The pause seemed of the longest; then, "Not so," said the Admiral, quietly. "It is your right. We know that you will make no swerving from your duty to God, the Queen, and every soul that sails upon this adventure, which duty is to strengthen to the uttermost this new sinew of our enterprise. Mailed hand and velvet glove, you know their several uses, and the man whom you shall choose will be one to make the galleon's name resound."

Ferne signed to the steward, and when the tankard was filled, raised the sherris to his lips. "I drink to Captain Robert Baldry, of the Phoenix!" he said, bowed slightly to the man of his nomination, then turned aside to where stood Henry Sedley.

Around the cabin ran a deep murmur of reluctant assent to the wisdom of the choice and of tribute to the man who had just heaped before his personal enemy the pure gold of opportunity. Few were there from whom Baldry had not won dislike, but fewer yet who knew him not for a captain famous for victory against odds, trained for long years in the school of these seas, at once desperate and wary, a man of men for adventure such as theirs. He had made known far and wide the name of that his ship which the sea took, and for the Phoenix he well might win a yet greater renown.

Now the red blood flooded his face, and he started up, speaking thickly. "You are Admiral of us all, Sir John Nevil! I do understand that it is yours to make disposition in a matter such as this. I take no favor from the hand of Sir Mortimer Ferne!"

"I give you none," said Ferne, coldly. "Favors I keep for friendship, but I deny not justice to my foe."

The Admiral's grave tones prevented Baldry's answer. "Do you appeal to me as Admiral? Then I also adjudge you the command of the galleon. The Star did very valiantly; look to it that the Phoenix prove no laggard."

"Hear me swear that I will make her more famous than is Drake's Golden Hind!" cried Baldry, his exultation breaking bounds. "Sir John, you have knowledge of men, and I thank you! Sir Mortimer Ferne, I will give account—"

"Not to me, sir," interrupted Ferne, haughtily. "I have but one account with you, and that my sword shall hereafter audit."

"Sir, I am content!" cried the other, fiercely, then turning again to the Admiral, broke into a laugh that was impish in its glee. "Ah, I've needed to feel my hand on my ship's helm! Sir John, shall I have my sixty tall fellows again, with just a small levy from the Mere Honour, the Marigold, and the Cygnet?"

"Yes," answered the Admiral, and presently, by his rising, declared the council ended, whereupon the adventurers dispersed to their several ships where they lay at anchor in the crystal harbor, the watchmen in the tops straining eyes, on the decks mariners and soldiers as jubilant as were ever men who did battle on the seas. Only the Cygnet's boat, rocking beneath the stern of the Mere Honour, waited for its Captain, who tarried with the Admiral.

In the state-cabin the two men sat for some moments in silence, the Admiral covering with his hand his bearded lips, Ferne with head thrown back against the wall and half-closed eyes. In the strong light with which the cabin was flooded his countenance now showed of a somewhat worn and haggard beauty. Drunken and forgotten was the wine of battle, gone the lofty and impassioned vein; after the exaltation came the melancholy fit, and the man who, mailed in activities, was yet, beneath that armor, a dreamer and a guesser of old riddles, had let the fire burn low, and was gone down into the shadowy places.

"Mortimer," spoke the Admiral, and waited. The other moved, drew a long breath, and then with a short laugh came back to the present.

"My friend ... How iron is our destiny! Do I hate that man too greatly? One might say, I think, that I loved him well, seeing that I have lent my shoulder for him to climb upon."

"Mortimer, Mortimer," said Nevil, "you know that I love you. My friend, I pray you to somewhat beware yourself. I think there is in your veins a subtle poison may work you harm."

Ferne looked steadfastly upon him. "What is its name?"

The other shook his head. "I know not. It is subtle. Perhaps it is pride—ambition too inwrought with fairest qualities to show as such,—security of your self of selves too absolute. Perhaps I mistake and your blood doth run as healthfully as a child's. But you are of those who ever breed in others speculation, wilding fancies.... When a man doth all things too well, what is there left for God to do but to break and crumble and remould? If I do you wrong, blame, if you will, my love, which is jealous for you—friend whom I value, soldier and knight whom I have ever thought the fair ensample of our time!"

"I hold many men, known and unknown, within myself," said Ferne, slowly. "I think it is always so with those of my temper. But over that hundred I am centurion."

"God forgive me if I misjudge one of their number," answered the other. "The centurion I have never doubted nor will doubt."

Another silence; then, "Will you see that Spaniolated Englishman, my prisoner?" asked Sir Mortimer. "He is under charge without."

The Admiral put to his lips a golden whistle, and presently there stood in the cabin a slight man of not unpleasing countenance—blue eyes, brown hair, unfurrowed brow, and beneath a scant and silky beard a chin as softly rounded as a woman's.—His name and estate? Francis Sark, gentleman.—English? So born and bred, cousin and sometime servant to my lord of Shrewsbury.—And what did my English gentleman, my cousin to an English nobleman, upon the galleon San Jose? Alack, sirs! were Englishmen upon Spanish ships so unknown a spectacle?

"I have found them," quoth the Admiral, "rowing in Spanish galleys, naked, scarred, chained, captives and martyrs."

Said Ferne, "You, sir, fought in Milan mail, standing beside the captain of soldiers from Nueva Cordoba."

"And if I did," answered boldly their prisoner, "none the less was I slave and captive, constrained to serve detested masters. Where needs must I fight, I fought to the purpose. Doth not the galley-slave pull strongly at the oar, though the chase be English and of his own blood?"

"He toils under the whip," said Ferne. "Now what whip did the Spaniard use?"

"He is dead, and his men await succor on that lonely coast where you left them," was Master Francis Sark's somewhat singular reply. "There is left in the fortress of Nueva Cordoba a single company of soldiers; the battery at the river's mouth hath another. Luiz de Guardiola commands the citadel, and he is a strong man, but Pedro Mexia at the Bocca is so easy-going that his sentinels nod their nights away. In the port ride two caravels—eighty tons, no more—and their greatest gun a demi-cannon. The town is a cowardly place of priests, women, and rich men, but it holds every peso of this year's treasure gathered against the coming of the plate-fleet. There is much silver with pearls from Margarita, and crescents of gold from Guiana, and it all lies in a house of white stone on the north side of the square. Mayhap De Guardiola up in the fortress watches, but all else, from Mexia to the last muleteer, think themselves as safe as in the lap of the Blessed Virgin. The plate-fleet stays at Cartagena, because of the illness of its Admiral, Don Juan de Maeda y Espinosa.... I show you, sirs, a bird's nest worth the robbing."

"You are a galley-slave the most circumstantial I have ever met," said Ferne. "If there are nets about this tree, I will wring your neck for the false songster that you are."

"You shall go with us bird's-nesting," said the Admiral.

"That falls in with my humor," Master Sark made answer. "For, look you, there are such things as a heavy score and an ancient grudge, to say nothing of true service to a true Queen."

"Then," quoth the other, "you shall feed fat your grudge. But if what you have told me is leasing and not truth, I will hang you from the yard-arm of my ship!"

"It is God's truth," swore the other.

Thus it was that, having, like all English adventurers upon Spanish seas, to trust to strange guides, the Mere Honour, the Cygnet, the Marigold, and the Phoenix shaped their course for the mainland and Nueva Cordoba, where were bars of silver, pearls, and gold crescents, and up in the castle that fierce hawk De Guardiola, who cared little for the town that was young and weak, but much for gold, the fortress, and his own grim will and pleasure.



V

Luiz De Guardiola, magnificent Castilian, proud as Lucifer, still as the water above the reef offshore, and cruel as the black fangs beneath that serenity, looked over the wall of the fortress of Nueva Cordoba. He looked down into the moat well stocked with crocodiles, great fish his mercenaries, paid with flesh, and he looked at the tunal which ringed the moat as the moat ringed the squat white fortress. A deadly girdle was the tunal, of cactus and other thorny things, thick, wide, dark, and impenetrable, a forest of stilettoes, and for its kings the rattlesnake and viper. Nor naked Indian nor mailed white man might traverse that thicket, where wall on wall was met a spiked and iron growth. One opening there was, through which ran the road to the town, but a battery deemed impregnable commanded this approach, forming an effectual clasp for that strong cestus which the fecund, supple, and heated land made possible to all Spanish fortifications. Beyond the tunal the naked hillside fell steeply to a narrow plain, all patched with golden flowers, and from this yellow carpet writhed tall cacti, fantastic as trees seen in a dream. Upon the plain, pearl pink in the sunset light, huddled the town. Palm-trees and tamarinds overhung it; palm-trees, mimosas, and mangroves marked the course of a limpid river. Above the battery at the river's mouth drooped a red cross in a white field. Caravels there were none in the road, but riding there, close inshore, the four ships that had sunk the caravels and silenced the battery.

High in the air of evening, blown from the town, a trumpet sounded. De Guardiola ground his teeth, for that jubilant silver calling was not for San Jago, but St. George. The notes gathered every memory of the past few days and pressed them upon him in one cup of chagrin. The caravels were gone, the battery at the Bocca gone, the town surrendered to these English dogs who now daily bared their teeth to the fortress itself. De Guardiola admitted the menace, knew from experience in the Low Countries that this breed of the North sprang strongly, held firmly. "Hounds of hell!" he muttered. "Where is the fleet from Cartagena?"

