Free Swords From the Sea by Harold Lamb Page B

talk when steel was out or lead was flying, and the Spaniard's pride was touched. He had the better horse and determined to end matters at once.
    He saw his chance when Thorne's beast shied. The dying hawk had fluttered into the road and startled the horses, but D'Alaber's was under control at once. He plunged in his spurs and leaned forward. The two rapiers flashed and sang together, and the Arab swerved away. D'Alaber dropped his weapon and clutched the mane of his horse.
    "Por Dios!" he cried faintly.
    Thorne dismounted swiftly and came to his side, helping him to the ground, where the Spaniard lay moaning, one fist pressed under his heart. His breath came jerkily and his eyes stared up into Thorne's. By an effort of will be opened his lips.
    "Tell Master Durforth," he whispered, "on the road a league toward Harwich-tell him D'Alaber is down. The Fox must know. Will you do this?"
    Thorne was silent a moment.
    "Aye, that I will."
    The Spaniard continued to stare at him, and even after the dark eyes held no life in them they seemed to smolder with vindictive rage. Thorne drew the body to one side of the road and tied the Arab's reins to a branch. This done, he mounted again and rode on with furrowed forehead.
    "It likes me not," he mused. "The don was a fellow of Renard's and'tis ill meddling with such. He set upon me with full intent, and there were none to see it. If I am charged with his taking off-"
    He was riding on the king's business and did not mean to be delayed. But a pledge to a dying man must be kept, and he wanted a glance at this Master Durforth.
    "My lord of Stratford did say that the Spaniards wished us evil, and here is one full of it already, and requited therefore, poor knave. He meant to ride, it would appear, with Durforth, and I must keep his rendezvous for him."
    Some moments later he spurred out of the mist at a crossroads where several men had dismounted, evidently to wait for someone.
    "Is Master Durforth in this company?" he called out, reining in.
    "Aye, so."
    A tall man in a fur-trimmed mantle looked up from his seat under a sign post.
    "A Spaniard did put it upon me to tell you his sorry case. He lies by the hedge, a league toward Greenwich, and his horse is tethered there. It was his wish that a certain Renard should know of it. And so-keep you better company, my master."
    Without waiting, Thorne spurred on and, when the mist closed around the forms of the astonished watchers, bent low in the saddle. A second later a pistol roared behind him and a ball whipped close to his hat. For a while he heard hoofbeats coming after him, then they dwindled as the unseen riders perceived the folly of pursuit in the heavy fog.
    Not until the sun broke through the mist and he could see the road ahead and behind did he allow his horse a breathing spell. Then he jogged on toward Orfordnesse, sorely puzzled.
    Chapter IV
    The Mad Cosmographer
    It is ever the way of crowds to mock what they cannot understand. And the good folk of Orfordnesse were in no wise different from other crowds: children thumbed their noses at old Master Thorne; young men sharp ened their tongues with witticisms at his expense at the White Hart tavern; the elders shook their heads, saying that no good could come of such doings as his, and there was talk of putting him in the pillory. The very dogs of the haven barked at his threadbare heels when he limped to the ale house.
    So that now old Master Thorne rarely showed himself in the village, subsisting no one knew just how, but laboring of nights, as the gleam of a candle in the casement showed. Honest men, it was well known, did not work in the hours of darkness.
    So they called him the Mad Cosmographer.
    He had gathered in the cottage the fruits of years of wandering, of talks with outland shipmen, of studying mariners' journals and the manuscripts of Oxford. He had brought charts from Paris, and once he had been forced to flee from Spain when he managed to copy fairly the world-map of