To return to the caravel; some one was talking of Neptune.
“What a clatter about your Neptune,” cried a soldier, peevishly, “I wish I’d never heard the name, and had stayed where I was. Here we are pitched from one storm into another, and land just in sight. I’m sick of it.”
“La casa quemada, acudir con el agua!” put in Hilo, who was swinging his legs over the bowsprit, and did not trouble himself to take his eyes from the blue land ahead.
“What does he say?” demanded the Frenchman, eagerly, looking suspiciously about.
“He says your house is burnt, and you run for the water,” exclaimed Wolfang, with a short chuckle.
“Ha!” retorted the other, setting down a steel cap he was polishing, to gesticulate and call attention to Hilo with his forefinger. “Look here, comrades, here’s a man to talk to another as if he had never made any blunders he would like to take back. But this kind of talking behind you, is the way with all these cowardly Spaniards.”
Hilo turned his head just sufficiently to send a glance at the irascible speaker from his wicked black eyes. “Take care!” it said.
“Take care!” repeated the Netherlander, warningly, this time translating the look. “You’re a born fool, Jean, to tempt the devil in him.”
“Fool!” cried Jean. “Who meddled with him first? He kicked my casque out of his way yesterday, and set me to work cleaning and straightening it out this morning. As to running for water when it’s too late, he’ll think so too some day when Señor Inique catches him, and he gets down on his knees to beg for life, or the Marquis of Villenos’s friends corner him. He needn’t think he’s thought less a villain by us Frenchmen than by his own countryfolks.”
Here the man-at-arms stopped to take breath and glower at Señor De Ladron, who lifting in his feet, walked coolly over, opposite the first, saying, with a smile on his face, “Come, come, there is no use in comrades quarreling. Do you suppose I knew it was your casque? Give me your hand, and let’s make it up.”