The tropic ocean answered not, and the words of the wind were unintelligible. The sun dropped lower; the plain appeared to move, to roll and welter in the heated air and yellow light. Tall starvelings, the cacti spread their arms; from a mimosa wood arose a cloud of vultures; it was the hour of the Angelus, but no bells rang in the churches of the town. The town sat in fear, shrinking into corners from its cup of trembling. "Ransom!" cried the English from their ships and from their quarters in the square. "Pay us ransom, or we burn and destroy!" "Mother of God!" wailed Nueva Cordoba. "Why ask but fifty thousand ducats? As easy to give you the revenue of all the Indies! Moreover, every peso is housed in the fortress. Day before yesterday we carried there—oh, senors, not our wealth, but our poverty!" Quoth the English: "What has gone up may come down," and sent messengers, both Spanish and English, to Don Luiz de Guardiola, Governor of Nueva Cordoba, who from his stronghold swore that he found himself willing to hang these pirates, but not to dispense to them the King of Spain his treasure. Ransom! What word was that for the lips of Lutheran dogs!

A sea bird flew overhead with a wailing cry; down in the moat a crocodile raised his horrible, fanged snout, then sank beneath the still water. Don Luiz turned his bloodshot eyes upon the town in jeopardy and the bland and mocking ocean, so guileless of those longed-for sails. The four ships in the river's mouth!—silently he cursed their every mast and spar, the holds agape for Spanish treasure, the decks whereon he saw men moving, the flags and streaming pennants flaunting interrogation of Spain's boasted power. A cold fury mounted from Don Luiz's heart to his brain. Of late he had slept not at all, eaten little, drunken no great amount of wine. Like a shaken carpet the plain rose and fell; a mirage lifted the coasts of distant islands, piling them above the horizon into castles and fortifications baseless as a dream. The sun dipped; up from the east rushed the night. The tunal grew a dark smudge, drawn by a wizard forefinger around De Guardiola, his men-at-arms, the silver bars and the gold crescents from Guiana. Out swung the stars, blazing, mighty, with black spaces in between. Again rang the trumpet, a high voice proclaiming eternal endeavor. The wind began to blow, and on the plain the cacti, gloomy and fantastic sentinels, moved their stiff bodies, waved their twisted arms in gestures of strangeness and horror. The Spaniard turned on his heel, went down to his men-at-arms where they kept watch and ward, and at midnight, riding like Death on a great, pale steed, led a hundred horsemen out of the fortress, through the tunal, and so down the hillside to the town.

The English sentries cried alarm. In the square a man with a knot of velvet in his helm swung himself into the saddle of a captured war-horse, waved aside the blue-jerkined boy at the rein, in a word or two cried over his shoulder managed to impart to those behind him sheer assurance of victory, and was off to greet Don Luiz. They met in the wide street leading from the square, De Guardiola with his hundred cavaliers and Mortimer Ferne with his chance medley of horse and foot. The hot night filled with noise, the scream of wounded steeds and the shouting of men. Lights flared in the windows, and women wailed to all the saints. Stubbornly the English drove back the Spanish, foot by foot, the way they had come, down the street of heat and clamor. In the dark hour before the dawn De Guardiola sounded a retreat, rode with his defeated band up the pallid hillside, through the serpent-haunted tunal, over the dreadfully peopled moat into the court of the white stone fortress. There, grim and gray, with closed lips and glowing eyes, he for a moment sat his horse in the midst of his spent men, then heavily dismounted, and called to him Pedro Mexia, who, several days before, had abandoned the battery at the river's mouth, fleeing with the remnant of his company to the fortress. The two went together into the hall, and there, while his squire unarmed De Guardiola, the lesser man spoke fluently, consigning to all the torments of hell the strangers in Nueva Cordoba.

"Go to; you are drunken!" said De Guardiola, coldly. "You speak what you cannot act."

"I have three houses in the town," swore the other. "A reasonable ransom—"

"There is no longer any question of ransom," answered Don Luiz. "Fellow"—to the armorer,—"fetch me a surgeon."

Mexia sat upright, his eyes widening: "No question of ransom! I thank the saints that I am no hidalgo! Now had simple Pedro Mexia been somewhat roughly handled, unhorsed mayhap, even the foot of an English heretic planted on his breast, I think that talk of the ransom of Nueva Cordoba would not have ceased. But Don Luiz de Guardiola!—quite another matter! Santa Teresa! if the town is burnt I will have payment for my three houses!" His superior snarled, then as the surgeon entered, made signs to the latter to uncover a bruised shoulder and side.

At sunrise a trumpet was blown without the tunal, and the English again made demand of ransom money. The fortress crouching upon the hilltop gave no answer, stayed silent as a sepulchre. Shortly afterwards from one quarter of the town arose together many columns of smoke; a little later an explosion shook the earth. The great magazine of Nueva Cordoba lay in ruins, while around it burned the houses fired by English torches. "Shall we destroy the whole of your city?" demanded the English. "Judge you if fifty thousand ducats will build it again!"

Nueva Cordoba, distracted, sent petitioners to their Governor. "Pay these hell-hounds and pirates and let them sail away!" "Pay," advised also Pedro Mexia, "or presently they may have the fortress as well as the town! The squadron—it is yet at Cartagena! Easier to torment the caciques until more gold flows than to build another Nueva Cordoba. Scarpines and strappado won't lay stone on stone!"

Don Luiz kept long silence where he stood, a man of iron, cold as the stone his long fingers pressed, venomous as any snake in the tunal, proud as a Spaniard may be, and like the rest of his world very mad for gold; but at last he turned, and despatching to the English camp a white flag, proposed by mouth of his herald a brief cessation of hostilities, and a meeting between himself, Don Luiz de Guardiola, Governor of Nueva Cordoba, and the valorous Senor John Nevil, commandant of Englishmen. Whereto in answer came, three-piled with courtesy, an invitation to Don Luiz de Guardiola and ten of his cavaliers to sup that evening in Nueva Cordoba with John Nevil and his officers. Truce should be proclaimed, safe-conduct given; for table-talk could be no better subject than the question of ransom.

Facing the square of Nueva Cordoba was a goodly house, built by the Church for the Church, but now sacrilegiously turned to other uses and become the quarters of Sir John Nevil and Sir Mortimer Ferne, who held the town and menaced the fortress, while Baptist Manwood and Robert Baldry kept the fleet and conquered battery. The place had a great arched refectory, and here the English prepared their banquet.

Indian friends by now had they, for in the town they had found and set at liberty three caciques, penned like beasts, chained with a single chain, scored with marks sickening to look upon. The caciques proved not ungrateful. Down the river this very day had come canoes rowed by men of bronze and filled with spoils of the chase, fish of strange shapes and brilliant hues, golden, luscious fruits, flowers also fairer than amaranth or asphodel, gold beads and green stones. Gold and gems went into the treasure-chests aboard the ships, but all besides came kindly in for the furnishing of that rich feast. Nor were lacking other viands, for grain and flesh and wine had been abundant in Nueva Cordoba, whose storehouses now the English held. They hung their borrowed banqueting-hall with garlands of flowers, upon the long table put great candles of virgin wax, with gold and silver drinking-vessels, and brought to the revel of the night a somewhat towering, wild, and freakish humor. Victory unassuaged was theirs, and for them Fortune had cogged her dice. They had taken the San Jose and sunk the caravels, they had sacked the pearl-towns and Nueva Cordoba, they had gathered laurels for themselves and England. For the fortress, they deemed that they might yet drain it of hoarded treasure. The poison of the land and time had touched them. The wind sang to them of conquest; morn and eve, the sun at noon, and at night the phosphorescent sea, were of the color of gold, and the stars spoke of Fame. The great mountains also, to the south,—how might the eye leap from height to height and the soul not stir? In Time's hornbook ambition is an early lesson, and these scholars had conned it well. Of all that force, scarce one simple soldier or mariner in whom expectation ran not riot, while the gentlemen adventurers in whose company were to sup De Guardiola and his ten cavaliers saw that all things might be done with ease and that evil chances lurked not for them.

The Captain of the Cygnet and the Captain of the Phoenix, with Arden and Sedley, awaited beside the great window of the hall their guests' appearance. The sunset was not yet, but the moment was at hand. The light, dwelling upon naked hillside and the fortress crowning it, made both to seem candescent, hill and castle one heart of flame against the purple mountains that stretched across the south. Very high were the mountains, very still and white that fortress flame; the yellow plain could not be seen, but the palm-trees were gold green above the walls of Nueva Cordoba. The light fell from the hilltop, a solitary trumpet blew, and forth from that guarded opening in the tunal rode De Guardiola on his pale horse, and at his back ten Spanish gentlemen.

"The dark line of them is like a serpent creeping from the tunal," said Henry Sedley. "Last night I dreamed a strange thing.... It concerned my sister Damaris. She came up from the sea, straight from the water like blown spray, and she was dressed in white. She looked down through the sea and her tears fell, and falling, they made music like the mermaiden's singing that we heard. 'Lie still,' she said. 'Thou under the sea and I under the sod. Lie still: dream well: all's over.' To whom did she speak?"

