Another moment, and she had leaped into the abyss. They watched her dark and slender limbs, twined closely round the old man’s corpse, turn over, and over, and over, till a crush among the leaves, and a scream among the birds, told that she had reached the trees; and the green roof hid her from their view.
“Brave lass!” shouted a sailor.
“The Lord forgive her!” said Yeo. “But, your worship, we must have these rascals’ ordnance.”
“And their clothes, too, Yeo, if we wish to get down the Magdalena unchallenged. Now listen, my masters all! We have won, by God’s good grace, gold enough to serve us the rest of our lives, and that without losing a single man; and may yet win more, if we be wise, and He thinks good. But oh, my friends, do not make God’s gift our ruin, by faithlessness, or greediness, or any mutinous haste.”
“You shall find none in us!” cried several men. “We know your worship. We can trust our general.”
“Thank God!” said Amyas. “Now then, it will be no shame or sin to make the Indians carry it, saving the women, whom God forbid we should burden. But we must pass through the very heart of the Spanish settlements, and by the town of Saint Martha itself. So the clothes and weapons of these Spaniards we must have, let it cost us what labor it may. How many lie in the road?”
“Thirteen here, and about ten up above,” said Cary.[191-9]
“Then there are near twenty missing. Who will volunteer to go down over the cliff, and bring up the spoil of them?”
“I, and I, and I”; and a dozen stepped out, as they did always when Amyas wanted anything done; for the simple reason, that they knew that he meant to help at the doing of it himself.
“Very well, then, follow me. Sir John,[192-10] take the Indian lad for your interpreter, and try and comfort the souls of these poor heathens. Tell them that they shall all be free.”