Sir Mortimer

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.

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