Chapter XIV: Master Pedro's Dogs in Danger

It was still high day when Mendez the notary, and Montoro de Diego, returned from their expedition to the heart of the Cacique's territory, and reported themselves once more on board the Admiral's ship; but by the time the history of their doings and discoveries was ended, it was too late for any further undertakings in the building line that afternoon. Fernando got hold of his chosen friend and comrade as the interview with the Admiral came to an end, and said resolutely--

"Come now, Diego, I take upon myself to say that thou hast earned a holiday for the next twelve hours, and those not given to sleep I intend shall be devoted to me; or, if it please you better, to me and those dogs of thine."

"My dogs, indeed!" laughed Montoro. "I have told thee before, and I tell thee again, that they are no more mine than thine. Had I but known in time that I was to go ashore at Hispaniola, they should have been landed there for their rightful owner, I can tell thee, and I had been quit of their care once for all."

"Ay, and of their love too," retorted Fernando slyly.

Montoro shrugged his shoulders; but his affectation of indifference went for nought. The mutual affection existing between the couple of young bloodhounds, and their young keeper, was too well known by every one on board for his occasional pretence of carelessness about them to go for anything. His companion soon proved its present shallowness.

"Oh, well," he said, in his turn shrugging his shoulders, "if you have left off caring about them it's all right. But I do pity the poor brutes a little myself, having nothing to eat for the past--well, there's no saying how many hours. But you know you didn't feed them before you went off yesterday."

"Of course I did not," returned Montoro angrily, all his coolness utterly vanished. "It was much too early then to feed them; but I did not suppose I left behind me a set of heartless wretches, who would let poor dumb animals suffer."

Fernando Colon's lip twitched with something uncommonly like a smile as he expostulated--

"Nay then, you know perfectly that you choose always to feed them yourself. You have ever given small thanks to those who have dared to do so in your place."

"Ah!" exclaimed Montoro with rising passion. "And so because, forsooth, I choose to attend to the dogs myself, when I am on board, if I were dead you would let them starve?"

"Nay, for I should not then have to fear your scowl," was the answer ending with a laugh. But Nando added the next moment with a good-natured smile--

"Even the Admiral himself was not afraid of your wrath anent those doggies, when you were safe out of the way, for he fed them with his own hands."

As those last words were uttered Montoro turned sharply away and brushed his sleeve across his eyes. He turned back again almost as quickly, and laid a tolerably hard grip of his strong fingers on his companion's arm as he muttered huskily--

"You'll never let me get a hold over my temper, Nando, if you torment me thus. But did--did thy noble father in very truth think upon the wants of the poor doggies?"

Ferdinand's eyes were glistening too as he replied--

"Ay, that he did indeed. And know'st thou, Toro, half I feel jealous of thee, for verily I believe that it was as much on thy account as for the dogs' sake that my father did them so much honour. But hark to the storm they are making. They have found out thou art on board. Come away, and let them loose."

The next minute the two dogs of Master Pedro, the spice and curiosity dealer of El Cuevo, were bounding up on deck, giving vent to a succession of excited hurrahs in their own especial tongue.

Those half-unconscious caresses bestowed upon the hounds by Doña Rachel Diego at the hour of parting, those tears with which, in trying to conceal them, she had bedewed the dogs' heads, had so endeared the animals to her son, that from the outset of his long journeyings he ever considered their comfort before his own, and reaped the just reward in their fidelity and strong attachment to himself. But that evening he was destined to pay a somewhat heavy penalty for the friendship.

"Toro, you never give the dogs a swim," said Ferdinand suddenly, when, after a regular romping match, boys and animals had tumbled themselves down together in a promiscuous heap, to get back breath and energy for further proceedings. The dogs were so enormously strong that playing with them was not easy work like playing with kittens.

"I feel as if I had been engaged in a pretty stiff wrestling match," said Montoro, laughing, and stretching his arms, "and oh! how warm it's become, or I."

"You may as well add that 'or I,'" laughed back the other; "for I suspect, as the sun is going down, that the air must be somewhat cooler than when you came on board. But the hounds really do look hot, poor creatures, and they could get such a splendid bathe here in the river--and so could we."

"Umph!" growled that rather tired-out young Don Diego. "I think it would have been a much more sensible suggestion that we could have a splendid turn-in to our berths. But you are such a horrible fellow. I don't believe you ever know what it is to feel done up."

"Nor you either, generally," said Ferdinand with another laugh.

But his companion was not going to be weak enough to echo it, not he.

"'Generally' isn't 'never,'" he returned. "But here goes, you energetic plague. In with you as hard as you like, I'll follow."

And so saying he rolled himself over with a very good imitation of used-up laziness, and got himself slowly up from his hands and knees on to his feet, with the wind-up of a solemn, self-satisfied "Oh!"