"If I were a dead man and she called my name, I would answer," said Ferne. "She under the sod and I under the sea.... So be it! But first one couch, one cup, one garland, the sounded depths of love—"

"I dreamed of home," quoth Baldry, "and of my mother's calling me, a little lad, when at twilight work was done. 'Robert, Robert!' she called."

"I had no dreams," said Sir Mortimer. "Now sounds John Nevil's trumpets—our guests have made entry."

"Why, senors," answered Mexia, flattered and flown with wine, "I learned to speak your tongue from a man of your country, who also gave me that knowledge of English affairs which you are pleased to compliment. I make my boast that I am no traveller—I have not been home to Seville these twenty years—yet, as you see, I have some trifling acquaintance—"

"Your learning is of so shining a quality," quoth Sir Mortimer, with courteous emphasis, "that here and there a flaw cannot mar its curious worth. Smerwick Fort lies in Ireland, senor, not in England. Though verily the best thing I know of Edmund Campion is the courageousness of his end; yet indeed he died not with a halo about his head, nor were miracles wrought with his blood. Her Gracious Majesty the Queen of England hath no such distemperature as that you name, and keepeth no sort of familiar fiend. The Queen of Scots, if a most fair and most unfortunate, is yet a most wicked lady, who, alas! hath trained many a gallant man to a bloody and disastrous end."

"Who is that Englishman, your teacher?" came from the head of the board the Admiral's grave voice.

"He is dead," said De Guardiola at his right hand.

"Of his fate, valiant senors," began the fuddled Mexia, "you alone may be precisely aware—"

"He is dead," again stated with deliberation Don Luiz. "I know, senors, the pool where these fish were caught and the wood where alone grows this purple fruit. So you set at liberty those three slaves, the caciques?... Well, I had reason to believe that they had hidden gold."

"Where is Master Francis Sark?" demanded Nevil, of Ferne. "I did command his attendance here to-night."

"He plead a tertian fever—would not mar our warmth with his shivering," said the other. "I sent the chirurgeon to his cell—for indeed the man shook like a reed."

It would appear that Francis Sark was an unknown name to their guests, for no flicker of recognition passed over the countenance of any Spaniard. They sat at the long table, and foe drank to foe while fiddle and hautboy made music and the candles slowly wasted and in the hot night the garlands withered. Perfumes were lit in the room, and the smoke of their burning made a violet haze through which quivered the heart-shaped candle flames. The music had a wild ring, and laughter as wild came easily to a man's lips. The English laughed for that their spirits were turned thistle-down, and the Spaniards laughed because a man's foe should not see his chagrin.

For a while compliment and courtesy led each party in chains; they masked distrust and hatred beneath cloth-of-gold ceremoniousness, punctiliously accepted a Roland for an Oliver, extravagantly praised the prowess of men and nations whom they much desired to sweep from the face of the earth. But as time wore on and the wine went round, this cloak of punctilio began to grow threadbare and the steel beneath to gleam dangerously. There was thunder in the air, and men were ready to play at ball with the apples of discord, though as yet they but tossed to each other the poisonous flowers which should grow that fruit. "How mightily on such a day did your little island!" cried the Spaniards. "Ah, senors, the invincibleness of your conquistadores!" ran the English testimony. "El Draco, Juan Acles, yourselves, valorous gentlemen, what daring past most pirates to sail the King of Spain his seas!" came the Spanish retort.

"The King of Spain his seas!" an Englishman echoed, softly.

"Why, had you not heard?" said Arden. "God gave them to him on creation morning."

"Pirates! That is a prickly word!" swore Baldry.

"Why do you smile, senor?" demanded De Guardiola of the gentleman opposite him, this being Sir Mortimer Ferne.

"Did I smile, senor? I but chanced to think of a hound of mine who once was king of the pack, but now grows old." The Englishman shrugged. "True he thinks himself yet the fleetest and the strongest, but the younger dogs outstrip him. Presently they will snatch from him every bone."

"Now, by the Mother of God, I agree not with you!" said De Guardiola.

"Now, by the power of God, yet will it come to pass!" affirmed Sir Mortimer.

The Admiral, to whom Pedro Mexia, an easy man, was making voluble narration of the latest futile search for Manoa, turned his glance for a moment from that frank Spaniard. But Mortimer Ferne sat at ease, a smile upon his beautiful mouth, and his hand, palm uppermost, upon the board. Opposite him Don Luiz de Guardiola also smiled, and if that widening of the lips was somewhat tigerish, why, if all accounts were true, the man himself was of that quality, as cruel, stealthy, and remorseless as any jaguar in those deep woods behind his castle. The Admiral returned to his discourse with Mexia, who might drop some useful hints as to the road to El Dorado.

"We have met before," said De Guardiola. "It was you who led your landing-party, capturing the battery."

"The fortune of war, senior! What says your proverb—"

"I gave ground, it is true.... There may come an hour when with a whip of iron I will drive you from Nueva Cordoba. Did you lead the attack upon the town?"

"Not so, senor. Sir John Nevil very valiantly held that honor, and to him Nueva Cordoba surrendered."

"Last night—when I thought to take you by-surprise—were you the leader then?"

"Yes, senor."

"Wore you," the Spaniard spoke slowly—"wore you black armor? Wore you in your helm a knot of rose-colored velvet?... Ah, it was you unhorsed me, then!"

"Again, senor, the fortune of war."

A spasm distorted for the moment De Guardiola's every feature. So often of late had chagrin been pressed to his lips that the cup had grown poisonous. When he spoke it was with a hollow voice: "Had not Mexia come in between us!... The light caught the velvet knot upon your helm and it flamed like a star. I, Luiz de Guardiola, lying at your feet, looked up and saw it blaze above me like an evil star!" His hand fell heavily upon the table. "The star may fall, Englishman!"

"The helm that bore the star may decline to earth," answered Ferne. "The star is fixed—beyond thy snatching, Spaniard!"

Thrust in Mexia, leaving El Dorado for the present less gilded plight of the Spanish: "Fifty thousand ducats! Holy Virgin! Are we Incas of Peru—Atahualpas who can fill a hall with gold? Now, twenty thousand—"

"I will not pay one peso," said De Guardiola. His voice, low and vibrant, was as a warder thrown down. On the instant, all the length of the table, the hurried speech, the growing excitement, the interchange of taunt and bravado, ceased, and men leaned forward, waiting. The silence was remarkable. Down in the square was heard the sentinel's tread; from a bough that drooped against the wall a globe of vegetable gold fell with the noise of stone-shot.

"Raze every house in Nueva Cordoba," went on the Spaniard, "play the earthquake and the wave—then sail away, sail away, marauders! and leave the fortress virgin, and the treasure no lighter by one piece, and Luiz de Guardiola to find a day when English dogs shall cringe before him!"

He had risen from his place, and at that movement sprang also to their feet his ten cavaliers. At once arose a tumult that might have resulted in the severance of the truce with sharp steel had not the leaders of the several parties stayed with lifted arm and stern command that threatened disgrace. At last was compelled a stillness sinister as that of the air before a storm.

"I bid our guests good night," said the Admiral. "Our enemies we shall meet again. I think that so slight a ransom will not now content us. As you ride through the streets of Nueva Cordoba look your last, senors, upon her goodly houses and pleasant places."

"Do thy worst!" answered De Guardiola, grinning like a death's-head.

Mexia wiped the sweat from his brow.

"Let us go—let us go, Don Luiz! I stifle here. There's a strangeness in the air—my heart beats to bursting! Holy Teresa, give that the wine was not poisoned!"

Back to their fortress rode the Spaniards, up the bare, steep, pallid hillside, through the tunal, past their strong battery; back to the town rode the English, who with the punctilio of the occasion had accompanied their foes to the base of the hill. They rode through the streets which that morning they had laid waste, and through those that the stern Admiral had sworn to destroy. There black ruin faced them starkly; here doomed things awaited mutely. The town was little, and it seemed to cower before them like a child. Almost in silence did they ride, lifted and restless in mind, thought straining at the leash, but finding no words that should free it.

"How hot is the night!" spoke Baldry at last. "Hast noticed the smell of the earth? We killed a great serpent coming across the plain to-day."

"How the sea burns!" said Henry Sedley. "There is a will-o'-the-wisp upon the marsh yonder."

"Here they call it the soul of the tyrant Aguirre," answered Ferne. "A lost soul."

A little longer and they parted for the night to meet early next morning in the council with the Admiral. If to Nueva Cordoba, stripped and beaten, trembling beneath the fear of worse things to come, an army with banners held the land, so, in no lesser light, did the English see themselves, and they meant to have the treasure and to humble that white fortress. But it must be done quickly, quickly! Pampatar in Margarita, the castle of Paria or Berreo's settlement in Trinidad, could send no ships that might contend with the four swinging yonder in the river's mouth, but from the west at any hour, from La Guayra or Santa Marta, thunderbolts might fall. Would they indeed be wholly victors, then a general and overwhelming attack must soon be planned, soon made.

