They stopped to look at one another. In silks and satins and plumes they were, with their jeweled swords at their sides. And before them the stronghold, with the ragged, dirty pirates there ready to give battle.
“If Señor Zorro were only here to lead us!” Don Audre Ruiz said, with a sigh. “But he is not—and let us remember why he is not—and strike the harder because of our remembrance! If you are ready—”
He whipped out his gleaming blade and waved it above his head, and the caballeros drew blades in turn, and answered him with their cheers.
And so they advanced to the attack—slowly, carefully, in a perfect line. And Don Audre Ruiz, because he wanted to give himself and the others added courage, and because he felt that it was fitting, sang lustily a song of old:
“Singing caballeros, going forth to die!
Laughing in the face of grinning Death!
Facing task that’s hopeless, ready yet to try!
Singing with the last of earthly breath!”
The caballeros took up the refrain and sang it through to the end, their voices ringing across the sea and the land. And, the song at an end, they were grim and silent again, intent upon the bloody business before them. The pirates were preparing, they could see. In a very few minutes the clash would come.
And suddenly, from the distance, from the slope between the two attacking forces, came a solitary voice, also raised in song: