Michael--moving forward exultantly amid flowers and
acclamations to take ship for Africa. And she would listen with
parted lips and glistening eyes, her slim body bending forward in
her eagerness to miss no word of this great epic. Anon when he
came to tell of that disastrous day of Alcacer-el-Kebir, her
dark, eager eyes would fill with tears. His tale of it was hardly
truthful. He did not say that military incompetence and a
presumptuous vanity which would listen to no counsels had been
the cause of a ruin that had engulfed the chivalry of Portugal,
and finally the very kingdom itself. He represented the defeat as
due to the overwhelming numbers of the Infidel, and dwelt at
length upon the closing scene, told her in fullest detail how
Sebastian had scornfully rejected the counsels of those who urged
him to fly when all was lost, how the young king, who had fought
with a lion-hearted courage, unwilling to survive the day's
defeat, had turned and ridden back alone into the Saracen host to
fight his last fight and find a knightly death. Thereafter he was
seen no more.
It was a tale she never tired of hearing, and it moved her more
and more deeply each time she listened to it. She would ply him
with questions touching this Sebastian, who had been her cousin,
concerning his ways of life, his boyhood, and his enactments when
he came to the crown of Portugal.
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