“Had it not been for your ox-brained stupidity, we might have been laughing at Master Contemptuous even now.” The giant rolled over and surveyed his vituperative companion with a yawn. “Now, had I been there,” Roger persisted, “instead of cooling my heels at the pleasure of these knaves, had I been there in place of a numskull, Master Frazer would have been here. Dolt!”
“Have a care, Roger! I’ll brook little more of thy poet-aping names. ’Twas Marlowe taught them to you, and ever since, like a magpie—”
But the other was shaking with mock laughter. “Brook little more!” he gasped; “brook little more, indeed! And think you I fear the threat of one who lets a laughing infant tweak his nose and run away without so much as spanking the child? I can see him smiling now, as he floated off in the canoe. Why, ’twas in the self-same craft you brought! Now, that was considerate of thee, gull.”
“Leave off, Roger.”
“Wherefore?”
“Think you I like to remember the escape?” There was a note almost pitiful in the gruff voice, a pathetic growl that sounded like a moan. “An I were a wench, Prat, I’d weep for sheer vexation.”
Roger curiously eyed him, and, strangely enough, the idea of this giant weeping failed to touch his bubbling sense of the ludicrous. With an unprecedented consideration of Hugh’s feelings, he changed the subject.
Five miles to the southward another couple held converse. They stood on the deck of a Spanish vessel—by name the Madre de Dios—apart from a company of soldiers.
“The man we sent to await him,” said one, “has returned alone. Yet our esteemed prince was to have left Roanoke this morning.”
“Then what think you, St. Magil?” asked the other, who was evidently a Spanish officer of no mean rank. “I fear his wayward highness has come to harm, and is a prisoner in their fort. Shall we not push forward without further delay?”