Sir Mortimer Part 8

When an hour had dragged itself away the fortress spoke again, and its speech was of a piece with the Governor's mind. The peril of the town and the lives within it were ignored. Bluntly, the price of Sir Mortimer Ferne's life was this--and this--and this!

The Admiral made reply that Honor was too dear a price for the life of any English gentleman. He and Sir Mortimer Ferne declined the terms of Don Luiz de Guardiola. The safety of his friend should, however, ransom a city. Deliver the captive sound in life and limb, and the English would withdraw from Nueva Cordoba, and proceed with their ships upon their way. Reject this offer, let harm befall the prisoner, and Don Luiz de Guardiola should see how John Nevil mourned his friends!

The Governor answered that his terms held. The evening before, the English leader had been pleased to announce that if by moonrise of this night he had not in hand fifty thousand ducats, Nueva Cordoba should lie in ashes; now Don Luiz de Guardiola, more generous, gave Sir John Nevil until the next sunrise to heap upon the quay at the Bocca all gold and silver, all pearls, jewels, wrought work and other treasure stolen from the King of Spain, to withdraw every English soul from the galleon _San Jose_, leaving her safe anch.o.r.ed in the river and above her the Spanish flag, to abandon town and battery and retire to his ships, under oath, upon the delivery to him of the prisoner, to quit at once and forever these seas. Did the first beams of the sun find the English yet in Nueva Cordoba, then the light should also behold the death with ignominy of the prisoner.

"He will not die with ignominy," spoke the Admiral when the herald had come and gone. "Death cannot wear a form so base that he, n.o.bly dying, will not enn.o.ble."

"Do you purpose, then, that he shall die?" demanded Baldry, roughly.

"I purpose that if he lives I may look him in the face," answered the other. "We may not buy his life with the dishonor of us all." His stern face working, he covered his bearded lips with his hand. "But as G.o.d lives, he shall not die! We have until the next sunrising."

"There is more in it than meets the eye," said Arden. "These monstrous conditions!... One would say that the Spaniard means there shall be no rescue."

Henry Sedley broke in pa.s.sionately. "Ay, that is it! Did you not hear their talk last night?"

"For many a year, as I have gone jostling up and down, I have studied the faces of men," pursued Arden. "With this Governor the cart draws the horse, and his particular quarrel takes precedence of his public duty. I think that in the wreaking of a grudge he would stand at nothing."

The Admiral paced the floor. Arden, eying him, spoke again with emotion.

"Mortimer Ferne is as dear to me as to you, John Nevil!... I think of the men of the _Minion_ and of John Oxenham."

In the silence that followed his words each man had his vision of the men of the _Minion_ and of John Oxenham. Then Baldry spoke, roughly and loudly, as was his wont:

"I think not of the dead, for whom there's no help. For the living man, he and I have yet to meet! There is to-night--there is the path he found--no doubt he counts upon our attacking as was planned! He is subtle with his words--no doubt he'll hold them off--insinuate--make them look only to the seaward--"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'DO YOU PURPOSE, THEN, THAT HE SHALL DIE?' DEMANDED BALDRY"]

The Admiral, coming to the table, leaned his weight upon it. "Gentlemen, you all do know that this is my friend, whom I love as David of old loved Jonathan. Of the value of his life, of that great promise which his death would cut short, I will not speak. I also think that this Governor, believing himself, the treasure, and his men-at-arms secure, careth naught for the town whose protector he is called. Therefore an we would save the man who is dear to us and to England from I know not what fate, from the fate perhaps of John Oxenham, this night must we take by storm the fortress, using the plan of attack, the hour, ay and the word of the night, which he gave us. If it is now less simple a thing, if this Spaniard will surely keep watch and ward to-night, yet there is none to tell him that, offering at his face, we do mean to strike him in the back. If our onslaught be but swift and furious enough we may, G.o.d willing, bring forth in triumph both the treasure and the man whose welfare so outweighs the treasure."

"Amen to that," answered Arden; "but I have a boding spirit. It seems to me that the blessed sun himself hath shrunken, and I would I might wring the neck of yonder yelling bird!... That Englishman, that Francis Sark--he is well guarded?"

"Ralph Walter guards him," said the Admiral, briefly. "There is but the one door--the window is barred and too narrow for the pa.s.sage of a child.... Yea, I grant, as did Mortimer Ferne, his knavery, but now, as nearly as we can sail to the wind of the truth, the man, desiring rest.i.tution and reward, speaks plain honesty."

"He spoke 'plain honesty' after the taking of the _San Jose_," muttered Arden. "Yet we found a hawk where we looked for a wren's nest. Oh, I grant you there were explanations enough to stand between him and the yard-arm, and that Fortune, having turned her wheel in our favor, apparently left her industry and fell asleep! She awakened this morning."

