“A truce to your sarcasms,” cried Inique, pale with anger. “I am not here, Padilh, to listen to a sermon or be ordered a penance. If you will help me in this affair by your intervention, you will not find me ungrateful; and I know enough of my own nature, as you might, to feel assured that, left to my own resources, I may do that in the heat of passion which cannot be undone. What! am I so fallen in your eyes that you cannot afford me the time and occasion I need for amendment, or distrust my best designs?” “No, by St. Jago,” cried our generous don, “that I will not, Inique. I have done you some wrong in thought, perhaps, but I will make amends by assisting you where I may with proper regard to my own views and affections. But, you understand, I annex a condition—the true Hilo must pass from your care into mine as soon as we effect a landing. As his nearest relative, I have a higher right to the charge of his person than the—than yourself, Don Augustino.” “Don Pedro,” answered Inique, slowly, after a pause, “you have justice on your side, and I will not oppose the transfer if you insist. But I beg you earnestly to consider that I, from hating, have come to love the youth better—yes, better than my own children; and until the present adjustment succeeds or fails, you may do worse than leave him in my keeping, as before—only that the doors of his prison, as you seemed but now to consider it, are open to you from this hour. I pledge you my word, at all hazard or pain, to restore him to you at the close of this expedition.” “Well, let it be so,” replied Don Pedro, surprised and pleased at the other’s words. And the maître-de-camp, with a breast somewhat less burdened, betook himself to his ship again. A couple of days later the peaked and thickly-wooded shores of Tercera were first visible, and the armada coasting along, to the mortal terror of the Portuguese, who were parceled out in companies to defend the accessible points, and miserably ignorant where the Spaniards would make their descent, came to anchor off St. Catherine, where about fifty French and twice as many Portuguese were drawn up to oppose the landing. “It would be a pity to cross the humor of the French gentlemen, yonder,” Santa-Cruz said, with a grim smile. “But their allies will only embarrass their manœuvres, and had better be routed before hand. Don’t you think we can frighten them, Pòlvora?” “Frighten them!” cried that cavalier; “I can see, at this distance, the finery of some glittering in the sunshine, as if the wearers were shaking all over. Let us try if they are not too frightened to run.”