ts below. High above the boats towered the
black hulls; the topmasts overlooked sea and land; the bold figureheads,
that had drunk the brine of many a storm and looked unmoved upon strange
sights, gazed into the darkness with inscrutable, blank eyes.

Silently the boats made landing, swiftly and silently through the
darkness two hundred men crossed the little plain, and their leader was
Robert Baldry. Out from Nueva Cordoba, stealing through the ruined and
depopulated quarter of the town, came a shadowy band, and they from the
town and they from the river met at the base of the long, westward slope
of the hill. Thence they climbed to the rocky plateau where, the night
before, Sir Mortimer Ferne had made pause. Here they halted, while Henry
Sedley and ten men went on to the tunal as, the night before, one man
had gone. By the signs that Ferne had given them they found the entrance
which they sought, and when they had thrust aside the curtain of branch
and vine, saw the clearing through the tunal. It lay beneath the stars,
a narrow defile much overgrown, walled on either side by impenetrable
wood. On went Sedley and his men, cautiously, silently, until they had
wellnigh pierced the tunal, that was scarce wider, indeed, than an
English copse. Before them, quiet as the tomb, rose the fortress--no
sound save their stealthy movement and the stir of the life that was
native to the woods, no sign of sentience other than their own. Back
they went to the plateau and made report, then with Baldry and half of
all the English force waited for the Admiral's attack upon that notable
fortification which guarded the known entrance through the tunal.

Rising ground and the bulk of the fortress hid from them the battery;
they would hear, not see, John Nevil's onslaught, so now they watched
the east for the silver signal of attack. Not long did they watch. Above
the waters the firmament became milk white; an argent line appeared,
thickened:--one moment of the moon, then tumult, shouting, the blast of
a trumpet, the sound of small arms, and the roar of those guns which
must be rushed upon and silenced! Noises of bird and beast had the
tropic night, all the warfare and the wrangling with which life exacts
tribute from life, but now the feud of man with man voiced itself to the
stars. So great and stern was the uproar that it seemed as though John
Nevil might oversweep with his iron determination that too formidable
battery and unaided seize