rom 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
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 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