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It must have been with a sinking heart that Martin de Vargas and his brave garrison beheld the town fall once again into the hands of Kheyr-ed-Din; they knew, as by this time did all the Mediterranean and the dwellers on the coasts thereof, the implacable enmity of the corsair to the Christians, and how short a shrift would be theirs should they fall into his hands.
For all that, he was much grieved at the loss of his lance, and saying so to his squire, he added, "I remember having read how a Spanish knight, Diego Perez de Vargas by name, having broken his sword in battle, tore from an oak a ponderous bough or branch, and with it did such things that day, and pounded so many Moors, that he got the surname of Machuca, and he and his descendants from that day forth were called Vargas y Machuca.
Del Rio was a man without character or talent, a mere tool in the hands of his superiors, but Juan de Vargas was a terrible reality. No better man could have been found in Europe for the post to which he was thus elevated. To shed human blood was, in his opinion, the only important business and the only exhilarating pastime of life. His youth had been stained with other crimes.
A royal decree was sent to him; he replied that he could not send the act that he had issued against Don Juan de Vargas, since he had to send it to a superior tribunal that is, to the tribunal of the Inquisition.
At that time, governor, archbishop, investigating judge, and Dominicans were preparing a farrago of documents to mislead the Council and to further their own reckless proceedings; they even notified the ex-governor, Don Juan de Vargas, that he must go into exile to Pangasinan, to which place he had banished the archbishop.
It has taken many volumes to tell of the victories of Frontenac. It would take as many again to relate the victories of De Vargas. He was accompanied, of course, by the fearless and quenchless friars. All the pueblos passed on the way north he found abandoned; but when he reached Santa Fe on the 13th of September, he found it held and fortified by the Indians.
And where is De Vargas, and in whose hands is the Peñon now? We know from whence the garrisons of Spain draw their supplies, and believe me that there will be hungry men in the Goletta in this coming year. Once we get to sea again, there will be more than enough for every good man who believes in the Prophet, and who has the sense to follow Barbarossa.
At the end of a week the sentence was uttered, and Vargas was notified that for four months he must do what follows: During the first month, he must go on every feast-day to divine worship in the cathedral, clad in the sackcloth robe of a penitent, and with a halter round his neck; and in this guise, he must listen in public to mass.
One more embassy he tried, and to this he received the following answer: "I spring from the race of the De Vargas, but my house has never made it a practice to boast of the glory of their long descent: they professed merely to imitate the heroism of their ancestors.
Only a few days previously to the signature of the treaty, he had also intercepted other letters from influential personages, Alonzo de Vargas and others, disclosing extensive designs to obtain possession of the strong places in the country, and then to reduce the land to absolute Subjection.
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