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Updated: May 17, 2025
Like a shaken carpet the plain rose and fell; a mirage lifted the coasts of distant islands, piling them above the horizon into castles and fortifications baseless as a dream. The sun dipped; up from the east rushed the night. The tunal grew a dark smudge, drawn by a wizard forefinger around De Guardiola, his men-at-arms, the silver bars and the gold crescents from Guiana.
Erelong, Don Luiz de Guardiola sent to inform Sir John Nevil that he had for his prisoner one of the latter's captains. It appeared to the Governor of Nueva Cordoba that the English held the man in some esteem, perchance even that he was their leader's close friend.
I've wondered more than once if he lived or died; if he beat out his brains as he strove to do; if, thinking better o't, he merely held his tongue and nursed his broken body; or if he cried aloud that which the old serpent De Guardiola made him believe, and henceforth travelled life's highway a lazar!... And that's a curious thought: leper to himself leper to his world leper's cry leper's mantle, with the cloth across his face and beneath it, all cleanliness, with not a soul but God to know it!"
Mexia, undisturbed, genial with his wine, and of a retrospective turn of mind, went smoothly, even dreamily on with his episode of a four-years-past struggle. He had scarcely noticed the slip of the tongue by which he had included himself with Luiz de Guardiola and his ministers. "Well.... He lay there indeed, and called upon God; and now and then he cried to men and women we knew not of.
But Mortimer Ferne sat at ease, a smile upon his beautiful mouth, and his hand, palm uppermost, upon the board. Opposite him Don Luiz de Guardiola also smiled, and if that widening of the lips was somewhat tigerish, why, if all accounts were true, the man himself was of that quality, as cruel, stealthy, and remorseless as any jaguar in those deep woods behind his castle.
Were these they this dwindled band staggering, leaping down from the heights, led by Henry Sedley, gray, exhausted, speaking in whispers or in strained, high voices? No time was there for explanation, bewildered conjecture, tragic apprehension. Scarcely had the three parties joined, when hard upon their heels came De Guardiola and all his men-at-arms.
I, Luiz de Guardiola, lying at your feet, looked up and saw it blaze above me like an evil star!" His hand fell heavily upon the table. "The star may fall, Englishman!" "The helm that bore the star may decline to earth," answered Ferne. "The star is fixed beyond thy snatching, Spaniard!" Thrust in Mexia, leaving El Dorado for the present less gilded plight of the Spanish: "Fifty thousand ducats!
Thus it was that, having, like all English adventurers upon Spanish seas, to trust to strange guides, the Mere Honour, the Cygnet, the Marigold, and the Phoenix shaped their course for the mainland and Nueva Cordoba, where were bars of silver, pearls, and gold crescents, and up in the castle that fierce hawk De Guardiola, who cared little for the town that was young and weak, but much for gold, the fortress, and his own grim will and pleasure.
"To Don Luiz de Guardiola," said the man beneath the tree. "Pardon, señor, but Juan de Mendez is at present Governor of Nueva Cordoba. Don Luiz de Guardiola has been transferred to Panama." The Englishman arose and looked out to sea, his hand above his eyes because of the flash and sparkle of the sun upon the water.
But when he saw that De Guardiola was in the room, he fell silent like that! "'Tell me this and this and this, says Don Luiz at his side. 'Then shall you go free. You are your Admiral's dearest friend; you are high in the English council. Even before you became my prisoner was there not a general attack planned for to-night? Tell me its nature and the hour. What force will be left upon the ships?
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