"Wring thine own neck for a bird of ill omen!" began Baldry, to be cut short by the Admiral's grave "Where all's danger, whatever course we shape, who gives a safer chart?" Then, as no one spoke: "To our loss we have found both shoal and reef between us and yonder castle. Think you not that I know, as knew Sir Mortimer Ferne, that we are shown a doubtful channel by a shifty pilot? But beyond is the open sea of all our hopes. Fortune and her wheel, Giles Arden!--nay, rather G.o.d and His hand over the issues of life and death!"

Up in his white fortress that same hour De Guardiola heard in silence the Admiral's message of defiance, then when he and Mexia were again alone frowned thoughtfully over a slip of paper which by devious ways had shortly before reached his hand. With all their vigilance not every hole and crevice could the English stop; Spanish was the town and Spanish the overhanging fortress, and the former was the place of many women and priests. The conquerors strove to secure the place as with a fowler's net, yet now and again a bird of the air fluttered through their meshes. The paper which Don Luiz held ran as follows: "May not a countryman of heretics choose his own king? When Death peers too closely--as was the case upon the galleon _San Jose_--may not a man turn his coat and send Death seeking elsewhere? Death gone by, may not the man be willing (if it be so that he is not well entreated of his new masters) to take again the colors to which on a Corpus Christi day of which you wot he swore fealty? At sunrise this morning the English laid toils for you. I have knowledge to sell. Will you buy my wares with five thousand pesos of silver and the letter to Cartagena which I desired?...

I wrap this in a fig-leaf and drop it from the window to Dolores laughing with the seamen below. If you will buy, then raise above the battery a pennant of red that may be seen from the room with the hidden door in the Friar's House."

"The dog! I thought that he perished with Antonio de Castro!" spoke Mexia.

"That he did not," answered the Governor. "He is so false that were there none else with whom to play the traitor, his right hand would betray his left.... The English called him Francis Sark."

"You'll pay?"

"He shall think I'll pay," said the other. "So they lay their toils!--it needs not this paper to tell me that;" he tapped it as it lay before him. "Somewhat will this Englishman, this Nevil, do to-night. He hath his game in his mind,--his hand on this piece, his eye on that, these p.a.w.ns in reserve, those advanced for action." De Guardiola leaned back in his chair and studied the ceiling. "Ha, Pedro! we must discover what he would do! When I know his dispositions, blessed Mother of G.o.d, what check may I not give him!"

"But if Desmond escapes not," began the duller Mexia, "we may learn not at all, or we may learn too late. Then all's conjecture. They fight like fiends, and day by day we lose. What if they overbear us yet?"

Don Luiz brought his gaze from the ceiling to meet the look of the lesser man. Mexia fidgeted, at last burst forth: "There are times when the devil dwells in your eye and upon your lip! 'Twas so you smiled in the Valdez matter and when that slave girl died! What do you mean?"

"Mean?" answered De Guardiola, still smiling. "I mean, my friend, that we must know what traps they bait down yonder." He called to those who waited without, wrote an order and sent it to the officer in command at the battery. "Up goes one traitor's signal!... Good Pedro, when Fate gives to you your enemy; says, 'Now! Revenge yourself to the uttermost!'--what do you do?"

"Why, I take his life," answered Mexia. "Then shall he trouble me no more."

"Now I," said Don Luiz, "I give him memories of me. Mayhap the dead do not remember. So live my foe! but live in h.e.l.l, remembering the brand upon thy soul and that it was I who set it glowing there!"

"Well, I am thy friend, am I not?" quoth Mexia, comfortably. "I am not Englishman nor Valdez nor Cimmaroon slave, and so I fear not thy smile.

It is twelve of the clock.... Do you think that Desmond knows so much?"

"Not more than one other," answered De Guardiola, and called for a flask of wine.

The day wore on in heat and light, white glare from the hill, and from the sea fierce gleams of blue steel. The coasts loomed, the plain moved in the hot air. Here the plain was arid, and there yellow flowers turned it to a ragged Field of Cloth of Gold. The gaunt cacti stood rigid, and the palms made no motion where they dropped against the blue. In cohorts to and fro went the colored birds; along the sandy sh.o.r.es, rose pink and scarlet and white, crowded the flamingoes. Crept on the noonday stillness; came the slow afternoon, the sun declined, and every hour of that day had been long, long! One would have said that it was the longest day of the year. Throughout it, dominant upon its ascending ground, white, impregnable, and silent as a sepulchre, rose the fortress. Before the fortress, slumberous also, couched the long, low fortification of stone and earthwork commanding in its turn the road through the tunal. In the town below, alcalde and friar waited trembling upon the English Admiral with representations that the quality of mercy is not strained. The slight rills of gold yet hidden in Nueva Cordoba burst forth and began to flow fast and more fast towards the English quarters. From the churches, Dominican and Franciscan, wailed the _miserere_, and the women and children trembled beneath the roofs which at any moment might no longer give them sanctuary. For all the blazing sunshine, the place began to wear a look of doom.

