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 com