e who
waited without, wrote an order and sent it to the officer in command at
the battery. "Up goes one traitor's signal!... Good Pedro, when Fate
gives to you your enemy; says, 'Now! Revenge yourself to the
uttermost!'--what do you do?"

"Why, I take his life," answered Mexia. "Then shall he trouble me no
more."

"Now I," said Don Luiz, "I give him memories of me. Mayhap the dead do
not remember. So live my foe! but live in hell, remembering the brand
upon thy soul and that it was I who set it glowing there!"

"Well, I am thy friend, am I not?" quoth Mexia, comfortably. "I am not
Englishman nor Valdez nor Cimmaroon slave, and so I fear not thy smile.
It is twelve of the clock.... Do you think that Desmond knows so much?"

"Not more than one other," answered De Guardiola, and called for a flask
of wine.

The day wore on in heat and light, white glare from the hill, and from
the sea fierce gleams of blue steel. The coasts loomed, the plain moved
in the hot air. Here the plain was arid, and there yellow flowers turned
it to a ragged Field of Cloth of Gold. The gaunt cacti stood rigid, and
the palms made no motion where they dropped against the blue. In cohorts
to and fro went the colored birds; along the sandy shores, rose pink and
scarlet and white, crowded the flamingoes. Crept on the noonday
stillness; came the slow afternoon, the sun declined, and every hour of
that day had been long, long! One would have said that it was the
longest day of the year. Throughout it, dominant upon its ascending
ground, white, impregnable, and silent as a sepulchre, rose the
fortress. Before the fortress, slumberous also, couched the long, low
fortification of stone and earthwork commanding in its turn the road
through the tunal. In the town below, alcalde and friar waited trembling
upon the English Admiral with representations that the quality of mercy
is not strained. The slight rills of gold yet hidden in Nueva Cordoba
burst forth and began to flow fast and more fast towards the English
quarters. From the churches, Dominican and Franciscan, wailed the
_miserere_, and the women and children trembled beneath the roofs which
at any moment might no longer give them sanctuary. For all the blazing
sunshine, the place began to wear a look of doom.

During the day the English dragged Mexia's conquered guns to the edge of
the town, and under their cover threw up earthworks and planted their
artillery where it might speak with effect. Sp