Drake spent all his leisure during the next fortnight with the Spaniard, whose recovery was slow but steady. It was tacitly understood that the less said of the incident which had left him stunned and half-drowned the better. If those who had sought to kill him knew him to be alive, they might try again. The young seaman had never known a man like this before. In his guest's casual talk of his young days one could see as in a mirror the Spain of a half-century since, with its audacious daring, its extravagant chivalry and its bulldog ferocity. "They have outgrown us altogether, these young fellows," he said once with his quaint half-melancholy smile. "When the King and Queen rode in armor at the head of their troops in Granada, our cavaliers dreamed of conquering the world--now it has all been conquered." "Not England," Drake put in quickly. "Not England--I beg your pardon, my friend. But we have grown heavy with gold in these days--and gold makes cowards." "It never made a coward o' me," laughed the lad. "Belike it'll never have the chance." Through the shadows the old ship's-lantern cast in the rude half-timbered room seemed to move the wild figures of that marvellous pageant of conquest which began in 1492. Saavedra spoke little of himself but much of others--Ojeda, Nicuesa, Balboa, Cortes, Alvarado, Pizarro. In his soft slow speech they lived again, while by the stars outside, unknown uncharted realms revealed themselves. This man used words as a master mariner would use compass and astrolabe. "Those days when we followed Balboa in his quest for the South Sea," he ended, "were worth it all. Gold is nothing if it blinds a man to the heavens. You too, my son, may seek the Golden Fleece in good time. May the high planets fortify you!" What room was left for a knight-errant in the Spain of to-day, ruling by steel and shot and flame and gold? It must be rather awful, the listener reflected, to see your own country go rotten like that in a generation. Yet there was no bitterness in the old hidalgo's tranquil eyes. "I have been a fool," he said smiling, "but somehow I do not regret it. The wound from a poisoned arrow can be seared with red-hot iron, but for the creeping poison of the soul--the loss of honor--there is no cure."