For God and Gold

by Julian Stafford Corbett

Between Frank and me lay a Spanish soldier fast bound. Our two Cimaroon guides had captured him on our march from the grove where we had lain hid all the afternoon. From him we had gathered intelligence which confirmed all that our espial had told us. Before this Frank had been loath to believe our good luck, thinking so strange a chance savoured of a trap to undo us. But this soldier, as soon as he learned who our captain was, was so overjoyed at knowing he would be softly dealt with that he gave us full knowledge of how to proceed, which he was the better able to do seeing that he himself was one of those hired to guard the Treasurer. All this, he swore, was honest truth, as he was a gentleman soldier. He seemed to wish nothing so much as our success, which we better could understand when he craved in return for his intelligence that our captain would not only save him from the Cimaroons, but also deal with him as he had with others in like place, giving him sufficient of the plunder to keep him and his mistress. He courteously promised in addition to make our names famous throughout all Spain and the Indies if we did this; but I think Frank was not very earnest to have his trumpet blown by such false lips. And I noted that as we lay there he had his dagger ready to curb any desire our prisoner might have to alarm his master when he approached.

It seemed hours that we lay there in the dim starlight. The tall grass about us hid everything from us but the white shirts of our comrades. We heard nothing but the drawing of our own breath, the beating of our own hearts, howsoever hard we strained our ears for a sound of the recuas. In truth, it could not have been past an hour before a puff of wind from the northward stirred the grass above us, and with it came the distant tinkle of bells.

It was but a recua from Venta Cruz, we knew, all of which we had resolved to let pass as only carrying merchandise for the city and Peru. Yet it made my heart beat faster for a while, till the breeze died again; and even as it ceased came another tinkle from the direction of the city. Every man moved to listen better, making the grass rustle, and Frank held up his hand to quiet them. The tinkling died away again as the recua passed down to some hollow, where the sound of its bells was drowned to us.

Night is day on this the most notable highway in the world, as I have shown, and great and rich is the traffic either way in the cool hours between sunset and dawn, when the Plate Fleet is lying in Nombre de Dios, and all the Spanish Main is stirring with the life, and hopes, and fears it brings.

It was natural, then, to hear on the round stones with which years ago Pizarro had paved the way the clatter of a horse's feet coming up from Venta Cruz, and mingling with the rise and fall of the distant tinkling. As the sound drew near, Pedro, who had been lying with his head pressed against the ground, crawled towards us like a snake.

'It is a cabalero,' whispered he.

'How do you know that?' says Frank.

'I can hear he has a page-boy running at his stirrup,' answered the Cimaroon, whose ears seemed to turn to eyes in the dark. 'It is easy to hear on the hard road. Listen!'

'Well, whatever he be, let him pass,' said Frank, for so we had determined. Yet very gladly, I think, would Pedro have made a dash at the gentleman's throat.

On came the horse at a gentle trot till, when he came about opposite Mr. Oxenham's party, we heard a plunging, as though he had taken fright at something, and immediately after he dashed past us at a false gallop on the way to the city.