"Aye, there he is
the same! `Peril--darkness? Well, let's meet it!' We
are alike, we three brothers, alike and different. Diego
serves God best in a monastery, and I serve best in a ship
with a book and a map to be followed and bettered. Bartholomew
serves best where he has been, Adelantado and Alcayde.
He is powerful there, with judgment and action. But
he is a sea master too, and he makes a good map.--I thank
God who gave us good parents, and to us all three mind
and a firm will! The inheritance passes to my sons. You
have not seen them? They are youths of great promise!
A family that is able and at one, loving and aiding each the
other, honoring its past and providing for its future, becomes,
I tell you, an Oak that cannot be felled--an Ark
that rides the waters!"
As he moved, his chains made again their dull noise. "Do
they greatly gall you?"
"Yes, they gall! Flesh and spirit. But I shall wear
them until the Queen saith, `Away with them!' But ever
after I shall keep them by me! They shall hang in my
house where forever men shall see them! In my son's
house after me, and in his son's!"
Alonso de Villejo visited him. "The tempest is over,
senor. I take it for good augury in your affair!"
Juan Lepe upon the deck found beside him a man whom
he knew. "What d'ye think? At the worst, in the middle
night, there came to Don Alonso and the master the old
seamen and would have him freed so that he might save us!
They said that they had seen his double upon the poop,
looking at the sea and waving his arm.
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