Calavar; or, The Knight of The Conquest, A Romance of Mexico. Robert Montgomery Bird

voice that instantly brought the follower, staring, to his side; "dost thou feed like a pelican, and yet refuse to share thy meal, as a pelican would, with a helpless fellow of thy race? Take me this lump of a Turk to Sidi Abdalla, and bid him feed his boy."

      "I will suggest to your favour," said the captain Salvatierra, with a grin, "that Lazaro be directed to bring the urchin hither, with his lute, of which it is said he is no mean master; and before he eats he shall sing us a song, which, thus, he will doubtless execute with more perfection than after he has gorged himself into stupidity or the asthma."

      "I agree to that, with all my heart," said the neophyte. "The boy can sing while we are eating, provided the poor fellow be not too hungry."

      Lazaro strode to the Moriscos; and in an instant, as they rose, Amador beheld the Sidi take the instrument from his own back where he had carried it, and put it into the hands of his offspring. The boy received it, and, as Amador thought, removed the gay covering, with a faltering hand. Nevertheless, in a few moments, this preparation was accomplished, and, with Abdalla, the stripling stood trembling from weariness or timidity at the side of the group.

      "Moor," said Salvatierra, before Amador had commenced his benevolent greeting, "the noble and valiant cavalier hath charitably commanded thou shouldst eat thy dinner at our feet; which whilst thou art doing, we will expect thy lad to entertain us with such sample of his skill in luting and singing as may make our own repast more agreeable."

      "That is, if the boy be not too hungry," said the good-natured neophyte. "I should blush to owe my pleasures to any torments of his own, however slight; and (as I know by some little famine wherewith we were afflicted at Rhodes,) there is no more intolerable anguish with which one can be cursed, than this same unhumoured appetite."

      "Jacinto will sing to my lord," said the Almogavar submissively.

      But Jacinto was seized with such a fit of trembling, as seemed for a time to leave him incapable; and when, at last, he had sufficiently subdued his terror, to begin tuning his instrument, he did it with so slow and so hesitating a hand, that Salvatierra lost patience, and reproved him harshly and violently.

      It happened, unluckily for the young Moor, that, at that moment, the eye of Amador wandered to Fogoso, and beheld him wallowing, with more of the spirit of a yeoman's hog than a warrior's charger, in a certain miry spot near to which he had been suffered to crop the green leaves. He called hastily and wrathfully to Lazaro, and, in his indignation, entirely lost sight of his dinner, his host, and the musician.

      "Whelp of a heathen!" said Salvatierra to the shrinking lad: "hast thou no more skill or manners, but to make this accursed jangling, to which there seems no end? Bestir thyself, or I will teach thee activity."

      The boy, frightened at the violence of the soldier, rose to his feet, and dropping his instrument in alarm clung to Abdalla. The wrath of the hot-tempered Salvatierra exceeded the bounds of decorum and of humanity. He had a twig in his hand, and with this he raised his arm to strike the unfortunate urchin. But just then the neophyte turned round, and beheld the act of tyranny.

      "Señor!" he cried, with a voice even more harsh and angry than his own, and seizing the uplifted hand with no ceremonious grasp,—"Señor! you will not so far forget your manhood as to do violence to the child? Know that I have taken him, for this journey, into my protection; know also, thou canst not inflict a stripe upon his feeble body, that will not degrade thee into the baseness of a hind, and that will not especially draw upon thee the inconvenience of mine own displeasure!"

      The heart of Salvatierra sunk before the flaming countenance of the cavalier: but observing that several of his nearest followers had taken note of the insult, and were grasping their arms, as if to avenge it, he said with an air of firmness,

      "The señor De Leste has twice or thrice taken occasion to requite my courtesies with such shame as is hard to be borne, and in particular by interfering with the just exercise of my authority; and I have to assure him, that when the duties of my office shall release me from restraint, his injuries shall not be unremembered."

      "If thou art a hidalgo," said the cavalier sternly, "thou hast the right to command me; if of ignoble blood, as from thy deportment to this trembling child, I am constrained to believe, I have, nevertheless, eaten of thy bread and salt, and cannot refuse to meet thee with such weapons and in such way as thou mayest desire; and to this obligation do I hold myself bound and fettered."

      Some half-dozen followers of the captain had crowded round their leader, and were lowering ominously and menacingly on the neophyte. Lazaro and Baltasar beheld the jeopardy of their master, and silently but resolutely placed themselves at his side; nay, even the youthful Fabueno, though seemingly bewildered, as if doubting on which side to array himself, had snatched up his bloodless sabre; and it seemed for an instant as if this unlucky rupture might end in blows. The señor Salvatierra looked from his followers to the angry hidalgo; the flush faded from his cheek; and it was remarked by some of his soldiers, not a little to his dispraise, that when, as if conquering his passion, he motioned them to retire, it was with a hurried hand and tremulous lip.

      "The señor de Leste is right," he said, with a disturbed voice; "I should have done myself dishonour to harm the boy; and although the reproof was none of the most gentle and honeyed, I can still thank him that it preserved me from the shame of giving too much rein to my ill-temper. I therefore forget the injury, as one that was merited, discharge my anger as causeless, and desiring rather to devote my blood to the subjugation of pagans, than to squander it in contest with a fellow-Christian, offer the hand of reconciliation and of friendship to Don Amador de Leste."

      There was an appearance of magnanimity in this confession of fault and offer of composition, that won upon the good opinion of the neophyte; and he frankly gave his hand to the captain. Then turning to the innocent cause of his trouble, who, during the time that there seemed danger of a conflict, had exhibited the greatest dismay, he found him sobbing bitterly in the arms of Abdalla.

      "Poor child!" said the benevolent cavalier, "thou art fitter to touch thy lute in the bower of a lady, than to wake it among these wild and troubled deserts. It is enough, Abdalla: conduct thy son to some shade, where he may eat and sleep; and when we renew our march, I will think of some device to spare his tender feet the pain of trudging longer over the sands."

      The Moor laid his hand on his heart, bowed with the deepest submission and gratitude, and led the boy away to a covert.