and run after them to stay them, for Don Abrahan knew the cargo was almost complete, that the captain was keen to be setting his prow in the direction of home.
On the other hand, such a move might result only in loss. Don Abrahan needed shoes and cotton goods, sugar, codfish, mackerel, pork. He needed trinkets of combs, buttons, buckles, and gauds for women's hair, the vain adornments of a weak and simple people such as lived in servitude beneath his hand. Fifty thousand cattle fed in his valleys and hills, each one of them representing no more than the value of a hide.
"Very well," said Don Abrahan, lifting his face, the wind from the sea flattening his beard against his breast. "Bring up the goods."
Sailors came running at the captain's shouted command, swarmed upon the wagon, throwing off the hides. The captain himself checked them off as they fell, Simon, the teamster, sitting placidly on the ground beside the mules, smoking in sleepy-eyed indifference of the haste and turbulence around him.
Don Abrahan dismounted, drew off his gauntlets, put them away in his saddle-pouch. He must, by force, accept the captain's count of the hides which were already in his hold; there was no argument that would compel him to accept the captain's count of shoes, or weight of sugar-boxes, or number of bales of cotton goods. He signaled forward several Indians who were loafing somnolently
