The Cross stands upright in the southern sky.It is the middle of the night.Cary and Yeo glide silently up the hill and into the camp, and whisper to Amyas that they have done the deed.The sleepers are awakened, and the train sets forth.
Upward and southward ever: but whither, who can tell? They hardly think of the whither; but go like sleep-walkers, shaken out of one land of dreams, only to find themselves in another and stranger one.All around is fantastic and unearthly; now each man starts as he sees the figures of his fellows, clothed from head to foot in golden filigree; looks up, and sees the yellow moonlight through the fronds of the huge tree-ferns overhead, as through a cloud of glittering lace.Now they are hewing their way through a thicket of enormous flags; now through bamboos forty feet high; now they are stumbling over boulders, waist-deep in cushions of club-moss;now they are struggling through shrubberies of heaths and rhododendrons, and woolly incense-trees, where every leaf, as they brush past, dashes some fresh scent into their faces, and "The winds, with musky wing, About the cedarn alleys fling Nard and cassia's balmy smells."Now they open upon some craggy brow, from whence they can see far below an ocean of soft cloud, whose silver billows, girdled by the mountain sides, hide the lowland from their sight.
And from beneath the cloud strange voices rise; the screams of thousand night-birds, and wild howls, which they used at first to fancy were the cries of ravenous beasts, till they found them to proceed from nothing fiercer than an ape.But what is that deeper note, like a series of muffled explosions,--arquebuses fired within some subterranean cavern,--the heavy pulse of which rolls up through the depths of the unseen forest? They hear it now for the first time, but they will hear it many a time again; and the Indian lad is hushed, and cowers close to them, and then takes heart, as he looks upon their swords and arquebuses; for that is the roar of the jaguar, "seeking his meat from God."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?
