"And you left Donna Mercedes a prisoner?" interrupted de Tobar, who had been consumed with anxiety even greater than that of the Viceroy.
"Alas, 'tis so."
"How can that be when you are free, señor?"
"Let me question my own officer, de Tobar," resumed the Viceroy peremptorily, "and silence, all, else we learn nothing. Now, Alvarado. What is this strange tale of thine?"
"My lord, after we left you yesterday morning we made the passage safely down the mountain. Toward evening as we approached La Guayra, just before the point where the road turns into the strand, we were set upon by men in ambush. The soldiers and attendants were without exception slain. Although I fought and beat down one or two of our assailants, they struck me to the earth and took me alive. The two ladies and I alone escaped. No indignity was offered them. I was bound and we were led along the road to a camp. There appeared to be some three hundred and fifty men under the leadership of a man who claimed to be Sir Henry Morgan, sometime pirate and robber, later Vice-Governor of Jamaica, now, as I gathered, in rebellion against his king and in arms against us. They captured the plate galleon with lading from Porto Bello and Peru, and were wrecked on this coast to the westward of La Guayra. They had determined upon the capture of that town, whence they expected to move on Caracas."
"And Mercedes?" again interrupted the impetuous and impassioned de Tobar.
"Let him tell his tale!" commanded the Viceroy, sternly. "It behooves us, gentlemen, to think first of the cities of our King."
"They had captured a band of holy nuns and priests. These were forced, especially the women, by threats you can imagine, to plant scaling ladders against the walls, and, although the troops made a brave defense, the buccaneers mastered them. They carried the place by storm and sacked it. When I left it was burning in several places and turned into a hell."
"My God!" ejaculated the old man, amid the cries and oaths of his fierce, infuriated men. "And now tell me about Mercedes."
"Morgan—who met her, you remember, when we stopped at Jamaica on our return from Madrid?"