to begin on a land-crab. A fool!"

The Nova Scotian cast an uninterested side glance at him, and said in
English, which Salazar did not understand:

"So you went there, after all? And now _he's_ got you." I did not answer
him. "I know all about you," he added.

"It's more than I do about you," I said.

He rose and suddenly jerked the door open, peered on each side of the
corridor, and then sat down again.

"I'm not afraid to tell," he said defiantly. "I'm not afraid of
anything. I'm safe."

The Cuban said to me in Spanish: "This senor is my friend. Everyone who
hates that devil is my friend."

"I'm safe," Nichols repeated. "I know too much about our friend the
raparee." He lowered his voice. "They say you're to be given up for
piracy, eh?" His eyes had an extraordinarily anxious leer. "You are now,
eh? For how much? Can't you tell a man? We're in the same boat! I kin
help you!"

Salazar accidentally knocked a silver goblet off the table and, at the
sound, Nichols sprang half off his chair. He glared in a wild stare
around him then grasped at a flagon of _aguardiente_ and drank.

"I'm not afraid of any damn thing" he said. "I've got a hold on that
man. He dursen't give me up. I kin see! He's going to give you up and
say you're responsible for it all."

"I don't know what he's going to do," I answered.

"Will you not, Senor," Salazar said suddenly, "relate, if you can
without distress, the heroic death of that venerated man?"

I glanced involuntarily at Nichols. "The distress," I said, "would be
very great. I was Don Balthasar's kinsman. The Senor O'Brien had a great
fear of my influence in the Casa. It was in trying to take me away
that Don Balthasar, who defended me, was slain by the _Lugarenos_ of
O'Brien."

Salazar said, "Aha! Aha! We are kindred spirits. Hated and loved by the
same souls. This fiend, Senor. And then...."

"I escaped by sea--in an open boat, in the confusion. When I reached
Havana, the _Juez_ had me arrested."

Salazar raised both hands; his gestures, made for large, grave men, were
comic in him. They reduced Spanish manners to absurdity. He said:

"That man dies. That man dies. To-morrow I go to the Captain-General.
He shall hear this story of yours, Senor. He shall know of these
machinations which bring honest men to this place. We are a band of
brothers...."

"That's what I say." Nichols leered at me. "We're all in the same boat."

I expect he noticed that I wasn't moved by