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 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.  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, nobly dying, will not ennoble.”

“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 God 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 passionately.  “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—­”

[Illustration:  “‘DO YOU PURPOSE, THEN, THAT HE SHALL DIE?’ DEMANDED BALDRY”]