Sir Mortimer: A Novel

by Mary Johnston

The day wore on in heat and light, white glare from the hill, and from the sea fierce gleams of blue steel. The coasts loomed, the plain moved in the hot air. Here the plain was arid, and there yellow flowers turned it to a ragged Field of Cloth of Gold. The gaunt cacti stood rigid, and the palms made no motion where they dropped against the blue. In cohorts to and fro went the colored birds; along the sandy shores, rose pink and scarlet and white, crowded the flamingoes. Crept on the noonday stillness; came the slow afternoon, the sun declined, and every hour of that day had been long, long! One would have said that it was the longest day of the year. Throughout it, dominant upon its ascending ground, white, impregnable, and silent as a sepulchre, rose the fortress. Before the fortress, slumberous also, couched the long, low fortification of stone and earthwork commanding in its turn the road through the tunal. In the town below, alcalde and friar waited trembling upon the English Admiral with representations that the quality of mercy is not strained. The slight rills of gold yet hidden in Nueva Cordoba burst forth and began to flow fast and more fast towards the English quarters. From the churches, Dominican and Franciscan, wailed the miserere, and the women and children trembled beneath the roofs which at any moment might no longer give them sanctuary. For all the blazing sunshine, the place began to wear a look of doom.

During the day the English dragged Mexia's conquered guns to the edge of the town, and under their cover threw up earthworks and planted their artillery where it might speak with effect. Spanish soldiery appeared before the battery, and, according to the tactics of the time, began to make thorny with abattis, poisoned stakes, and other devices the way of the enemy across the open space which it guarded. English marksmen picked them off, others took their place; they falling also, one great gun from the fort bellowed defiance. Its echoes ceasing, silence again wrapped the white ascent and all that crowned it. For days now each antagonist had that knowledge of the other that ammunition was the pearl of price only to be fully shown by warrant of circumstance.

The sun in sinking cast a strange light. It stained the sea, and the air so partook of that glow that town and fortress sprang into red significance. The river also, where swung the dark ships, was ensanguined, as was every ripple upon the shore, where now the birds grew very clamorous. There were no clouds; only the red ball of the sun descending, and a clear field for the stars. The evening wind arose; at last the day died; unheralded by any dusk, on came the night. Color of blood changed to color of gold, gleamed and glistened the sea, sparkled the fire-flies, shone the deep stars; over the marsh flared the will-o'-the-wisp like a torch lit to bad ends.

Nueva Cordoba was held by two-thirds of the English force; now for the Spaniards' greater endangering down from each ship's side came, man by man, wellnigh all of that division which looked to the safety of the fleet. So great was the prize, so intolerable any idea of defeated purpose, that for this night--this night only--the balances could not be evenly held. Precaution lifted from one side added weight to the other, and the borrowing from Peter became of less moment than the paying of Paul. Day by day, north and east and west, watchmen in the tops of the Mere Honour, the Cygnet, the Marigold, and the Phoenix had seen no hostile sail upon the bland and smiling ocean. The river ran in mazes; undulating like a serpent it came from hidden sources, and its heavy borders of tamarind and mangrove sent long shadows out towards midstream. The watchmen looked to the river also; but no greater thing ever appeared than some Indian canoe gliding down from illimitable forests. Now the ships were left maimed for what was meant to be the briefest while. The sick manned them; together with a handful of the unhurt they looked down from the decks and whispered envious farewells to their comrades in the boats below. High above the boats towered the black hulls; the topmasts overlooked sea and land; the bold figureheads, that had drunk the brine of many a storm and looked unmoved upon strange sights, gazed into the darkness with inscrutable, blank eyes.

