“Here he is,” answered Diego, who, with Juan, had been lying on the deck near the foremast, but in the shadow, so that he had not been recognizable. “What is it, my son?”
By way of joke he often assumed the clerical manner, which he mimicked as well as he did most things.
“Come hither, and tell us more of this land we have sighted, at last.”
“Ay, do, good fray,” cried one after another of the men. Although a stiff gale was blowing, it was not a cold one, but rather laden with heat, as if it had come from a warm region, and the men were lying about the deck, clad in only shirts and trousers.
“Why,” said Diego, “there is nothing new to tell you. I have told you all I know twenty times over.”
“Then tell us for the twenty-first time,” said Rodrigo.
“How well that worthy Rodrigo calculates!” said Diego, paternally. “He can add one to twenty and know the result. It is because he has taken to counting maravedis lately, no doubt.”
Everybody laughed, for it was very well known that Rodrigo had spent many times over, in imagination, the ten thousand maravedis which were to be his for first seeing land.
“If he get them,” interposed Miguel, sourly. “Deserters are not like to have many favors shown them.”
“Oh,” interposed Juan, who often came between Miguel’s crookedness and the anger of the men, “he will never think again of his maravedis after he has been a few days at Bohio, if what Diego tells has but a grain of truth in it.”
“This is Bohio, then?” demanded one of the men, eagerly.
“The Indians say so,” answered Diego, “and are so mightily afraid at the very thought of landing here that I think they must be right.”
“They say the inhabitants are great warriors and cannibals, do they not, Diego?” asked Juan.
“But the gold,” inquired one, as if the question had not already been asked and answered a hundred times. “Do they say there is a plenty of it?”
“Plenty and plenty; but what is the use of my telling that so many times? By the morning we shall know all about it; and if we are not all roasted and served up before we can get away, I have no doubt that we shall all be as rich as we ought to be.”
“Ay! if we are not roasted,” growled Miguel.
“Have no fear, my son,” said Diego, in his most benevolent tones; “for unless it should be in the dark, I doubt if any savage would take so much as one bite of you. And unless your flesh be far sweeter than your temper, even the darkness would not win you a second bite.”