Weary enough from the day's work, yet, when he and his fellow adventurers had exchanged good night, Mortimer Ferne went not to his quarters. Instead he passed through a dim corridor to the little cell-like room where was lodged Master Francis Sark, whom the English kept under surveillance, and who, under another name, had given to Pedro Mexia his knowledge of English speech and English history. What persuasion the Captain of the Cygnet used, what bribe or promise or threat, what confidence that there was more to tell thereby like a magnet compelling any wandering information, is not known; nor is known what hatred of his conqueror, of a gallant form and a stainless name, may have uncoiled itself to poisonous ends in the soul of the small, smug, innocent-seeming man to whom he spoke; but at the end of a half-hour the Captain of the Cygnet left his prisoner of the San Jose, moved swiftly and lightly down the corridor to his own apartment, where he crossed to the window and stood there with his eyes upon the fortress of Nueva Cordoba, rising shadowy upon its shadowy hill. So often had he looked upon it that now, despite the night, he saw with precision the squat, white walls, the dark sweep of the encircling tunal, and, strong clasp for that thorny girdle, the too formidable battery defending the one apparent opening. "Another path!" he said to himself. "Masked and hidden, unguarded, known only to their leaders.... To come upon them from the rear while, catlike, they watch the highway yonder!" His breath came in a long sigh of satisfaction. "What if he lies? Why should he lie, seeing that he is in our power? But if he does ..."

Minutes passed and yet he stood there, gazing with thoughtful eyes at hill and fortress rising above the silent town. Finally he went over to Robin-a-dale, asleep upon a pallet, and shaking him awake, bade the lad to follow him but make no noise. To the sentinels at the great door, in the square, at the edge of the town, he gave the word of the night, and so issued with the boy from the huddle of flat-roofed houses, overhung by palm-trees, to the open plain.

Overhead innumerable stars, between heaven and earth incalculable swarms of luminous insects, from the soil a heavy exhalation as of musk, here arid places, there cacti like columns, like candelabra, like dark writhing fingers thrust from the teeming earth;—Robin-a-dale liked not the place, wondered what dangerous errand his master was upon, but since he as greatly feared as greatly loved the man he served, cared not to ask. Presently Ferne turned, and a few moments found them climbing the long western slope of the hill, above them the dim outline of the fortress, the dark fringe of the tunal. Half-way up they came to a little rocky plateau, and here Ferne paused, hesitated a moment, then sat down upon a great stone and looked out to sea. He was waiting for the moon to rise, for with her white finger she must point out that old way through the tunal of which Master Francis Sark had told him. Was it indeed there? The man, he thought, had all the marks of a liar. Again, why should he lie, being in their power?—unless treachery were so ingrained that it was his natural speech. By all the tokens Sark had given, the opening should not be fifty yards away. When the moon rose he would see for himself....

A pale radiance in the east proclaimed her approach. Since wait he must he waited patiently, and by degrees withdrew his mind from his errand and from strife and plotting. The boy crouched in silence beside him. There was air upon these heights, and the stir of it made Robin-a-dale to shiver. He gazed about him fearfully, for it was a dismal place. From behind those piled rocks, from the shadow of those strange trees, what things might creep or spring? Robin thought it time that the adventure were ended, and had he dared had said as much. Lights were burning upon the Cygnet where she rode in the pale river, near to the Phoenix, with the Mere Honour and the Marigold just beyond, and there came over the boy a great homesickness for her decks. He crept as closely as he might to her Captain, sitting there as quietly as if the teeming, musky soil were good Devon earth, and that phosphorescent ocean the gray waves of English seas, and he laid his hand upon Sir Mortimer's booted knee, and so was somewhat comforted.

Upon Ferne, waiting in inaction, looking out over the vast, dim panorama of earth and ocean, there fell, after the fever and exaltation, the stress and exertion of the past hours, a strange mood of quiet, of dreaming, and of peace. Sitting there in listless strength, he thought in quietude and tenderness of other things than gold, and fame, and the fortress which must be taken of Nueva Cordoba. With his eyes upon the gleaming sea he thought of Damaris Sedley, and of Sidney, and of a day at Windsor when the Queen had showed him much favor, and of a little, windy knoll, near to his house of Ferne, where, returning from hunting or hawking, he was wont to check his horse that he might taste the sweet and sprightly air.

Now this man waited at the threshold of an opening door, and like a child his fancy gathered door-step flowers, recking nothing of the widening space behind, the beckoning hands, the strange chambers into which shortly he must go. Some faint and far monition, some breath of colder air may have touched him, for now, like a shriven man drowsing into death, his mind dwelt lightly upon all things, gazed quietly upon a wide, retreating landscape, and saw that great and small are one. He was wont to think of Damaris Sedley with ardor, imagining embraces, kisses, cries of love, sweet lips, warm arms,—but to-night he seemed to see her in a glass, somewhat dimly. She stood a little remote, quiet, sweet, and holy, and his spirit chastened itself before her. Dear were his friends to him; his heart lodged them in spacious chambers and lapped them with observance; now he thought whimsically and lightly of his guests as though their lodgings were far removed from that misty central hall where he himself abode. Loyal with the fantastic loyalty of an earlier time, practiser of chivalry and Honor's fanatic, for a moment those things also lost their saliency and edge. Word and deed of this life appeared of the silver and the moonlight, not of gold and sunlight; existence a dream and no matter of moment. He plucked the flowers one by one, looked at them tranquilly, and laid them down, nor thought, This is Farewell.

Nueva Cordoba lay still amongst her rustling palms; the ocean rippled gold, and like gold-dust were the scintillating clouds of insects; the limpid river palely slid between its mangrove banks, a low wind sighed, a night-bird called; far, far in the forest behind the hill a muffled roar proclaimed that the jaguar had found its meat. The moon rose—such a moon as never had England looked upon. Pearl, amethyst, and topaz were her rings; she made the boss of a vast shield; like God's own candle she lit the night. "At home the nightingales would sing," thought Sir Mortimer. "Ah, Philomela, here befits a wilder song than thine!" He looked towards the Cygnet, still as a painted ship upon the silver sluggish flood. "When there shall be no more sea, what will seamen do?" Over the marsh wandered the ignes fatui. "How restlessly and to no bourne dost thou move, lost soul!" The boy at his feet stirred and sighed. "Poor Robin! Tired and sleepy and frightened, art not? Why, dear knave, the jaguar is not roaring for thee!" Bending, he put an arm about the lad and drew him to his side. "I only wait for the brightness to grow," he said. "Do not shiver so! In a little while we shall be gone."

The moon rose higher and the plain grew spectral, the town a dream town, and the ships dream ships. Ferne turned slightly so that he might behold the Cordillera. In mystery and enormity the mountains reared themselves, high as the battlements of heaven, deep as those of hell. The Elizabethan looked long upon them, and he wreathed that utter wall, that sombre and terrific keep, with strange imaginings.

At last the two, master and boy, arose, and climbing the farther slope to the tunal, began to skirt that spiked and thorny circlet, moving warily because to the core it was envenomed. Beneath the sun it swarmed with hideous life; beneath the moon the poison might yet stir. The moon silvered the edge of things, drew illusion like a veil across the haunted ring; below, what hidden foulness!... Did the life there know its hideousness? Those lengths and coils, those twisting locks of Medusa, might think themselves desirable. These pulpy, starkly branching cacti, these shrubs that bred poignards, these fibrous ropes, dark and knotted lianas, binding all together like monstrous exaggerations of the tenants of the place, like serpents seen of a drunkard, were they not to themselves as fair as the fairest vine or tree or flower? The dwellers here deceived themselves, never dreamed they were so thwart and distorted.

As he walked, the halo of the moon seemed to widen until it embraced a quarter of the heavens. The sea beneath was molten silver. A low sound of waves was in his ears, and a wind pressed against him faintly, like a ghost's withstanding. From the woods towards the mountains came a long, bestial cry, hoarse and mournful. "O God," said Sir Mortimer, "whither dost Thou draw us? What am I? What is my meaning and my end?"

Beyond loomed the fortress, all its lineaments blurred, softened, qualitied like a dream by the flooding moonlight. A snake stretching across their path, Sir Mortimer drew his sword, but the creature slipped away, kept before them for a while, then turned aside into its safe home. They came to the place they were seeking. Here was the cactus, taller than its fellows, and gaunt as a gallows-tree, and here the projecting end of a fallen cross. Between showed no vestige of an opening; dark, impervious, formidable as a fortress wall, the tunal met the eye. Ferne, attacking it with his sword, thrust aside a heavy curtain of broad-leaved vine, came upon a network of thorn and spike and prickly leaf, hewed this away, to find behind it a like barrier. Evidently the man had lied!—to what purpose Sir Mortimer Ferne would presently make it his business to discover.... There overtook him a sudden revulsion of feeling, depression of spirit, cold and sick distaste of the place. Tom and breathless, in very savagery over his defeated hope and fool's errand, he thrust with all his strength at the heart of this panoplied foe. His blade, piercing the swart curtain, met with no resistance. With an exclamation he threw himself against that thick-seeming barrier, and so, with Robin-a-dale behind him, burst into a narrow, secret way, masked at entrance and exit, and winding like a serpent through the tunal which surrounded the fortress of Nueva Cordoba.



VI

"Now Neptune keep the plate-fleet at Cartagena!" whistled Arden. "When I go home I'll dress in cloth of gold, eat tongues of peacocks, and drink dissolved pearls!"

