that the tops of the masts of two large ships were to be seen on the horizon, and that there might be more, as the light was but faint owing to the clouds that still passed over the sky. I hastened back to inform my mistress of Tibbot’s news. The door of the cabin opened before I had reached it and Grace O’Malley appeared upon the scene, and as the door closed behind her I saw that Don Francisco was speaking earnestly to Eva, who, for her part, was listening to him with deep attention.