Don Ruiz smiled in rage and malice, a smile that displayed his white teeth. 'Ingenious. Yes. And then, you brigand?'
'I could not without disrespect to his Eminence, the Primate of New Spain, set his ransom at less than a hundred thousand ducats.'
Don Ruiz sucked in his breath. He went livid. His jaw fell loose. 'A hundred thousand ducats!'
'That is today. Tomorrow I may not be so modest.'
The Captain–General in his fury swung to the Cardinal, his gestures wild. 'Your Eminence hears what this thief now demands?'
But the Cardinal, having now resumed his unworldly calm, was not again to be shaken from it. 'Patience, my son. Patience! Let us beware the mortal sin of anger, which will scarcely hasten my release for the apostolic labours that await me in Havana.'
It would have needed a great deal more than this to bring Don Ruiz to yield had not the very fury that now possessed him, craving an orgy of vengeance, shown him the way. Trembling a little in his suppressed wrath, yet he was sufficiently master of himself to bow as if to an order, and to promise in comparatively civil terms that the money should at once be forthcoming, in order that his Eminence's deliverance should be procured at the earliest moment.
V
But in his barge as he was returning to shore with the Alcalde, the Captain–General betrayed the fact that it was not the deliverance of the Cardinal–Archbishop that spurred him so much as his eagerness to crush this impudent pirate who defeated him at his own game.
'The fool shall have the gold, so that destruction may overtake him.'