r any two with fists or knives or any other
weapon in their choice. And when no one took up his challenge, he cried
out, 'Ho, stand back there, ye pack of cowards! This man is mine. A
hundred silver shields! What is a hundred shields, when for such a wiry
fellow, albeit a little old, we will get a hundred gold pieces from
Parma, if only we can get him as far as Nieuport.'

"And so to Parma I was given, but the galley I was first placed in met
with an English ship-of-war, and she ran us so close that we could not
row. Her prow scraped us, breaking the oars and tossing the dead about,
many being slain with the bounding fragments. And I--I was in the place
next the port-hole, and I mind me I could lay my hand on the muzzle of a
shotted gun. But that is the last I remember. For at that moment the
Englishman fired a broadside and swept our decks. I alone was unhurt,
and after a while in the lazar-house of Vigo, I came hither in a
galleasse to teach the 'comites' of the Mediterranean side the newer
practice of the fleets of the North."

He chuckled a little, his well-trained ear taking in the _diminuendo_
and _crescendo_ of the sentinel's footsteps on the wooden platform above
his head.

"But from what I saw of the English," he murmured, "I judge that before
long there will be no need of galleys to fight Spain's battles."

In a moment John d'Albret knew that his companion had not yet heard of
the destruction of the Great Armada. He told him.

"Glory to the God of Battles," he said, hushed and low, "to Him the
praise!"

Just then all the bells of the city began to ring, slow and measured.
The sound came mellowed over the water and filtered through the striped
awnings of yellow and red.

"Some great man is dead," he said, "perhaps the King--Philip, I mean. Or
else a day of humiliation----"

"_Auto de fe!_" came along the benches in a thrilling whisper, for in
spite of their fatigue few of the slaves were asleep. The afternoon was
too hot, the glare from the water intolerable.

"Ah, well, the sooner to peace for some poor souls," said Francis the
Scot. Then a thought seemed to strike him. "It is not possible--no, you
cannot have heard. I dare not expect it. But I had a daughter, she was
named Claire. They told me--that is, the Flamand Holtz, a not unkindly
brute, though he had resolved to make money out of me, dead or
alive--well, he told me that one of the wisest of the professors, a
learned man, had taken her under