Part 7 (1/2)
”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 s.n.a.t.c.hing, 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 pa.s.sed 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 th.o.r.n.y 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+ver. 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 phosph.o.r.escent 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 s.p.a.ce 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 gla.s.s, 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 s.p.a.cious 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.