"Oh, indeed!" came the mocking echo from half-a-dozen deep throats, followed by shouts of laughter.

Montoro was just a trifle disconcerted. He had not known of these extra witnesses of his performance.

"Pity but thy mother were here," said Diego Mendez, one of the group. "Then wouldst thou have surely had such another lollipop as must have rewarded thy first triumph in this exhibition."

"Nay then," came the reply, for the performer had not taken long to recover his self-possession; "nay then, Señor, if you are pleased to bestow that lollipop for the show it will be the first, seeing that on that other past occasion of which you speak I returned myself to the floor with a suddenness that bumped my forehead, and my reward, therefore, was a plaster."

"Thy impudent mouth deserves a hot plaster now, methinks," muttered a surly hidalgo in the background.

But fortunately hot-tempered Montoro did not hear the mutter, and no one else heeded it. The group of men moved off, and left the lads once more to their own devices. Montoro stepped up to the side of the vessel and looked over at the clear, bright waters of the river. The dogs shook themselves and followed him, Don rearing himself up on his hind legs on the right hand to look over, and Señor resolutely pushing himself in between the two boys, and rearing himself up on Montoro's left hand, with forepaws resting on the vessel's edge.

"How different the river looks now to the dingy-coloured, troubled stream we sailed up such a short time ago," said Montoro.

"Yes," answered Ferdinand; "the fair weather has given the mud and sand time to settle. That is why I think it looks so tempting for a bathe."

The dogs gave their answers also in an expressive fashion of their own, like the hurrah business, hunching up their shoulders, and settling their heads down between them with noses pushed forward, and intent eyes that meant anything you like to imagine, except disagreement with their friend. Still that same friend hesitated. His human companion glanced at him with some wonder.

"Toro--"

"Ay, Nando, what now?"

"Only--the banks are very nigh on either hand, and thou canst swim now, I take it, as well as any one on board these caravels?"

"Hey, what sayest thou?" said Montoro, with a bewildered stare in his eyes, which was very nearly reproduced in the other pair when he suddenly recollected himself, and exclaimed with a short laugh--"Why now, Nando, you may fairly think that I have lost my wits; but in truth they had but gone travelling on their own account hence to El Cuevo, and--Come. I can swim, saidst thou? Truly can I then, and I'll prove it by beating you and the dogs in a match from here to the shore yonder, and back again."

"Done with you," exclaimed the sailor's son, beginning his disrobing with eager haste as he spoke. "Antonio," he shouted to the pilot, "Antonio! be good-natured; drop us over a rope, and bide here to summon us back if we are wanted."

"A crocodile, maybe, will have you first," answered Alaminos as he sauntered up.

"In saying so you belie your own boasted knowledge that these ugly brutes will not, unprovoked, attack a human being," was the quick retort.

"Even so," was the calm reply; "neither will they. But I said not they would hesitate to make a snap at imps."

However, there were no crocodiles--to give the alligators the name given to them at that time--to be seen, neither were other more dangerous enemies to be seen, when the two boys and the two dogs took their simultaneous plunge, with a splutter and dash and commotion that drew two or three of the crew to keep watch beside the pilot.

Once in the water, Montoro quite forgot that he was tired, and struck out vigorously for the shore. Unfortunately, however, for the fulfilment of his boast, his four-footed admirers would insist upon trying to help him, first to get back to the caravel, which they appeared to consider the wisest proceeding; and when he had at last thoroughly convinced them that he intended to keep his face for the present turned the other way, their attentions were little less retarding. One would get a whole bunch of the curly black locks between his teeth firmly, if not exactly comfortably to their owner, while the other made perpetual lip-nibbles at his ears and shoulders. Montoro was not at all sorry at last to join the laughing and exultant Ferdinand on the river bank.

"Don and Señor shall go back first when we return," he said with a reproachful shake of his head at the four-footed individuals in question. "I should have beaten you easily but for them."

"Poor old doggies!" said Ferdinand, stroking the great head nearest to him as he spoke. "Good old fellows; you'd better far make friends with me, as he is so ungrateful to you."

As though the dogs understood the address made to them, when Nando took his hand from Señor's head, and rolled himself down the bank back into the water again, with a great souse, and forthwith set to work floundering and swimming and diving and jumping, Señor jumped up, gave a hasty lick to Diego's hand, and then followed the other boy into the water, and the two together began to hurry back to the ship, actuated at first by a spirit of mischief, and then, by the sharply-uttered orders of the Admiral.

And while Columbus shouted his commands to his young son to return to him, others were trying to obey the orders to man a boat instantly, and put off from the ship for the shore Fernando and Señor had just left.

"But there is no boat! they are all yonder!" groaned Antonio de Alaminos as he wrung his hands. "And the bravest and brightest spirit of us all will die unrevenged."