Over the sun-baked Causeway blue-tailed lizards raced and chased each other, frisking up tree trunks, flashing across branches: a snowy heron rose like some winged thing from Heaven, and floated away into the silvery light. And like living jewels the gorgeous wood-ducks glided in and[294] out where the water sparkled among the cypress trees.
"Think," he said, "of those men in armour toiling through these swamps under a vertical sun! Think of them, starved, haggard, fever racked, staggering toward their El Dorado!—their steel mail scorching their bodies, the briers and poison-grass festering their flesh; moccasin, rattler, and copperhead menacing them with death at every step; the poisoned arrows of the Indians whizzing from every glade!"
"Blood and gold," she nodded, "and the deathless bravery of avarice! That was Spain. And it inflamed the sunset of Spanish glory."
He mused for a while: "To think of De Soto being here—here on this very spot!—here on this ancient Causeway, amid these forests!—towering in his armour! His plated mail must have made a burning hell for his body!"
She looked down at the cool, blue water at her feet. He, too, gazed at it, curiously. For a few feet the depths were visible, then a translucent gloom, glimmering with emerald lights, obscured further penetration of his vision. Deep down in that water was what they sought—if it truly existed at all.
After a few moments' silence he rose, drew the[295] hunting-knife at his belt, severed a tall, swamp-maple sapling, trimmed it, and, returning to the water's edge, deliberately sounded the channel. He could not touch bottom there, or even at the base of the Causeway.
"Miss Sandys," he said, "there is plenty of room for such a structure as the Maltese cross is supposed to mark."
"I wonder," she murmured.
"Oh, there's room enough," he repeated, with an uneasy laugh. "Suppose we begin operations!"
"When?"