The Two Captains

Friedrich Heinrich Karl La Motte-Fouqué is the author of The Two Captains. Chapter I begins with a mild summer evening resting on the shores of Malaga, awakening the guitar of many a merry singer among the ships in the harbor. Troops of infantry on the shore, the text says, purposed to spend the night there, that they might be ready for embarkation early on the following morning.

A speaker tells of a beautiful girl named Lucila and says that he offered his homage, a boy only just capable of bearing arms, with a childlike, friendly feeling. The speaker says that when he returned to his native city from foreign wanderings, a few weeks ago, he found his mistress married to a rich and noble knight. The text calls the scene white and desolate in its vastness, the fearful desert of Sahara to the eye of the wanderer who has lost himself in these frightful regions. In a combat between Heimbert and Fadrique, Fadrique cries “Hold!” and they search for a wound, and it was not long before Heimbert’s blade pierced Fadrique’s right shoulder.