I hurried off into the cabin, and telling Don Francisco and Fitzgerald that they were to be put for the night aboard of my galley, and having whispered to Eva that there was something in the wind, but that I knew not quite what it was, I conducted the two men to The Cross of Blood, and delivered them over to Calvagh, bidding him keep a close guard over them. Then I got into a boat, and in a trice was on the Spanish galleon’s deck.
Just as I reached it the clouds drifted from off the face of the moon, and as I looked up around me I could scarcely believe my eyes at what I saw. Pausing not to think, I placed my hand upon my sword, and had pulled it half-way out of its sheath, when a voice which I recognised as Tibbot the Pilot’s, sang out close to my ear, while there was a splutter of laughter in his throat, as he said—
“’Tis a wise man who sometimes doubts his seeing aright, Ruari Macdonald. Know you not your friends from your foes?”
Tibbot, I perceived, was not attired in the Irish fashion, but had discarded his saffron mantle and his long, wide-sleeved jacket, and had replaced them by a sober Spanish suit, under which, one might be sure, was a shirt of mail.
And now I noticed that the sailors who moved about us, getting the galleon ready for sea, were no more our own wild kernes of Mayo, but all mariners of Spain!
“Tibbot,” said I, “what is the meaning of this? Wherefore is this mummery?”
“’Tis by our mistress’s order,” said he, “and ’tis herself will have good reason for it, I’m thinking.” And his cheeks creased with laughter.
Grace O’Malley had said something of a stratagem,—was this it? One quicker of apprehension than myself would have seen what her intentions were, but I had to go and ask her for an explanation.
And, lo, on the poop deck, where a few hours before there had been so great a struggle, I found not my mistress, but a youthful, handsome, smiling, debonair knight of Spain, who yet had the eyes and the accents of our princess! By her side there stood the captain of the Capitana, risen from the dead—or such a passable imitation of him in face and figure as might well have deceived the living.
I stared stupidly at them both,—and then I understood. For the nonce, we were no longer O’Malleys or other free Irish rovers of the sea, but dons and señors—if you please,—soldiers and sailors under the flag of Spain; the Capitana for the time being had not been taken, but was still bound in all security for the port of Galway—only haply, that being stayed by storms, she had taken shelter behind the island of Arran, from which she would presently emerge to meet the other galleons as they came up.