“He is dead, and his men await succor on that lonely coast where you left them,” was Master Francis Sark’s somewhat singular reply.  “There is left in the fortress of Nueva Cordoba a single company of soldiers; the battery at the river’s mouth hath another.  Luiz de Guardiola commands the citadel, and he is a strong man, but Pedro Mexia at the Bocca is so easy-going that his sentinels nod their nights away.  In the port ride two caravels—­eighty tons, no more—­and their greatest gun a demi-cannon.  The town is a cowardly place of priests, women, and rich men, but it holds every peso of this year’s treasure gathered against the coming of the plate-fleet.  There is much silver with pearls from Margarita, and crescents of gold from Guiana, and it all lies in a house of white stone on the north side of the square.  Mayhap De Guardiola up in the fortress watches, but all else, from Mexia to the last muleteer, think themselves as safe as in the lap of the Blessed Virgin.  The plate-fleet stays at Cartagena, because of the illness of its Admiral, Don Juan de Maeda y Espinosa....  I show you, sirs, a bird’s nest worth the robbing.”

“You are a galley-slave the most circumstantial I have ever met,” said Ferne.  “If there are nets about this tree, I will wring your neck for the false songster that you are.”

“You shall go with us bird’s-nesting,” said the Admiral.

“That falls in with my humor,” Master Sark made answer.  “For, look you, there are such things as a heavy score and an ancient grudge, to say nothing of true service to a true Queen.”

“Then,” quoth the other, “you shall feed fat your grudge.  But if what you have told me is leasing and not truth, I will hang you from the yard-arm of my ship!”

“It is God’s truth,” swore the other.

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.

V

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.  He looked down into the moat well stocked with crocodiles, great fish his mercenaries, paid with flesh, and he looked at the tunal which ringed the moat as the moat ringed the squat white fortress.  A deadly girdle was the tunal, of cactus and other thorny things, thick, wide, dark, and impenetrable, a forest of stilettoes, and for its kings the rattlesnake and viper.  Nor naked Indian nor mailed white man might traverse