Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth, - [e books for reading .TXT] 📗
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But what is that glare away to the northward? The yellow moon is ringed with gay rainbows; but that light is far too red to be the reflection of any beams of hers. Now through the cloud rises a column of black and lurid smoke; the fog clears away right and left around it, and shows beneath, a mighty fire.
The men look at each other with questioning eyes, each half suspecting, and yet not daring to confess their own suspicions; and Amyas whispers to Yeo—
“You took care to flood the powder?”
“Ay, ay, sir, and to unload the ordnance too. No use in making a noise to tell the Spaniards our whereabouts.”
Yes; that glare rises from the good ship Rose. Amyas, like Cortez of old, has burnt his ship, and retreat is now impossible. Forward into the unknown abyss of the New World, and God be with them as they go!
The Indian knows a cunning path: it winds along the highest ridges of the mountains; but the travelling is far more open and easy.
They have passed the head of a valley which leads down to St. Jago. Beneath that long shining river of mist, which ends at the foot of the great Silla, lies (so says the Indian lad) the rich capital of Venezuela; and beyond, the gold-mines of Los Teques and Baruta, which first attracted the founder Diego de Losada; and many a longing eye is turned towards it as they pass the saddle at the valley head; but the attempt is hopeless, they turn again to the left, and so down towards the rancho, taking care (so the prudent Amyas had commanded) to break down, after crossing, the frail rope bridge which spans each torrent and ravine.
They are at the rancho long before daybreak, and have secured there, not only fourteen mules, but eight or nine Indians stolen from off the Llanos, like their guide, who are glad enough to escape from their tyrants by taking service with them. And now southward and away, with lightened shoulders and hearts; for they are all but safe from pursuit. The broken bridges prevent the news of their raid reaching St. Jago until nightfall; and in the meanwhile, Don Guzman returns to the river mouth the next day to find the ship a blackened wreck, and the camp empty; follows their trail over the hills till he is stopped by a broken bridge; surmounts that difficulty, and meets a second; his men are worn out with heat, and a little afraid of stumbling on the heretic desperadoes, and he returns by land to St. Jago; and when he arrives there, has news from home which gives him other things to think of than following those mad Englishmen, who have vanished into the wilderness. “What need, after all, to follow them?” asked the Spaniards of each other. “Blinded by the devil, whom they serve, they rush on in search of certain death, as many a larger company has before them, and they will find it, and will trouble La Guayra no more forever.” “Lutheran dogs and enemies of God,” said Don Guzman to his soldiers, “they will leave their bones to whiten on the Llanos, as may every heretic who sets foot on Spanish soil!”
Will they do so, Don Guzman? Or wilt thou and Amyas meet again upon a mightier battlefield, to learn a lesson which neither of you yet has learned?
CHAPTER XXII THE INQUISITION IN THE INDIES
My next chapter is perhaps too sad; it shall be at least as short as I can make it; but it was needful to be written, that readers may judge fairly for themselves what sort of enemies the English nation had to face in those stern days.
Three weeks have passed, and the scene is shifted to a long, low range of cells in a dark corridor in the city of Cartagena. The door of one is open; and within stand two cloaked figures, one of whom we know. It is Eustace Leigh. The other is a familiar of the Holy Office.
He holds in his hand a lamp, from which the light falls on a bed of straw, and on the sleeping figure of a man. The high white brow, the pale and delicate features—them too we know, for they are those of Frank. Saved half-dead from the fury of the savage negroes, he has been reserved for the more delicate cruelty of civilized and Christian men. He underwent the question but this afternoon; and now Eustace, his betrayer, is come to persuade him—or to entrap him? Eustace himself hardly knows whether of the two.
And yet he would give his life to save his cousin.
His life? He has long since ceased to care for that. He has done what he has done, because it is his duty; and now he is to do his duty once more, and wake the sleeper, and argue, coax, threaten him into recantation while “his heart is still tender from the torture,” so Eustace's employers phrase it.
And yet how calmly he is sleeping! Is it but a freak of the lamplight, or is there a smile upon his lips? Eustace takes the lamp and bends over him to see; and as he bends he hears Frank whispering in his dreams his mother's name, and a name higher and holier still.
Eustace cannot find the heart to wake him.
“Let him rest,” whispers he to his companion. “After all, I fear my words will be of little use.”
“I fear so too, sir. Never did I behold a more obdurate heretic. He did not scruple to scoff openly at their holinesses.”
“Ah!” said Eustace; “great is the pravity of the human heart, and the power of Satan! Let us go for the present.”
“Where is she?”
“The elder sorceress, or the younger?”
“The younger—the—”
“The Senora de Soto? Ah, poor thing! One could be sorry for her, were she not a heretic.” And the man eyed Eustace keenly, and then quietly added, “She is at present with the notary; to the benefit of her soul, I trust—”
Eustace half stopped, shuddering. He could hardly collect himself enough to gasp out an “Amen!”
“Within there,” said the man, pointing carelessly to a door as they went down the corridor. “We can listen a moment, if you like; but don't betray me, senor.”
Eustace knows well enough that the fellow is probably on the watch to betray him, if he shows any signs of compunction; at least to report faithfully to his superiors the slightest expression of sympathy with a heretic; but a horrible curiosity prevails over fear, and he pauses close to the fatal door. His face is all of a flame, his knees knock together, his ears are ringing, his heart bursting through his
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