During the day the English dragged Mexia's conquered guns to the edge of the town, and under their cover threw up earthworks and planted their artillery where it might speak with effect. Spanish soldiery appeared before the battery, and, according to the tactics of the time, began to make th.o.r.n.y with abattis, poisoned stakes, and other devices the way of the enemy across the open s.p.a.ce which it guarded. English marksmen picked them off, others took their place; they falling also, one great gun from the fort bellowed defiance. Its echoes ceasing, silence again wrapped the white ascent and all that crowned it. For days now each antagonist had that knowledge of the other that ammunition was the pearl of price only to be fully shown by warrant of circ.u.mstance.

The sun in sinking cast a strange light. It stained the sea, and the air so partook of that glow that town and fortress sprang into red significance. The river also, where swung the dark ships, was ensanguined, as was every ripple upon the sh.o.r.e, where now the birds grew very clamorous. There were no clouds; only the red ball of the sun descending, and a clear field for the stars. The evening wind arose; at last the day died; unheralded by any dusk, on came the night. Color of blood changed to color of gold, gleamed and glistened the sea, sparkled the fire-flies, shone the deep stars; over the marsh flared the will-o'-the-wisp like a torch lit to bad ends.

Nueva Cordoba was held by two-thirds of the English force; now for the Spaniards' greater endangering down from each ship's side came, man by man, wellnigh all of that division which looked to the safety of the fleet. So great was the prize, so intolerable any idea of defeated purpose, that for this night--this night only--the balances could not be evenly held. Precaution lifted from one side added weight to the other, and the borrowing from Peter became of less moment than the paying of Paul. Day by day, north and east and west, watchmen in the tops of the _Mere Honour_, the _Cygnet_, the _Marigold_, and the _Phoenix_ had seen no hostile sail upon the bland and smiling ocean. The river ran in mazes; undulating like a serpent it came from hidden sources, and its heavy borders of tamarind and mangrove sent long shadows out towards midstream. The watchmen looked to the river also; but no greater thing ever appeared than some Indian canoe gliding down from illimitable forests. Now the ships were left maimed for what was meant to be the briefest while. The sick manned them; together with a handful of the unhurt they looked down from the decks and whispered envious farewells to their comrades in the boats below. High above the boats towered the black hulls; the topmasts overlooked sea and land; the bold figureheads, that had drunk the brine of many a storm and looked unmoved upon strange sights, gazed into the darkness with inscrutable, blank eyes.

Silently the boats made landing, swiftly and silently through the darkness two hundred men crossed the little plain, and their leader was Robert Baldry. Out from Nueva Cordoba, stealing through the ruined and depopulated quarter of the town, came a shadowy band, and they from the town and they from the river met at the base of the long, westward slope of the hill. Thence they climbed to the rocky plateau where, the night before, Sir Mortimer Ferne had made pause. Here they halted, while Henry Sedley and ten men went on to the tunal as, the night before, one man had gone. By the signs that Ferne had given them they found the entrance which they sought, and when they had thrust aside the curtain of branch and vine, saw the clearing through the tunal. It lay beneath the stars, a narrow defile much overgrown, walled on either side by impenetrable wood. On went Sedley and his men, cautiously, silently, until they had wellnigh pierced the tunal, that was scarce wider, indeed, than an English copse. Before them, quiet as the tomb, rose the fortress--no sound save their stealthy movement and the stir of the life that was native to the woods, no sign of sentience other than their own. Back they went to the plateau and made report, then with Baldry and half of all the English force waited for the Admiral's attack upon that notable fortification which guarded the known entrance through the tunal.

Rising ground and the bulk of the fortress hid from them the battery; they would hear, not see, John Nevil's onslaught, so now they watched the east for the silver signal of attack. Not long did they watch. Above the waters the firmament became milk white; an argent line appeared, thickened:--one moment of the moon, then tumult, shouting, the blast of a trumpet, the sound of small arms, and the roar of those guns which must be rushed upon and silenced! Noises of bird and beast had the tropic night, all the warfare and the wrangling with which life exacts tribute from life, but now the feud of man with man voiced itself to the stars. So great and stern was the uproar that it seemed as though John Nevil might oversweep with his iron determination that too formidable battery and unaided seize upon the fortress.

No tarrying after the burst of sound and light made Baldry and his men.

