When I came to, I lay in a dark cabin, and Ludar, scarcely less pallid than I, sat beside me.
“Come on deck,” said he, “this place is stifling. If the Dons mean to make an end of us, they may as well do it at once.”
So, bracing himself up to lend me an arm, he made for the deck.
A sentinel stood at the gangway, whom Ludar, brushing past, bade, in round English, give us food, and lead us to the captain.
The man stared in surprise, and muttered something in Spanish, which, as luck would have it, Ludar, mindful of his smattering of Spanish, learned at Oxford, understood to mean we were to remain below.
Whereupon he pulled me forward, and defied the fellow to put us back.
We might possibly have been run through then and there, had not a soldier, who had overheard our parley, come up.
“Are you English?” said he, in our own tongue.
“My comrade is English, I am Irish,” said Ludar, “and unless we have food forthwith, we are not even that.”
“I am an Irishman myself,” said the soldier, who, by his trappings, was an officer, “therefore come and have some food.”