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"There was one Don Luiz de Guardiola.... Oh, I will tell you what you wish to know, señors! Be not so impatient. It was without the room where lay his prisoner that he gathered from Desmond news indeed; and it was from that room that he sent Desmond away, and wrote very swiftly order after order to his lieutenants.
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 José, leaving her safe anchored 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.
Luiz De Guardiola, magnificent Castilian, proud as Lucifer, still as the water above the reef offshore, and cruel as the black fangs beneath that serenity, looked over the wall of the fortress of Nueva Cordoba.
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.
That is a prickly word!" swore Baldry. "Why do you smile, señor?" demanded De Guardiola of the gentleman opposite him, this being Sir Mortimer Ferne. "Did I smile, señor? I but chanced to think of a hound of mine who once was king of the pack, but now grows old." The Englishman shrugged. "True he thinks himself yet the fleetest and the strongest, but the younger dogs outstrip him.
The notes gathered every memory of the past few days and pressed them upon him in one cup of chagrin. The caravels were gone, the battery at the Bocca gone, the town surrendered to these English dogs who now daily bared their teeth to the fortress itself. De Guardiola admitted the menace, knew from experience in the Low Countries that this breed of the North sprang strongly, held firmly.
Then in Ultima Thule he should not escape me.... I bent the mariners and soldiers of the Sea Wraith to my will. I promised them gold; I promised them joyous life and an easy task I know not what I promised them, for my heart was a hot coal within my breast, and there seemed no desirable thing under the sun other than a shortened sword and my hand upon the throat of Don Luiz de Guardiola.
The great bay steed which bore Sir Mortimer Ferne reared, screamed, then fell, hurling its rider to earth, where he lay, senseless, stark in black armor, with a knot of rose-colored velvet in his crest. No hawk like De Guardiola was Pedro Mexia, but when luck pinioned his prey his talons were strong to close upon it.
Quoth the English: "What has 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 final whisper from Drake: "In no way toucheth your honor, a private matter favors ransom " The governor, leaning forward, playing with his wine, gave some sign of acquiescence perhaps, indeed, may have had his own indifferences to any blackening of the character of Don Luiz de Guardiola, now nourishing at Madrid like a green bay-tree.
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