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 José_? 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, señors, 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 Señor 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 José_ 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, señors," 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, señor, 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 señors," began the fuddled Mexia, "you alone may
be precisely aware--"
"He is dead," again stated with deliberation Don Luiz. "I know, señors,
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, señors,
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, señor?" demanded De Guardiola of the gentleman
opposite him, this being Sir Mortimer Ferne.
"Did I smile, señor? 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, señor. 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, señor."
"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, señor, 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, señors,
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
José_, 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.