“It is nothing,” he said. “It is not more than a scratch. I pray you, leave me, my friends, to my own devices, for upon my soul you have not a moment to spare. By now a mounted company is surely upon our heels.” “Mounseer,” said the Englishman, with a delicacy of address of which I should not have deemed him to be capable, “I care not if all Spain is out and mounted on the strain Bucephalus. Do you suppose that one who hath the blood of kings under his doublet will leave you to the wolves. Where is your hurt, good Mounseer? We will look to it, if it please you.” In spite of the courage of our friend, who protested that his hurt was nothing and that time was much, we kept to our determination to find his injury. He then allowed that he had had several inches of steel in his ribs. “But it is nought, my friends; the merest trifle I assure you,” he said as he staggered towards his horse. All the same it was clear to us that if the Count of Nullepart was to continue his journey, means must be found to staunch the bleeding of his wound. Unhappily, we were without the implements of surgery; and the wound was so deep that our kerchiefs knotted together and coiled about it could not cope with the flow of blood. In this pass the Englishman did a strange thing. It furnished a further proof of that genius for contrivance which above all things distinguished this strange individual. Without more ado he proceeded to disrobe himself. Stripping off his shirt, and all naked to the waist as he was, he tore that garment into ribands and wove the pieces tightly round the Count of Nullepart’s body. And so powerful was this ready-witted surgery that the wounded man vowed laughingly that the Englishman had checked not only his bleeding but the source of life itself. Hardly had this skilful operation been performed, and before Sir Richard Pendragon could reinvest his skin with that doublet which was wont to enclose the blood of kings, when our ears were assailed with the sounds of armed men approaching rapidly in the darkness. “Here comes John Castilian’s wasp nest about our ears,” said the Englishman grimly. It was not a season for speech, however. Lifting the Count of Nullepart into his saddle, we tarried not an instant, but led our horses off the track. Rising sheer on either side of the road loomed the face of a steep mountain. It seemed well-nigh impossible to traverse it; and we had gone but a short distance along this difficult ascent when we stayed our progress to listen to our enemies, who passed noisily by us in the road below. To judge by the jingling of swords and bridles and the beating of hoofs against the stones, they formed a considerable mounted company. And I think had they not been riding carelessly they must have seen us, so short a distance were we from them.