Project Gutenberg's The Two Captains, by Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque

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Title: The Two Captains

Author: Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque

Posting Date: December 3, 2008 [EBook #2826]
Release Date: September, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TWO CAPTAINS ***

Produced by Sandra Laythorpe

THE TWO CAPTAINS.

By Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Freiherr de La Motte-Fouque

CHAPTER I.

A Mild summer evening was resting on the shores of Malaga, awakening the
guitar of many a merry singer among the ships in the harbor, and in
the city houses, and in many an ornamental garden villa. Emulating
the voices of the birds, the melodious tones greeted the refreshing
coolness, and floated like perfumed exhalations from meadow and water,
over the enchanting region. Some troops of infantry who were on the
shore, and who purposed to spend the night there, that they might be
ready for embarkation early on the following morning, forgot amid the
charms of the pleasant eventide that they ought to devote these last few
hours on European soil to ease and slumber; they began to sing military
songs, to drink to each other with their flasks filled to the brim with
the rich wine of Xeres, toasting to the long life of the mighty Emperor
Charles V., who was now besieging the pirate-nest Tunis, and to whose
assistance they were about to sail. The merry soldiers were not all
of one race. Only two companies consisted of Spaniards; the third
was formed of pure Germans, and now and then among the various
fellow-combatants the difference of manners and language had given
rise to much bantering. Now, however, the fellowship of the approaching
sea-voyage and of the glorious perils to be shared, as well as the
refreshing feeling which the soft southern evening poured over soul and
sense, united the band of comrades in perfect and undisturbed harmony.
The Germans tried to speak Castilian, and the Spaniards to speak German,
without its occurring to any one to make a fuss about the mistakes and
confusions that happened. They mutually helped each other, thinking of
nothing else but the good-will of their companions, ea