Silently the boats made landing, swiftly and silently through the darkness two hundred men crossed the little plain, and their leader was Robert Baldry. Out from Nueva Cordoba, stealing through the ruined and depopulated quarter of the town, came a shadowy band, and they from the town and they from the river met at the base of the long, westward slope of the hill. Thence they climbed to the rocky plateau where, the night before, Sir Mortimer Ferne had made pause. Here they halted, while Henry Sedley and ten men went on to the tunal as, the night before, one man had gone. By the signs that Ferne had given them they found the entrance which they sought, and when they had thrust aside the curtain of branch and vine, saw the clearing through the tunal. It lay beneath the stars, a narrow defile much overgrown, walled on either side by impenetrable wood. On went Sedley and his men, cautiously, silently, until they had wellnigh pierced the tunal, that was scarce wider, indeed, than an English copse. Before them, quiet as the tomb, rose the fortress--no sound save their stealthy movement and the stir of the life that was native to the woods, no sign of sentience other than their own. Back they went to the plateau and made report, then with Baldry and half of all the English force waited for the Admiral's attack upon that notable fortification which guarded the known entrance through the tunal.

Rising ground and the bulk of the fortress hid from them the battery; they would hear, not see, John Nevil's onslaught, so now they watched the east for the silver signal of attack. Not long did they watch. Above the waters the firmament became milk white; an argent line appeared, thickened:--one moment of the moon, then tumult, shouting, the blast of a trumpet, the sound of small arms, and the roar of those guns which must be rushed upon and silenced! Noises of bird and beast had the tropic night, all the warfare and the wrangling with which life exacts tribute from life, but now the feud of man with man voiced itself to the stars. So great and stern was the uproar that it seemed as though John Nevil might oversweep with his iron determination that too formidable battery and unaided seize upon the fortress.

No tarrying after the burst of sound and light made Baldry and his men. Up the steep ground they swept towards that pale, invulnerable castle borne upon the shoulder of the hill, faintly outlined against the pallid east. On they came, a long thin line of men of England to that secret path through the tunal. Devon was there, and Kent and Sussex, and many a goodly shire beside. Men of land-fights and of sea-fights were they, and of old adventures to alien countries, strong of heart and frame, and very fiercely minded towards the fortress of Nueva Cordoba. It withheld from them the gold they wanted, and now within its grasp was a life they valued. To-night their will was set to take the one and rescue the other. They saw the treasure heaped and gleaming, and they saw the face and waved hand of Mortimer Ferne. They heard him laugh and gayly cry his thanks.

They entered the defile. To the right and the left rose the impenetrable wood; before them wound a path thorny and difficult, where not more than three men might go abreast; beyond, was the mass of the fortress. On through the impeding growth, where passage was just possible, rushed Baldry and his men. The way was not long, larger loomed the fortress, louder grew the noise of attack and defence. At last the edge of the tunal was reached, and they in the van, freed from hindrance and delay, sprang forward over open ground, marked here and there by low bushes and some trailing growth, sweeping around the fortress to the rear of the battery, and apparently of a solidity with the universal frame of things.

Suddenly, beneath the footing of the foremost, the earth gave way and a line of men stumbled, and pitched forward into a trench which had been digged, which had been planted with pointed stakes, which had been cunningly covered over by a leafy roof so thin that a child had broken through. Not until towards the sunset of that day had Don Luiz de Guardiola received information which enabled him to lay snares, but since that hour he had worked with frantic haste. Now he knew the moment when his springe would be trodden upon, the number of them who would come stealthily through the tunal to that gin, the nature of Nevil's attack upon the front, what guard had been left in the town, what upon the ships. His information was minute and accurate, and, hawk and serpent, he acted upon it with fierceness and with guile.

The onward rush of the English had been impetuous. They in the rear of the first upon that frail bridge, unable to stay their steps, plunged also into the trench; those who were latest to clear the tunal surged forward in consternation and confusion. Suddenly, from a low earthwork hastily raised in the shadow of the fortress wall, and masked by bushes, burst a withering fire of chain-shot from cannon and culverin, of slighter missiles from falcon and bastard and saker, caliver and harquebus. The trench, dug in a half-circle, either end touching the tunal, made with the space it enclosed, and which was now crowded by the English, an iron trap, into which with thunder and flame the Spanish ordnance was pouring death.