eing who
wore the flesh and blood which their Lord wore; true martyrs, they
bore witness of Christ, and received too often the rewards of such,
in slander and contempt. Such an one was Fray Gerundio; a poor, mean,
clumsy-tongued peasant's son, who never could put three sentences
together, save when he waxed eloquent, crucifix in hand, amid some
group of Indians or negroes. He was accustomed to such rebuffs as the
bishop's; he took them for what they were worth, and sipped his wine in
silence; while the talk went on.

"They say," observed the commandant, "that a very small Plate-fleet will
go to Spain this year."

"What else?" says the intendant. "What have we to send, in the name of
all saints, since these accursed English Lutherans have swept us out
clean?"

"And if we had anything to send," says the sea-captain, "what have we to
send it in? That fiend incarnate, Drake--"

"Ah!" said his holiness; "spare my ears! Don Pedro, you will oblige my
weakness by not mentioning that man;--his name is Tartarean, unfit
for polite lips. Draco--a dragon--serpent--the emblem of Diabolus
himself--ah! And the guardian of the golden apples of the West, who
would fain devour our new Hercules, his most Catholic majesty. Deceived
Eve, too, with one of those same apples--a very evil name, senors--a
Tartarean name,--Tita!"

"Um!"

"Fill my glass."

"Nay," cried the colonel, with a great oath, "this English fellow is of
another breed of serpent from that, I warrant."

"Your reason, senor; your reason?"

"Because this one would have seen Eve at the bottom of the sea, before
he let her, or any one but himself, taste aught which looked like gold."

"Ah, ah!--very good! But--we laugh, valiant senors, while the Church
weeps. Alas for my sheep!"

"And alas for their sheepfold! It will be four years before we can get
Cartagena rebuilt again. And as for the blockhouse, when we shall get
that rebuilt, Heaven only knows, while his majesty goes on draining the
Indies for his English Armada. The town is as naked now as an Indian's
back."

"Baptista Antonio, the surveyor, has sent home by me a relation to the
king, setting forth our defenceless state. But to read a relation and
to act on it are two cocks of very different hackles, bishop, as all
statesmen know. Heaven grant we may have orders by the next fleet to
fortify, or we shall be at the mercy of every English pirate!"

"Ah, that blockhouse!" sighed the bishop. "That was indeed a