He gave an angry laugh and explained his figure.

"Why, the Queen and the King and the law and Martin Pinzon, to whom we, are bound for a year, are pressing us! Which is to say they've cast a net and here we are, good fish, beating against the meshes and finding none big enough to slip through! Haven't you been pressed too, scooped in without a 'By your leave, Palos fish!' A hundred fish and more in this net and one by one the giant will take us out and broil us!" The second man spoke with a whine.

"I had rather a Barbary pirate were coming aboard! I had rather be took slave and row a galley!" The third, a young man, had a whimsical, dark, fearless face.

"But we be going to see strange things and serve the Queen! That's something!" "The Queen is just a lady.

She don't know anything about deep and fearful seas!" "Where are you going," I asked, "and with whom ?" The angry man answered, "The last of that is the easiest, mate! With an Italian sorcerer who has bewitched the great! He ought to be burned, say I, with the Jews and heretics! We are going with him, and we are going with Captain Martin Pinzon, whom he hath bewitched with the rest! And we are going with three ships, the _Santa Maria_, the Pinta and the Nina." The third said, "The Santa Maria's a good boat." "There isn't any boat, good or bad," the first answered him, "that can hold together when you come to heat that'll melt pitch and set wood afire! There isn't any boat, good or bad, that can stand it when a lodestone as big as Gibraltar begins to draw iron!" The second, whose element was melancholy, sighed, "I've been north of Ireland, Pedro, and that was bad enough! The lookout saw a siren and the _Infanta Isabella_ was dashed on the rocks and something laughed at us all night!" "Ireland's nothing at all to it!" answered the angry man, whose name was Pedro.