s 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 st