LEGENDS OF THE CITY OF MEXICO
Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, had had his head murderously split open, and was dead of it, in the Molucca Islands the evening before.
Well, Señor, you may fancy what a nest of wasps was let loose when this Gil Pérez gave to the Captain of the Guard so incredible an account of himself; and, on top of it, told that the Governor of the Filipinas had been badly killed on the previous evening in islands in the Pacific Ocean thousands and thousands of miles away! It was a matter that the Viceroy himself had to look into. Therefore before the Viceroy who at that time was the good Don Luis de Velasco-Gil Pérez was brought in a hurry: and to the Viceroy he told over again just the same story, in just the same cool manner, and in just the same words.
Very naturally, the Viceroy put a great many keen questions to him; and to those questions. he gave his answers-or said plainly that he could not give any answers-with the assured air of an old soldier who would not lightly suffer his word to be doubted even by a Viceroy; and who was ready, in dealing with persons of less consequence, to make good his sayings with his fists or with his sword.
[100]
