"My dogs, indeed!" laughed Montoro. "I have told thee before, and I tell thee again, that they are no more mine than thine. Had I but known in time that I was to go ashore at Hispaniola, they should have been landed there for their rightful owner, I can tell thee, and I had been quit of their care once for all." "Ay, and of their love too," retorted Fernando slyly. Montoro shrugged his shoulders; but his affectation of indifference went for nought. The mutual affection existing between the couple of young bloodhounds, and their young keeper, was too well known by every one on board for his occasional pretence of carelessness about them to go for anything. His companion soon proved its present shallowness. "Oh, well," he said, in his turn shrugging his shoulders, "if you have left off caring about them it's all right. But I do pity the poor brutes a little myself, having nothing to eat for the past--well, there's no saying how many hours. But you know you didn't feed them before you went off yesterday." "Of course I did not," returned Montoro angrily, all his coolness utterly vanished. "It was much too early then to feed them; but I did not suppose I left behind me a set of heartless wretches, who would let poor dumb animals suffer." Fernando Colon's lip twitched with something uncommonly like a smile as he expostulated-- "Nay then, you know perfectly that you choose always to feed them yourself. You have ever given small thanks to those who have dared to do so in your place." "Ah!" exclaimed Montoro with rising passion. "And so because, forsooth, I choose to attend to the dogs myself, when I am on board, if I were dead you would let them starve?" "Nay, for I should not then have to fear your scowl," was the answer ending with a laugh. But Nando added the next moment with a good-natured smile-- "Even the Admiral himself was not afraid of your wrath anent those doggies, when you were safe out of the way, for he fed them with his own hands." As those last words were uttered Montoro turned sharply away and brushed his sleeve across his eyes. He turned back again almost as quickly, and laid a tolerably hard grip of his strong fingers on his companion's arm as he muttered huskily-- "You'll never let me get a hold over my temper, Nando, if you torment me thus. But did--did thy noble father in very truth think upon the wants of the poor doggies?" Ferdinand's eyes were glistening too as he replied-- "Ay, that he did indeed. And know'st thou, Toro, half I feel jealous of thee, for verily I believe that it was as much on thy account as for the dogs' sake that my father did them so much honour. But hark to the storm they are making. They have found out thou art on board. Come away, and let them loose." The next minute the two dogs of Master Pedro, the spice and curiosity dealer of El Cuevo, were bounding up on deck, giving vent to a succession of excited hurrahs in their own especial tongue.