Up the steep ground they swept towards that pale, invulnerable castle borne upon the shoulder of the hill, faintly outlined against the pallid east. On they came, a long thin line of men of England to that secret path through the tunal. Devon was there, and Kent and Suss.e.x, and many a goodly shire beside. Men of land-fights and of sea-fights were they, and of old adventures to alien countries, strong of heart and frame, and very fiercely minded towards the fortress of Nueva Cordoba. It withheld from them the gold they wanted, and now within its grasp was a life they valued. To-night their will was set to take the one and rescue the other. They saw the treasure heaped and gleaming, and they saw the face and waved hand of Mortimer Ferne. They heard him laugh and gayly cry his thanks.

They entered the defile. To the right and the left rose the impenetrable wood; before them wound a path th.o.r.n.y and difficult, where not more than three men might go abreast; beyond, was the ma.s.s of the fortress. On through the impeding growth, where pa.s.sage was just possible, rushed Baldry and his men. The way was not long, larger loomed the fortress, louder grew the noise of attack and defence. At last the edge of the tunal was reached, and they in the van, freed from hindrance and delay, sprang forward over open ground, marked here and there by low bushes and some trailing growth, sweeping around the fortress to the rear of the battery, and apparently of a solidity with the universal frame of things.

Suddenly, beneath the footing of the foremost, the earth gave way and a line of men stumbled, and pitched forward into a trench which had been digged, which had been planted with pointed stakes, which had been cunningly covered over by a leafy roof so thin that a child had broken through. Not until towards the sunset of that day had Don Luiz de Guardiola received information which enabled him to lay snares, but since that hour he had worked with frantic haste. Now he knew the moment when his springe would be trodden upon, the number of them who would come stealthily through the tunal to that gin, the nature of Nevil's attack upon the front, what guard had been left in the town, what upon the ships. His information was minute and accurate, and, hawk and serpent, he acted upon it with fierceness and with guile.

The onward rush of the English had been impetuous. They in the rear of the first upon that frail bridge, unable to stay their steps, plunged also into the trench; those who were latest to clear the tunal surged forward in consternation and confusion. Suddenly, from a low earthwork hastily raised in the shadow of the fortress wall, and masked by bushes, burst a withering fire of chain-shot from cannon and culverin, of slighter missiles from falcon and b.a.s.t.a.r.d and saker, caliver and harquebus. The trench, dug in a half-circle, either end touching the tunal, made with the s.p.a.ce it enclosed, and which was now crowded by the English, an iron trap, into which with thunder and flame the Spanish ordnance was pouring death.

VII

They who saw the full promise of the night in one instant of time dashed from their lips and lost in desert sands struggled fiercely with their fate. Baldry's great figure at their head, Baldry's great voice shouting encouragement, they strove to pa.s.s the trench, to rush upon and overwhelm the masked batteries, the hidden marksmen. An effectual _chevaux-de-frise_, the pointed stakes withstood them, tore them, and threw them back. Effort upon effort, a wild crossing over the interlaced bodies of the fallen, a forward rush upon the guns, a loud "'Ware the vines!" from Baldry--another and a wider ditch, irregular and shallow, but lined with thorns like stilettos, and strung from side to side with lianas strong as ropes to entangle, to bring p.r.o.ne upon the thorns the desperate men who strove in the snare. A small band won to the farther side, but the shot was as a blast of winter among sere leaves, and terribly thinned their ranks. All was vain, all hopeless; to advance, destruction, to tarry in that arena amidst the deadly thunder of the guns, no less a thing.

"Back, back!" shouted Baldry. "Back through the tunal--back to the Admiral at the main battery! Here all's lost!"

Above the din rose his voice. Back to the one door of safety surged the English, but the way was narrow from that pit into which they had been betrayed. The guns yet spoke; men dropped with an answering groan or with a wild cry to their comrades not to leave them behind in that fatal trench, upon Death's harvest-field. How in the murk and rain of death could the whole gather the maimed, know the living from the dead? Barely might the uninjured save themselves, give support perhaps to some hurt and staggering comrade. Happy were the dead, for the fallen whose wounds were not mortal, perhaps the fate of the men of the _Minion_! Of the company which had come with Robert Baldry through the tunal to take by surprise the fortress of Nueva Cordoba hardly a third found again its shelter, turned drawn faces to the sea, rushed from that death-trap, through the bitter and fatal wood, towards hillside and plain, and the Admiral's attack upon that fortification which with all their force they had twice endeavored to storm and found impregnable.

Baldry himself? Surely he was among them!--in that shadowy pa.s.s was not this his great form--or this--or this?

"Baldry! Robert Baldry!" cried Sedley, and there came no answer. High and shrill as a woman's wail rang again the young man's voice. "Captain Robert Baldry!"

"He's not here, sir," said a Devon man, softly. "G.o.d rest his soul!"