"When I go home I'll build again my father's house," cried Henry Sedley.

"In Plymouth port there's a bark I know," quoth Baldry. "When I go home she's mine,—I'll make of her another Star!"

"When I go home—" said Sir Mortimer, and paused. The early light was on his face, a deeper light within his eyes that saw the rose which he should gather when he went home. Then, since he would not utter so deep and dear a thought—"When we go home," he said, and began to speak—half in earnest, half in relief from the gravity of the past council—of that returning. By degrees the fire burned, and he whose spirit the live coal touched as it touched Sidney's and, more rarely, Walter Raleigh's, bore his listeners with him in a rhapsody of anticipation. Long fronds of palm drooped without the room which held them, Englishmen in a world or savage or Spanish, but their spirits followed the speaker to green fields of Kent or Devon. They saw the English summer, saw the twilight fall, heard the lonely tinkle of far sheep-bells, heard the nightingales singing beneath the moon that shone on England. Friends' homes opened to them; Grenville welcomed them to Stowe, Sidney to charmed Penshurst. Then to London and the Triple Tun! Bow Bells rang for them; they drank in the inn's long-room; their names were in men's mouths. What welcome, what clashing of the bells, when they should sail up the Thames again—the Mere Honour, the Cygnet, the Marigold, and the Phoenix—with treasure in their holds, and for pilot that bright angel Fame! What should they buy with their treasure? what should they do with their fame? Treasure should beget stout ships, stout hearts to sail them; fame, laid to increase, might swell to deathless glory! Sea-captains now, sea-kings would the English be, gathering tribute from the waters and the winds, bringing gifts to England—frankincense of wealth, myrrh of knowledge, spikenard of power!—till, robed and crowned, she rose above the peoples, Joseph's sheaf, Joseph's star!

On went the charmed words, each a lantern flashed on thought, grave, poetic, telling of triumph, yet far removed from gross optimism, not without that strange, melancholy note sounding now and again amongst the age's crashing chords. Abruptly his voice fell, but presently with a lighter note he broke the silence in which his listeners gazed upon the stately vision he had conjured up. "Ah, we will talk to Frank Drake of this night! Canst not hear Richard Hawkins laugh in the Triple Tun's long-room? The Queen, too, in her palace will laugh,—like a man with the flash in her eye and her white hand clenched! And they whom we love.... What is the word for to-night, John Nevil? I may give it? Then—Dione!"

It was the red dawn after his vigil on the fortress hill: in the great room of the stone house the leaders of the expedition had followed, line by line, his sword point as it drew upon the flagging a plan of attack, to which they gave instant adoption; Master Francis Sark had been dismissed, and to the Admiral's grave hint of possible treachery Ferne had answered, "Ay, John Nevil, I also think him a false—hearted craven, Spaniolated and perverse, a huckster, whose wares do go to the highest bidder! Well, with our hand at his throat we do not bid the highest?"

Now as he raised his tankard to thirsty lips, suddenly from the square below, shattering all the languid stillness of the tropic dawn, brayed a trumpet, arose a noise of hurrying steps and hasty voices. Baldry, at the window, wheeled, color in his cheeks, light in his deep eyes.

"War is my mistress! Down the hillside come those to whom I can speak—can speak as well as thou, Sir Mortimer Ferne!" The door was flung open, and Ambrose Wynch, a mighty man in a battered breastplate and morion, looked joyfully in upon them.

"The Dons supped so well last night, Sir John, that now they're coming to breakfast! 'Tis just a flourish—no great sortie. Shall a handful of us go out against them?"

That sally from the fortress was led by Mexia, who somewhat burned to wipe out the memory of his lost battery at the river's mouth. And as blind Fortune's dearest favor flutters often to the lackey while the master snatches vainly, so it befell in this case, for Mexia's chance raid, a piece of mere bravado to which De Guardiola had given grudging consent, was productive of results. Bravado for bravado, interchange of chivalric folly, of magnificence that was not war,—forth to meet the Spaniard and his company must go no greater force of Englishmen! Luiz de Guardiola, Governor of Nueva Cordoba, kept his state in his fortress; therefore, Sir John Nevil, Admiral of the English and of no less worth than the Castilian, remained for this skirmish inactive. On both sides their captains played the game.

Sir Mortimer Ferne and Robert Baldry at the head of threescore men, some mounted, some on foot, deemed themselves and this medley sufficient for Pedro Mexia. Nor can it be said that their reckoning was at fault, since Mexia, deep in curses, had at last to make hasty way across the strip of plain between Nueva Cordoba and its fortress. Too easily did the English repel an idle sortie, too eagerly did they follow Mexia in retreat, for suddenly Chance, leaving all neutrality, threw herself, a goddess armed, upon the Spanish side. In the very shadow of the hill, the mounted English, well ahead of those on foot, Mexia's disordered band making for the shelter of the tunal, a Spaniard turned, raised his harquebus and fired. The great bay steed which bore Sir Mortimer Ferne reared, screamed, then fell, hurling its rider to earth, where he lay, senseless, stark in black armor, with a knot of rose-colored velvet in his crest.

No hawk like De Guardiola was Pedro Mexia, but when luck pinioned his prey his talons were strong to close upon it. Now on the instant he wheeled, swooped with all his might upon the disordered vanguard of the English. Baldry and those with him fought madly, the English on foot made all haste; the prostrate figure, pinned beneath the dying bay, became the centre of a wild melee, the hotly contested prize of friend and foe! Then burst from the tunal, came at a run down the hill, re-enforcements for Mexia....

Erelong, Don Luiz de Guardiola sent to inform Sir John Nevil that he had for his prisoner one of the latter's captains. It appeared to the Governor of Nueva Cordoba that the English held the man in some esteem,—perchance even that he was their leader's close friend. Sir John Nevil would understand that to a Spanish soldier and good son of the Church the prisoner was, inevitably, mere pirate and heretic, to be dealt with as such.

To this announcement John Nevil returned curt answer. Nueva Cordoba lay in the hollow of his hand, and at his disposal were some Spanish lives perhaps not altogether valueless in the eyes of Don Luiz de Guardiola, since their kindred and friends and Spain herself might hold him responsible for their sudden and piteous taking off.

When an hour had dragged itself away the fortress spoke again, and its speech was of a piece with the Governor's mind. The peril of the town and the lives within it were ignored. Bluntly, the price of Sir Mortimer Ferne's life was this—and this—and this!

The Admiral made reply that Honor was too dear a price for the life of any English gentleman. He and Sir Mortimer Ferne declined the terms of Don Luiz de Guardiola. The safety of his friend should, however, ransom a city. Deliver the captive sound in life and limb, and the English would withdraw from Nueva Cordoba, and proceed with their ships upon their way. Reject this offer, let harm befall the prisoner, and Don Luiz de Guardiola should see how John Nevil mourned his friends!

The Governor answered that his terms held. The evening before, the English leader had been pleased to announce that if by moonrise of this night he had not in hand fifty thousand ducats, Nueva Cordoba should lie in ashes; now Don Luiz de Guardiola, more generous, gave Sir John Nevil until the next sunrise to heap upon the quay at the Bocca all gold and silver, all pearls, jewels, wrought work and other treasure stolen from the King of Spain, to withdraw every English soul from the galleon San Jose, leaving her safe anchored in the river and above her the Spanish flag, to abandon town and battery and retire to his ships, under oath, upon the delivery to him of the prisoner, to quit at once and forever these seas. Did the first beams of the sun find the English yet in Nueva Cordoba, then the light should also behold the death with ignominy of the prisoner.

"He will not die with ignominy," spoke the Admiral when the herald had come and gone. "Death cannot wear a form so base that he, nobly dying, will not ennoble."

"Do you purpose, then, that he shall die?" demanded Baldry, roughly.

"I purpose that if he lives I may look him in the face," answered the other. "We may not buy his life with the dishonor of us all." His stern face working, he covered his bearded lips with his hand. "But as God lives, he shall not die! We have until the next sunrising."

"There is more in it than meets the eye," said Arden. "These monstrous conditions!... One would say that the Spaniard means there shall be no rescue."

Henry Sedley broke in passionately. "Ay, that is it! Did you not hear their talk last night?"

"For many a year, as I have gone jostling up and down, I have studied the faces of men," pursued Arden. "With this Governor the cart draws the horse, and his particular quarrel takes precedence of his public duty. I think that in the wreaking of a grudge he would stand at nothing."

The Admiral paced the floor. Arden, eying him, spoke again with emotion.

"Mortimer Ferne is as dear to me as to you, John Nevil!... I think of the men of the Minion and of John Oxenham."

In the silence that followed his words each man had his vision of the men of the Minion and of John Oxenham. Then Baldry spoke, roughly and loudly, as was his wont:

"I think not of the dead, for whom there's no help. For the living man, he and I have yet to meet! There is to-night—there is the path he found—no doubt he counts upon our attacking as was planned! He is subtle with his words—no doubt he'll hold them off—insinuate—make them look only to the seaward—"



The Admiral, coming to the table, leaned his weight upon it. "Gentlemen, you all do know that this is my friend, whom I love as David of old loved Jonathan. Of the value of his life, of that great promise which his death would cut short, I will not speak. I also think that this Governor, believing himself, the treasure, and his men-at-arms secure, careth naught for the town whose protector he is called. Therefore an we would save the man who is dear to us and to England from I know not what fate, from the fate perhaps of John Oxenham, this night must we take by storm the fortress, using the plan of attack, the hour, ay and the word of the night, which he gave us. If it is now less simple a thing, if this Spaniard will surely keep watch and ward to-night, yet there is none to tell him that, offering at his face, we do mean to strike him in the back. If our onslaught be but swift and furious enough we may, God willing, bring forth in triumph both the treasure and the man whose welfare so outweighs the treasure."

