"Oh, laird of Preston," exclaimed Florence, in a voice to which emotion lent a chord that was soft and musical; "even in this hour of terror hear me. I fight only for Madeline, and for the love I bear her—a love beyond the grave—see that she is in safety."
"Thanks, my ancient enemy—may Heaven nerve your eye and hand!"
Florence fired again, and while the deep vaults and the rocky glen rang with a thousand echoes, a Spaniard fell, and was seen tossing his arms in the moonlight, as he shrieked on "the Holy of Holies" (el Santo de los Santos) to have pity upon him. On beholding the slaughter of his men, Gamboa uttered a dreadful oath in Spanish.
"Let us smoke forth these Scots!" he exclaimed.
"How, smoke them say you?" asked an Englishman, who proved to be no other than Master Patten, the future historian of the expedition, who rode up at that moment.
"Exactly," rejoined the Spaniard, who spoke the English language with great fluency: "many a brood of yellow Indians I have smoked out of their holes in Hispaniola and Tortuga. You know nothing of life in Cuba—but I do. There I have often roasted thirteen Indian devils alive on a Good Friday, in honour of our blessed Lord and the twelve Apostles. God smite ye, fellows! cut brushwood—bring fire—fill the cavern-mouth, and burn them as we would castanos in their shells."
This proposition, which made the blood of Florence run cold, was received with a loud hurrah, and relinquishing their arquebuses, the Spaniards drew their short swords, and together with the English billmen, proceeded to form piles and bundles of wood, by uprooting shrubs and bushes—cutting down small trees, and tearing branches from firs and beeches; and now, from the ruins of the old castle above (a place where they were secure from the arquebuse of Florence), they began to throw down vast heaps of this hastily-gathered fuel, together with an entire stack of straw, which they found near; and as these combustibles accumulated about the cavern-mouth, and gradually covered it up, excluding the moonlight and the external air, the imminence of their danger could no longer be concealed from the countess and the vicar; and to save them at least from so horrible a death, Florence proposed that a capitulation should be asked for.
"To capitulate is to be destroyed!" exclaimed Hamilton fiercely; "what hope of quarter have we from mercenaries like these?"
"To remain here is also to be destroyed, and by a death too dreadful for contemplation—suffocation in a dark pit," replied Florence, pressing Madeline to his breast closely and tenderly.
"Bring hither a lighted match; but, by the Holy of Holies," they heard the superstitious Don Pedro exclaiming; "I am loath to smother a woman at the close of a day of victory—a woman whose name may be Mary, too!"