Nueva Cordoba was held by two-thirds of the English force; now for the Spaniards’ greater endangering down from each ship’s side came, man by man, wellnigh all of that division which looked to the safety of the fleet.  So great was the prize, so intolerable any idea of defeated purpose, that for this night—­this night only—­the balances could not be evenly held.  Precaution lifted from one side added weight to the other, and the borrowing from Peter became of less moment than the paying of Paul.  Day by day, north and east and west, watchmen in the tops of the Mere Honour, the Cygnet, the Marigold, and the Phoenix had seen no hostile sail upon the bland and smiling ocean.  The river ran in mazes; undulating like a serpent it came from hidden sources, and its heavy borders of tamarind and mangrove sent long shadows out towards midstream.  The watchmen looked to the river also; but no greater thing ever appeared than some Indian canoe gliding down from illimitable forests.  Now the ships were left maimed for what was meant to be the briefest while.  The sick manned them; together with a handful of the unhurt they looked down from the decks and whispered envious farewells to their comrades in the boats below.  High above the boats towered the black hulls; the topmasts overlooked sea and land; the bold figureheads, that had drunk the brine of many a storm and looked unmoved upon strange sights, gazed into the darkness with inscrutable, blank eyes.

Silently the boats made landing, swiftly and silently through the darkness two hundred men crossed the little plain, and their leader was Robert Baldry.  Out from Nueva Cordoba, stealing through the ruined and depopulated quarter of the town, came a shadowy band, and they from the town and they from the river met at the base of the long, westward slope of the hill.  Thence they climbed to the rocky plateau where, the night before, Sir Mortimer Ferne had made pause.  Here they halted, while Henry Sedley and ten men went on to the tunal as, the night before, one man had gone.  By the signs that Ferne had given them they found the entrance which they sought, and when they had thrust aside the curtain of branch and vine, saw the clearing through the tunal.  It lay beneath the stars, a narrow defile much overgrown, walled on either side by impenetrable wood.  On went Sedley and his men, cautiously, silently, until they had wellnigh pierced the tunal, that was scarce wider, indeed, than an English copse.  Before them, quiet as the tomb, rose the fortress—­no sound save their stealthy movement and the stir of the life that was native to the woods, no sign of sentience other than their own.  Back they went to the plateau and made report, then with Baldry and half of all the English force waited for the Admiral’s attack upon that notable fortification which guarded the known entrance through the tunal.