"Amen to that," answered Arden; "but I have a boding spirit. It seems to me that the blessed sun himself hath shrunken, and I would I might wring the neck of yonder yelling bird!... That Englishman, that Francis Sark—he is well guarded?"

"Ralph Walter guards him," said the Admiral, briefly. "There is but the one door—the window is barred and too narrow for the passage of a child.... Yea, I grant, as did Mortimer Ferne, his knavery, but now, as nearly as we can sail to the wind of the truth, the man, desiring restitution and reward, speaks plain honesty."

"He spoke 'plain honesty' after the taking of the San Jose," muttered Arden. "Yet we found a hawk where we looked for a wren's nest. Oh, I grant you there were explanations enough to stand between him and the yard-arm, and that Fortune, having turned her wheel in our favor, apparently left her industry and fell asleep! She awakened this morning."

"Wring thine own neck for a bird of ill omen!" began Baldry, to be cut short by the Admiral's grave "Where all's danger, whatever course we shape, who gives a safer chart?" Then, as no one spoke: "To our loss we have found both shoal and reef between us and yonder castle. Think you not that I know, as knew Sir Mortimer Ferne, that we are shown a doubtful channel by a shifty pilot? But beyond is the open sea of all our hopes. Fortune and her wheel, Giles Arden!—nay, rather God and His hand over the issues of life and death!"

Up in his white fortress that same hour De Guardiola heard in silence the Admiral's message of defiance, then when he and Mexia were again alone frowned thoughtfully over a slip of paper which by devious ways had shortly before reached his hand. With all their vigilance not every hole and crevice could the English stop; Spanish was the town and Spanish the overhanging fortress, and the former was the place of many women and priests. The conquerors strove to secure the place as with a fowler's net, yet now and again a bird of the air fluttered through their meshes. The paper which Don Luiz held ran as follows: "May not a countryman of heretics choose his own king? When Death peers too closely—as was the case upon the galleon San Jose—may not a man turn his coat and send Death seeking elsewhere? Death gone by, may not the man be willing (if it be so that he is not well entreated of his new masters) to take again the colors to which on a Corpus Christi day of which you wot he swore fealty? At sunrise this morning the English laid toils for you. I have knowledge to sell. Will you buy my wares with five thousand pesos of silver and the letter to Cartagena which I desired?... I wrap this in a fig-leaf and drop it from the window to Dolores laughing with the seamen below. If you will buy, then raise above the battery a pennant of red that may be seen from the room with the hidden door in the Friar's House."

"The dog! I thought that he perished with Antonio de Castro!" spoke Mexia.

"That he did not," answered the Governor. "He is so false that were there none else with whom to play the traitor, his right hand would betray his left.... The English called him Francis Sark."

"You'll pay?"

"He shall think I'll pay," said the other. "So they lay their toils!—it needs not this paper to tell me that;" he tapped it as it lay before him. "Somewhat will this Englishman, this Nevil, do to-night. He hath his game in his mind,—his hand on this piece, his eye on that, these pawns in reserve, those advanced for action." De Guardiola leaned back in his chair and studied the ceiling. "Ha, Pedro! we must discover what he would do! When I know his dispositions, blessed Mother of God, what check may I not give him!"

"But if Desmond escapes not," began the duller Mexia, "we may learn not at all, or we may learn too late. Then all's conjecture. They fight like fiends, and day by day we lose. What if they overbear us yet?"

Don Luiz brought his gaze from the ceiling to meet the look of the lesser man. Mexia fidgeted, at last burst forth: "There are times when the devil dwells in your eye and upon your lip! 'Twas so you smiled in the Valdez matter and when that slave girl died! What do you mean?"

"Mean?" answered De Guardiola, still smiling. "I mean, my friend, that we must know what traps they bait down yonder." He called to those who waited without, wrote an order and sent it to the officer in command at the battery. "Up goes one traitor's signal!... Good Pedro, when Fate gives to you your enemy; says, 'Now! Revenge yourself to the uttermost!'—what do you do?"

"Why, I take his life," answered Mexia. "Then shall he trouble me no more."

"Now I," said Don Luiz, "I give him memories of me. Mayhap the dead do not remember. So live my foe! but live in hell, remembering the brand upon thy soul and that it was I who set it glowing there!"

"Well, I am thy friend, am I not?" quoth Mexia, comfortably. "I am not Englishman nor Valdez nor Cimmaroon slave, and so I fear not thy smile. It is twelve of the clock.... Do you think that Desmond knows so much?"

"Not more than one other," answered De Guardiola, and called for a flask of wine.

The day wore on in heat and light, white glare from the hill, and from the sea fierce gleams of blue steel. The coasts loomed, the plain moved in the hot air. Here the plain was arid, and there yellow flowers turned it to a ragged Field of Cloth of Gold. The gaunt cacti stood rigid, and the palms made no motion where they dropped against the blue. In cohorts to and fro went the colored birds; along the sandy shores, rose pink and scarlet and white, crowded the flamingoes. Crept on the noonday stillness; came the slow afternoon, the sun declined, and every hour of that day had been long, long! One would have said that it was the longest day of the year. Throughout it, dominant upon its ascending ground, white, impregnable, and silent as a sepulchre, rose the fortress. Before the fortress, slumberous also, couched the long, low fortification of stone and earthwork commanding in its turn the road through the tunal. In the town below, alcalde and friar waited trembling upon the English Admiral with representations that the quality of mercy is not strained. The slight rills of gold yet hidden in Nueva Cordoba burst forth and began to flow fast and more fast towards the English quarters. From the churches, Dominican and Franciscan, wailed the miserere, and the women and children trembled beneath the roofs which at any moment might no longer give them sanctuary. For all the blazing sunshine, the place began to wear a look of doom.

During the day the English dragged Mexia's conquered guns to the edge of the town, and under their cover threw up earthworks and planted their artillery where it might speak with effect. Spanish soldiery appeared before the battery, and, according to the tactics of the time, began to make thorny with abattis, poisoned stakes, and other devices the way of the enemy across the open space which it guarded. English marksmen picked them off, others took their place; they falling also, one great gun from the fort bellowed defiance. Its echoes ceasing, silence again wrapped the white ascent and all that crowned it. For days now each antagonist had that knowledge of the other that ammunition was the pearl of price only to be fully shown by warrant of circumstance.

The sun in sinking cast a strange light. It stained the sea, and the air so partook of that glow that town and fortress sprang into red significance. The river also, where swung the dark ships, was ensanguined, as was every ripple upon the shore, where now the birds grew very clamorous. There were no clouds; only the red ball of the sun descending, and a clear field for the stars. The evening wind arose; at last the day died; unheralded by any dusk, on came the night. Color of blood changed to color of gold, gleamed and glistened the sea, sparkled the fire-flies, shone the deep stars; over the marsh flared the will-o'-the-wisp like a torch lit to bad ends.

Nueva Cordoba was held by two-thirds of the English force; now for the Spaniards' greater endangering down from each ship's side came, man by man, wellnigh all of that division which looked to the safety of the fleet. So great was the prize, so intolerable any idea of defeated purpose, that for this night—this night only—the balances could not be evenly held. Precaution lifted from one side added weight to the other, and the borrowing from Peter became of less moment than the paying of Paul. Day by day, north and east and west, watchmen in the tops of the Mere Honour, the Cygnet, the Marigold, and the Phoenix had seen no hostile sail upon the bland and smiling ocean. The river ran in mazes; undulating like a serpent it came from hidden sources, and its heavy borders of tamarind and mangrove sent long shadows out towards midstream. The watchmen looked to the river also; but no greater thing ever appeared than some Indian canoe gliding down from illimitable forests. Now the ships were left maimed for what was meant to be the briefest while. The sick manned them; together with a handful of the unhurt they looked down from the decks and whispered envious farewells to their comrades in the boats below. High above the boats towered the black hulls; the topmasts overlooked sea and land; the bold figureheads, that had drunk the brine of many a storm and looked unmoved upon strange sights, gazed into the darkness with inscrutable, blank eyes.

Silently the boats made landing, swiftly and silently through the darkness two hundred men crossed the little plain, and their leader was Robert Baldry. Out from Nueva Cordoba, stealing through the ruined and depopulated quarter of the town, came a shadowy band, and they from the town and they from the river met at the base of the long, westward slope of the hill. Thence they climbed to the rocky plateau where, the night before, Sir Mortimer Ferne had made pause. Here they halted, while Henry Sedley and ten men went on to the tunal as, the night before, one man had gone. By the signs that Ferne had given them they found the entrance which they sought, and when they had thrust aside the curtain of branch and vine, saw the clearing through the tunal. It lay beneath the stars, a narrow defile much overgrown, walled on either side by impenetrable wood. On went Sedley and his men, cautiously, silently, until they had wellnigh pierced the tunal, that was scarce wider, indeed, than an English copse. Before them, quiet as the tomb, rose the fortress—no sound save their stealthy movement and the stir of the life that was native to the woods, no sign of sentience other than their own. Back they went to the plateau and made report, then with Baldry and half of all the English force waited for the Admiral's attack upon that notable fortification which guarded the known entrance through the tunal.

