"However, the Flamand (a vantard and a bully, but very cunning) offered to fight any man there, or any two with fists or knives or any other weapon in their choice. And when no one took up his challenge, he cried out, 'Ho, stand back there, ye pack of cowards! This man is mine. A hundred silver shields! What is a hundred shields, when for such a wiry fellow, albeit a little old, we will get a hundred gold pieces from Parma, if only we can get him as far as Nieuport.'
"And so to Parma I was given, but the galley I was first placed in met with an English ship-of-war, and she ran us so close that we could not row. Her prow scraped us, breaking the oars and tossing the dead about, many being slain with the bounding fragments. And I—I was in the place next the port-hole, and I mind me I could lay my hand on the muzzle of a shotted gun. But that is the last I remember. For at that moment the Englishman fired a broadside and swept our decks. I alone was unhurt, and after a while in the lazar-house of Vigo, I came hither in a galleasse to teach the 'comites' of the Mediterranean side the newer practice of the fleets of the North."
He chuckled a little, his well-trained ear taking in the diminuendo and crescendo of the sentinel's footsteps on the wooden platform above his head.
"But from what I saw of the English," he murmured, "I judge that before long there will be no need of galleys to fight Spain's battles."
In a moment John d'Albret knew that his companion had not yet heard of the destruction of the Great Armada. He told him.
"Glory to the God of Battles," he said, hushed and low, "to Him the praise!"
Just then all the bells of the city began to ring, slow and measured. The sound came mellowed over the water and filtered through the striped awnings of yellow and red.
"Some great man is dead," he said, "perhaps the King—Philip, I mean. Or else a day of humiliation——"
"Auto de fé!" came along the benches in a thrilling whisper, for in spite of their fatigue few of the slaves were asleep. The afternoon was too hot, the glare from the water intolerable.
"Ah, well, the sooner to peace for some poor souls," said Francis the Scot. Then a thought seemed to strike him. "It is not possible—no, you cannot have heard. I dare not expect it. But I had a daughter, she was named Claire. They told me—that is, the Flamand Holtz, a not unkindly brute, though he had resolved to make money out of me, dead or alive—well, he told me that one of the wisest of the professors, a learned man, had taken her under his care. They escaped together to go to his mother's house with one of the students, a cousin of the Hope of Israel. You never heard—no, it is not possible. Why should I dream it?"