"He said, ‘It is your prerogative to cut my head off, but then I cannot tell you the story of how the Vagabond named Quicksilver achieved his long-planned revenge against a Frankish Duke in Cairo, and stole this hoard of Mexican gold.’ So I commanded him to tell me that tale before he was put to death. And this he did; but what he was really telling me was that he and his companions were worth more to me alive, as slaves, than as headless corpses bobbing in the Gulf of Cambaye."