Rising ground and the bulk of the fortress hid from them the battery; they would hear, not see, John Nevil's onslaught, so now they watched the east for the silver signal of attack. Not long did they watch. Above the waters the firmament became milk white; an argent line appeared, thickened:—one moment of the moon, then tumult, shouting, the blast of a trumpet, the sound of small arms, and the roar of those guns which must be rushed upon and silenced! Noises of bird and beast had the tropic night, all the warfare and the wrangling with which life exacts tribute from life, but now the feud of man with man voiced itself to the stars. So great and stern was the uproar that it seemed as though John Nevil might oversweep with his iron determination that too formidable battery and unaided seize upon the fortress.

No tarrying after the burst of sound and light made Baldry and his men. Up the steep ground they swept towards that pale, invulnerable castle borne upon the shoulder of the hill, faintly outlined against the pallid east. On they came, a long thin line of men of England to that secret path through the tunal. Devon was there, and Kent and Sussex, and many a goodly shire beside. Men of land-fights and of sea-fights were they, and of old adventures to alien countries, strong of heart and frame, and very fiercely minded towards the fortress of Nueva Cordoba. It withheld from them the gold they wanted, and now within its grasp was a life they valued. To-night their will was set to take the one and rescue the other. They saw the treasure heaped and gleaming, and they saw the face and waved hand of Mortimer Ferne. They heard him laugh and gayly cry his thanks.

They entered the defile. To the right and the left rose the impenetrable wood; before them wound a path thorny and difficult, where not more than three men might go abreast; beyond, was the mass of the fortress. On through the impeding growth, where passage was just possible, rushed Baldry and his men. The way was not long, larger loomed the fortress, louder grew the noise of attack and defence. At last the edge of the tunal was reached, and they in the van, freed from hindrance and delay, sprang forward over open ground, marked here and there by low bushes and some trailing growth, sweeping around the fortress to the rear of the battery, and apparently of a solidity with the universal frame of things.

Suddenly, beneath the footing of the foremost, the earth gave way and a line of men stumbled, and pitched forward into a trench which had been digged, which had been planted with pointed stakes, which had been cunningly covered over by a leafy roof so thin that a child had broken through. Not until towards the sunset of that day had Don Luiz de Guardiola received information which enabled him to lay snares, but since that hour he had worked with frantic haste. Now he knew the moment when his springe would be trodden upon, the number of them who would come stealthily through the tunal to that gin, the nature of Nevil's attack upon the front, what guard had been left in the town, what upon the ships. His information was minute and accurate, and, hawk and serpent, he acted upon it with fierceness and with guile.

The onward rush of the English had been impetuous. They in the rear of the first upon that frail bridge, unable to stay their steps, plunged also into the trench; those who were latest to clear the tunal surged forward in consternation and confusion. Suddenly, from a low earthwork hastily raised in the shadow of the fortress wall, and masked by bushes, burst a withering fire of chain-shot from cannon and culverin, of slighter missiles from falcon and bastard and saker, caliver and harquebus. The trench, dug in a half-circle, either end touching the tunal, made with the space it enclosed, and which was now crowded by the English, an iron trap, into which with thunder and flame the Spanish ordnance was pouring death.



VII

They who saw the full promise of the night in one instant of time dashed from their lips and lost in desert sands struggled fiercely with their fate. Baldry's great figure at their head, Baldry's great voice shouting encouragement, they strove to pass the trench, to rush upon and overwhelm the masked batteries, the hidden marksmen. An effectual chevaux-de-frise, the pointed stakes withstood them, tore them, and threw them back. Effort upon effort, a wild crossing over the interlaced bodies of the fallen, a forward rush upon the guns, a loud "'Ware the vines!" from Baldry—another and a wider ditch, irregular and shallow, but lined with thorns like stilettos, and strung from side to side with lianas strong as ropes to entangle, to bring prone upon the thorns the desperate men who strove in the snare. A small band won to the farther side, but the shot was as a blast of winter among sere leaves, and terribly thinned their ranks. All was vain, all hopeless; to advance, destruction, to tarry in that arena amidst the deadly thunder of the guns, no less a thing.

"Back, back!" shouted Baldry. "Back through the tunal—back to the Admiral at the main battery! Here all's lost!"

Above the din rose his voice. Back to the one door of safety surged the English, but the way was narrow from that pit into which they had been betrayed. The guns yet spoke; men dropped with an answering groan or with a wild cry to their comrades not to leave them behind in that fatal trench, upon Death's harvest-field. How in the murk and rain of death could the whole gather the maimed, know the living from the dead? Barely might the uninjured save themselves, give support perhaps to some hurt and staggering comrade. Happy were the dead, for the fallen whose wounds were not mortal, perhaps the fate of the men of the Minion! Of the company which had come with Robert Baldry through the tunal to take by surprise the fortress of Nueva Cordoba hardly a third found again its shelter, turned drawn faces to the sea, rushed from that death-trap, through the bitter and fatal wood, towards hillside and plain, and the Admiral's attack upon that fortification which with all their force they had twice endeavored to storm and found impregnable.

Baldry himself? Surely he was among them!—in that shadowy pass was not this his great form—or this—or this?

"Baldry! Robert Baldry!" cried Sedley, and there came no answer. High and shrill as a woman's wail rang again the young man's voice. "Captain Robert Baldry!"

"He's not here, sir," said a Devon man, softly. "God rest his soul!"

Sedley raised his white face to the stars, then: "On men, on! We've to help Sir John, you know!" Tone of voice, raised arm, and waving hand, subtle and elusive likeness to the leader whom he worshipped, upon whom he had moulded himself—for the moment it was as though Sir Mortimer Ferne had cried encouragement to their sunken hearts, was beckoning them on to ultimate victory plucked from present defeat. A cheer, wavering, broken, touched with hysteria, broke from throats that were dry with the horror of past moments. On with Henry Sedley, their leader now, they struggled, making what mad haste they might through the tunal.

In wrath and grief, set of face, hot of heart, they burst at last from the tunal into the open with sky and sea, the plain, the town and the river before them—the river where the ships lay in safety, the Cygnet and the Phoenix close in shore, the Mere Honour and the Marigold in midstream. The ships in safety—then what meant those distant cries, that thrice repeated booming of a signal gun, that glare upon the river, those two boats filled with rowers making mad haste up the stream, that volley from the Mere Honour's stern guns beneath which sank one of the hurrying craft?

Turned to stone they upon the hillside watched disaster at her work. The Cygnet was a noble ship, co-equal in size and strength with the Mere Honour, well beloved and well defended. Now for one instant of time a great leap of flame from her decks lit all the scene and showed her in her might; it was followed by a frightful explosion, and the great ship, torn from her anchorage, wrecked forever, a flaming hulk, a torch, a pyre, a potent of irremediable ruin, bore down the swift current and struck the Phoenix.... Once more the Mere Honour's cannon thundered loud appeal and warning. In the red light cast by her destroyer the galleon began to sink, and that so rapidly that her seamen threw themselves overboard. Yet burning, the Cygnet kept on her way. Borne by the tide she passed from the narrow to the wider waters; to-night a waning star, the morn might find her a blackened derelict, if indeed there was sign of her at all upon the surface of the sea.

Around the base of the hill swept the Admiral and his force. Vain had been the attack upon the fortress, heavy the loss of the English, but it was not the Spanish guns which had caused that retreat. Where were Robert Baldry and his men? What strange failure, unlooked-for disaster, portended that heavy firing at the rear of the fortress?... The signal gun! The ships!

John Nevil and his company left attacking forever the fortress of Nueva Cordoba, and rushed down the hillside towards plain and river. Forth from the town burst Ambrose Wynch with the guard which had been left in the square—but where were Robert Baldry and his men? Were these they—this dwindled band staggering, leaping down from the heights, led by Henry Sedley, gray, exhausted, speaking in whispers or in strained, high voices? No time was there for explanation, bewildered conjecture, tragic apprehension. Scarcely had the three parties joined, when hard upon their heels came De Guardiola and all his men-at-arms. Nevil wheeled, fought them back, set face again to the river, but his adversaries chose not to have it so.

They achieved their purpose, for he gave them battle on the plain, at his back the red light from the river, before him that bitter, triumphant fortress. Hard and long did they fight in a death struggle, fierce and implacable, where quarter was neither asked nor given. Nevil himself bore a charmed life, but many a gentleman adventurer, many a simple soldier or mariner gasped his last upon Spanish pike or sword. Not fifty paces from the river bank Henry Sedley received his quietus. He had fought as one inspired, all his being tempered to a fine agong of endeavor too high for suffering or for thought. So now when Arden caught him, falling, it was with an unruffled brow and a smile remote and sweet that he looked up at the other's haggard, twisted features.

