The Siege of Malta

Sydney Fowler Wright Other

“You are one,” Captain Antonio said, “for whom I would do much. If it would not ruffle your pride, I would call you friend. But there is a length to which you cannot ask me to go. I will not be hanged for that slut.”Francisco controlled his anger in a way which, had he considered it, might have been surprise to himself. It was an evidence of the strait in which he stood, which he was coming to see, and which a quarrel with the Genoese sailor would not relieve. But it was the most he could do to reply in temperate words.“I must ask you to take that back, after which we can talk of that which is on your mind.”“Why, so I do, if you wish,” Antonio replied, in a ready way. “I will call her La Cerda’s mistress, or what you will, but you must allow for this, that I have known her before.”“I should say that you do not know her at all.”“Well, so you may. It is a thing I have never sought. So of what she is, or is not, I will say no more, except that she is one for whom I am loth to hang.”“So you have said once before. But you are not asked. Do you know where she is now?”“I could make a most excellent guess.”“So might the Provost-Marshal himself and guess wrong. They cannot hang you for that.”“Yet if there be signs littered before my eyes——”“Which you have no occasion to see.”“Which it might be said that I have. . . . And it is not for myself that I fear alone. For who does that which I must say that I do not know that you do—he is in a most perilous pass, for the Grand Master is one that not only the Turks may dread.”

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