nci. Going boldly up to him, he
asked,--

"Why don't you like me, and why do you want to kill me? I never did you
any harm, and I should like to be friends, please."

The Spaniard looked at him sidelong out of his soft, sleepy eyes.

"Have you understanding?" he asked presently. "Have you intelligence to
accept the idea of a person of poetry, of soul?"

"I think so!" said John, with some confidence. "I could try, anyhow."

"Look, then!" exclaimed Franci, throwing his arms abroad with a dramatic
gesture.

"I am not of nature murderous. A dove, a lamb at sport in the meadow,
such is the heart of Franci. But--behold me desolated on this infernal
schooner. Torn by my parents from my home, from warm places of my
delight, from various maidens, all enamoured of my person, I am sent to
be a sailor. A life of horror, believe me who say it to you! Wetness,
cold and work; work, cold and wetness! Behold the sea! may it be
accursed, and dry up at the earliest moment! I come here, on this so
disastrous voyage. Have I poetry, think you, on board this vessel? Is
the pig-faced armadillo yonder a companion for me, for Franci? Is my
beauty, the gentleness and grace of my soul appreciated here? even the
Patron, a person in some ways of understanding, has for me only the
treatment of a child, of a servant. Crushed to the ground by these
afflictions, how do I revenge myself? How do I make possible the passage
of time in this wooden prison? I make for myself the action, I make for
myself the theatre. Born for the grace of life, deprived of it, let me
have the horrors! In effect, I would not hurt the safety of a flea; in
appearance, I desire blood, blood, blood!"

He shrieked the last words aloud, and leaped upon the boy, his eyes
glaring like a madman's; but John was on his own ground now; his eyes
shone with appreciation.

"That's splendid!" he cried. "Blood! Oh, I wish I could do it like that!
I say, we can play all kind of things, can't we? We'll be pirates--only
good pirates,--and we'll scour the seas, and save all the shipwrecked
people, won't we? And you shall be the captain (or you might call it
admiral, if you liked the sound better, I often do), and I will be the
mate, or the prisoners, or the drowning folks, just as you like. I love
to play things."

"Come to my heart, angelic child!" cried Franci, flinging out his arms
once more. "At length I am understood, I am appreciated, I have found a
comrade! That I weep on thy bos