"My knighthood's yet to seek," he said. "It matters not. Tell my Captain that as I fought for him here, so I wait for him in Christ His court. Tell my sister Damaris—" He was gone, and Arden, rising, slew the swordsman to whom his death was due.

Still fighting, the English reached the brim of the river and the boats that were hidden there. The Mere Honour and the Marigold were now their cities of refuge. Lost was the town, lost any hope of the fortress and what it contained, lost the Cygnet and the Phoenix, lost Henry Sedley and Robert Baldry and many a gallant man besides, lost Sir Mortimer Ferne. Gall and vinegar and Dead Sea fruit and frustrated promise this night held for them who had been conquerors and confident.

They saw the Cygnet, yet burning, upon her way to the open sea; from the galleon San Jose it was gone to join the caravels. Wreckage strewed the river's bosom, and for those who had manned the two ships, destroyer and destroyed, where were they? Down with the allegartos and the river slime—yet voyaging with the Cygnet—rushing, a pale accusing troop towards God's justice bar?... The night was waxing old, the dawn was coming. Upon the Mere Honour Baptist Manwood, a brave and honest soul who did his duty, steered his ship, encouraged his men, fought the Spaniard and made no more ado, trained his guns upon the landing, and with their menace kept back the enemy while, boatload after boatload, the English left the bank and reached in safety the two ships that were left them.

The day was breaking in red intolerable splendor, a terrible glory illuminating the Mere Honour and the Marigold, the river and the sandy shore where gathered the flamingoes and the herons and the egrets, as the Admiral, standing on the poop of the Mere Honour, pressed the hands of those his officers that were spared to him, and spoke simply and manfully, as had spoken Francis Drake, to the gentlemen adventurers who had risked life and goods in this enterprise, and to the soldiers and mariners gathered in the waist; then listened in silence to the story of disaster. Nor Robert Baldry nor Henry Sedley was there to make report, but a grizzled man-at-arms told of the trap beyond the tunal into which Baldry had been betrayed. "How did the Dons come to know, Sir John? We'll take our oath that the trench was newly dug, and sure no such devil's battery as opened on us was planted there before this night! 'Twas a traitor or a spy that wrought us deadly harm!" He ended with a fearful imprecation, and an echo of his oath came from his fellows in defeat.

Michael Thynne, Master of the Cygnet, a dazed and bleeding figure, snatched from the water by one of the Marigold's boats, spoke for his ship. "Came to us that were nearest the shore a boat out of the shadow—and we saw but four or maybe five rowers. 'Who goes there?' calls I, standing by the big culverin. 'The word or we fire!' One in the boat stands up. 'Dione,' says he, and on comes the boat under our stern." He put up an uncertain hand to a ghastly wound in his forehead.... "Well, your Honor, as I was saying, they were Spaniards, after all, and a many of them, for they were hidden in the bottom of the boat. 'Dione,' says they, and I lean over the rail to see if 'twere black Humphrey clambering up and to know what was wanted.... After that I don't remember—but one had a pistolet, I think.... There was another boat that came after them—and we were but twenty men in all. They swarmed over the side and they cut us down. They must ha' found the magazine, for they fired the ship—they fired the Cygnet, Sir John, and it bore down with the tide and struck the Phoenix." His voice falling, one caught and drew him aside to the chirurgeon's care.

The Admiral turned to Ambrose Wynch, who burst forth with: "Sir John Nevil, as I have hope of heaven, I swear I did guard that man as you bade me do! The room was safe, the window high and barred, the door locked—"

"I doubt not that you did your duty, Ambrose Wynch," spoke the Admiral. "But the man escaped—"

"At the nooning he was safe enough," pursued the other, with agitation. "I, going the rounds, looked in and saw him sitting on his bed, smiling at me like a woman—Satan take his soul! I left Ralph Walter in the hall without, and you know him for a stanch man.... When we heard the Mere Honour's guns, and the town rose against us who were left within it, and I and my handful were cutting our way out to join you, Walter got to my side for a moment. 'He's gone!' says he. 'When I heard the alarum I went to fetch him forth to the square with me—and he was not there! When he went and how, except the devil aided him, I know no more than you!'"

"Where is Ralph Walter?" said the Admiral.

"Dead on the plain yonder!" groaned his lieutenant, and sitting down, covered his face with his hands.

From the main-deck arose a long, shrill cry. Arden drew a shuddering breath.

"It's that boy Robin! Had they not bound him he would have thrown himself overboard. I doubt you'll have to flog his senses back to him."

Robin-a-dale's voice again, this time from the break of the poop;—Robin-a-dale himself upon them, his bonds broken, his eyeballs starting, a wild blue-jerkined Ariel filled with tidings. In this moment a scant respecter of persons, he threw himself upon Nevil, pointing and stammering, inarticulate with the wealth of his discovery. The eyes of the two men followed his lean, brown finger.... Above the quay where boats made landing a sand-spit ran out from the tamarind-shadowed bank, and now in the red dawning the mist that clung to it lifted. A man who for an hour had lain heavily in the heavy shadow where he had been left by De Guardiola's picked men had arisen, and with feeble and uncertain steps was treading the sand-spit in the direction of the ships. Even as Nevil and Arden looked where Robin's shaking forefinger bade them look, he raised and waved his hand. It was the shadow of an old familiar gesture.

Before the cockboat reached the point he had fallen, first to his knee, then prone upon the sand. It was in that deep swoon that he was brought aboard the Mere Honour and laid in the Admiral's cabin, whence Arden, leaving the chirurgeon and Robin-a-dale with the yet unconscious man, presently came forth to the Admiral and to Ambrose Wynch and asked for aqua vitae, then drew his hand across his brow and wiped away the cold sweat; finally found voice with which to load with curses Luiz de Guardiola and his ministers. The Admiral listening, kept his still look upon the fortress. When Arden had ended his imprecations he spoke with a quiet voice:

"I love a knightly foe," he said. "For that churl and satyr yonder, may God keep him in safety until we come again!"

"Till we come again!" Arden cried, in the fierceness of his unwonted passion. "Are we not here? Why is the boatswain calling? Why do we make sail, and that so hastily?"

"Look!" said Ambrose Wynch, gruffly, and pointed to the west. "The plate-fleet!"

Those many white flecks upon the horizon grew larger, came swiftly on. Forth from the river's mouth, out to sea, put the Mere Honour and the Marigold, for they might not tarry to meet that squadron. None that looked upon Nevil's face doubted that though now he went, he would come again. But he must gather other ships, replace his dead, renew his strength by the touch of his mother earth. Home therefore to England, to the friends and foes of a man's own house! To the eastward turned the prows of the English ships; the sails filled, the shores slipped past. In the town the bells were ringing, on the plain were figures moving; from the fortress boomed a gun, and the sound was like a taunt, was like a blow upon the cheek. Swift answer made the cannon of both ships, and the sullen, defiant roar awoke the echoes. Taunt might they give for taunt. Three ships had the English taken, three towns had they sacked; in sea-fights and in land-fights they had been victors! Where were the caravels, where the ruined battery at the river's mouth, where the great magazine of Nueva Cordoba? Where was Antonio de Castro?—and the galleon San Jose was lost to friend as well as foe—and Spaniard no more than Englishman might gather again the sunken treasure. Thus spake the guns, but the hearts of the men behind were wrung for the living and the dead. The shores slipped by, the fortress hill of Nueva Cordoba lessened to a silver speck against the mountains; swift-sailing ships they feared no chase by those galleons of Spain. Islands were passed, behind them fell bold coasts, before them spread the waste of waters. Beyond the waste there was home, where friend and foe awaited tidings of the expedition which had gone forth big with promise.

In the Mere Honour's state-cabin upon the evening of that decisive day were gathered a number of the adventurers who had staked life and goods in this enterprise. Not all were there who had sailed from England to the Spanish seas. Then as now England paid tithes of her younger sons to violent death. Many men were missing whose voices the air seemed yet to hold. They had outstripped their comrades, they had gone before: what bustling highways or what lonely paths they were treading, what fare they were tasting, for what mark they were making, and upon what long, long adventure bound—these were hidden things to the travellers left behind in this murky segment of life. But to the strained senses of the men upon whom, as yet, had hardly fallen the upas languor of accepted defeat, before whose eyes, whether shut or open, yet passed insistent visions of last night's events, like an echo, like a shade, old presences made themselves felt. Swinging lanterns dimly lit the cabin of the Mere Honour, and in ranks the shadows rose and fell along its swaying walls. From without, the sound of the sea came like an inarticulate murmur of far-away voices. There were vacant places at the table, and upon the long benches that ran beneath the windows; yet, indefinably, there seemed no less a company than in the days before the taking of the galleon San Jose and the town of Nueva Cordoba. One arose restlessly and looked out upon the star-rimmed sea, then in haste turned back to the lit cabin and passed his hand before his eyes. "I thought I saw the Phoenix," he said, "huge and tall, with Robert Baldry leaning over the side." Another groaned, "I had rather see the Cygnet that was the best-loved ship!" At the mention of the Cygnet they looked towards a door. "How long his stupor holds!" quoth Ambrose Wynch. "Well, God knows 'tis better dreaming than awaking!" The door opened and Sir Mortimer Ferne stood before them.