Had he but listened to him and accepted the wise and loyal counsel he had given these so-called guests of his, instead of being his masters, might have been his prisoners. His nobles might have learnt the mastery of these strange brutes which had trampled them down in scores on the pavement of the plaza, and the use of those terrible flame-and-thunder weapons which had wrought such fearful havoc among them, and then, if that had only come to pass, who should have set bounds to the glory and dominion that might have been his? Yet here he was a helpless prisoner, with even his life at the mercy of a few strangers from some unknown land, whose numbers were to his legions as a few pebbles might be to the sands of the sea shore! How had the miracle come to pass? Was there no explanation of it? What was the power that had drawn these men from lands which to him were only names, and across oceans whose magnitude he could not even dimly guess at? What did they come for? How could their master, seated on some far-away throne, and, as they had told him, Lord Paramount of the world, covert so eagerly these distant dominions? So far his train of thought had reached, and then his eyes opened, and his glance fell by chance on Carvahal, who at that moment, as it happened, half-drunk with wine and chicha, was holding up a great goblet of massive gold and crying in his thickly-laughing voice-- “Ah, comrades and soldiers of Spain! whether ye be servants of Heaven or Hell, as some of our enemies might call you, is not that a glorious thing to get in the grip of an honest man’s fist? Carrajo! It’s all very well to talk at home of the glories of conquest and the bringing of religion to the heathen, but there--_there_ is the thing we adventure for and fight for. _This_ is that for which we have crossed the world. It was the hope of this that kept us from dying of much despair and little food on the sands of Gallo. Look at the sweet yellow shine of it in the light of those fair silver lamps--that is the lustre of the day-star or night-star or will-of-the-wisp--call it what you please--that has brought us here. Gold, good gold, solid and shining and heavy--heavy--ay, Cristo y Santiago! mine is no woman’s arm, yet the weight of this pretty bauble is so preciously great that it drags it down.” “Ay! and see thou well to it that its weight is not great enough also to drag thy soul down to Hell, blasphemer of our holy enterprise!” The voice, harsh and cold, was that of Valverde, who had risen from his seat on the opposite side and was pointing across the table with his lean forefinger at Carvahal’s drink-flushed face.