eeds 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," adv