manded) 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-