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Ferdinand resolved also to lay siege to Loxa, or Loja, a city of great strength at no great distance from Alhama, and all-important to its protection. It was, in fact, a military point situated in a pass of the mountains between the kingdoms of Granada and Castile, and commanded a main entrance to the Vega. The Xenil flowed by its walls, and it had a strong castle or citadel built on a rock.
Having reached the top of the mountain on Thursday, they beheld a great plain beyond of wonderful beauty, being eighty leagues long, and between twenty and thirty leagues wide. This appeared one of the finest plains in the world, so green and delightful that the Spaniards thought it a terrestrial paradise, on which account the admiral named it Vega Real, or the Royal Plain.
I shall lie there some day, wherever I may die, and I have assigned you a place beside me. Promise me, Wilhelm, that you will accept it. Promise me that you, in your turn, will make the necessary arrangements for your remains to be brought at last to our vega. I do not know if I may ever belong to you as your wife in my lifetime, but in death I want to have you forever at my side.
"No, matter," said he suddenly; "Nordenskiold must be found, and with him Patrick O'Donoghan. They shall be, or it will not be my fault." Erik's plan was a very simple one. He proposed to write an anonymous letter to the leading newspapers of Stockholm, and thus proclaim his fears as to the fate of the "Vega."
'Twas just such a hot broth of a day as this has been. And I'd call at him 'Hey, monseer! and he'd look at me black, with the damp showin' through his shirt in places. "'Fat, strong mans, says I to General De Vega, 'is needed in New Orleans. Yes. To carry on the good work. Carrambos! Erin go bragh!" Breakfast in Coralio was at eleven. Therefore the people did not go to market early.
He offered with hearty goodwill to take them on board the "Vega" by the path which had been cut in the ice in order to keep open the means of communication between the vessel and the land, and a rope attached to stones served as a guide on dark nights. As they walked, he related to them their adventures since they had been unable to send home any dispatches.
Now the young doctor of the "Vega" had told them, as had the proprietor of the Red Anchor, in Brooklyn, that laziness was one of the distinguishing characteristics of Patrick O'Donoghan. It therefore seemed to them very improbable that he would be resigned to follow such a laborious and unremunerative life.
His orders did not stop here, if we are to receive the accounts of Garcilasso de la Vega, himself of the Inca race, and by his mother's side nephew of the great Huayna Capac. According to this authority, Atahuallpa invited the Inca nobles throughout the country to assemble at Cuzco in order to deliberate on the best means of partitioning the empire between him and his brother.
The alarm-bell on the Terre de la Campana, or watch-tower of the Alhambra, keeps up a clangor from morn till night; and happy is the damsel that can ring that bell; it is a charm to secure a husband in the course of the year. The sound, which can be heard over the whole Vega, and to the top of the mountains, summons the peasantry to the festivities.
Beside us and before us the silver cup of the Sierra Nevada, which held the city in its tiled hollow, poured it out over the immeasurable Vega washed with moonshine which brightened and darkened its spread in a thousand radiances and obscurities of windows and walls and roofs and trees and lurking gardens.
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