"I saw your light," said Fisher bluntly, assuming that she knew of his situation, "and feared that the gang was upon us again. My friend and I are lying down in the brushwood yonder, but we are nearly dead with fatigue and want of food. If you could show us a safe road to the shore, I could not thank you enough."
They stood, as I have said, face to face, the boy and the girl; and yet there was between them that understanding which flashes up instinctively in the young day of life; and they knew that words were not wanting upon the seal of their confidence. He, for his part, put his safety into her hands as readily as he would have put it into the hands of one he had known since childhood; and when she answered him, she did so without any fear or pretence of ignorance.
"I know all your story," said she. "They were saying at the house that you had gone into the woods by the other bay, and they are searching for you there. But I saw you come here from my window this morning, and I waited for the dark to help you. They are still watching upon the beach, but that is a mile from here."
She extinguished the lantern with her words, but not before he had asked her—
"Why do you do this for us?"
"I do it for you," she replied quite simply; "you cannot understand, but I have never had a friend. My own people are a shame to me. My life is all loneliness. God only knows what it is——"
She spoke with such an infinite tenderness that Fisher caught her hand in his, and held it to his lips; and the touch of it sent him trembling.
"Would to God I could repay you," said he, "but I have nothing to offer but my gratitude, and what that is words could not tell you. I shall remember it to my last day——"
"And I shall remember you," said she, still permitting him to hold her; "I could never forget you have given me happiness, and I have known so little."
Her note of sorrow struck in the lad a whole chord of fine chivalry. Standing as he did with her hand in his, and her hot breath upon his cheeks, almost feeling the rapid beating of her heart as she pressed against him, looking down into eyes that glowed with Southern passion, he vowed that he would return again whatever lot fate put upon him; and telling her this, regardless of time or place, he of a sudden drew her yet closer to him, and their lips met in the first kiss he had ever put upon the lips of woman. And for long moments she clung to him with tears upon her cheeks, and gladness at her heart, while the fire-flies played and the leaves trembled in the first flush of a warm breeze, and the woods were still in all the beauty of a summer's night.
The moment was long drawn, yet she, disengaging herself from his embrace, was the first to come to her senses.
"We are both forgetting," said she; "and we stand where we must not forget. I am going to lead you through the private garden to the shore. I can do no more, and if the men return from the other end of the bay, it may only be leading you to danger. But it is all I can do."
"I am sure of it," said Fisher, "and we must take our chance. I shall tell Messenger all you have done."
"Indeed no," said she, "it was done for you. If you do not forget, that is all I ask."
There was no need for his answer. Yet he vowed again and again, as men vow, that he would never forget, and that he would come again to thank her, as he could not thank her then. Thus, hand in hand, they crept towards the hill whereon Messenger's watch had been, and to him it seemed that he told her the history of his life, and that he had found one who had caused a whole world of dreams to open before him enchantingly. But she, going on with quick steps, led him at last to the hill, and to the man who was already coming towards the thicket for an understanding of the delay.
"Well," said Messenger, observing the two, "you appear to be occupied. Is this the young lady you spoke of a week ago?"
"Yes," said Fisher simply; "this is the second time she has done us a service. She has just promised to take us through the private garden to the beach, which she thinks is free of men."
The Prince, looking upon the pair, did not even ask himself is it safe to go? He had reckoned up the chances at a thought, as the lad and the Spanish girl came towards him; and now he only thanked her with that infinite courtesy he was master of at any moment. But this being done, she led them quickly through the nearer of the woods until they came to a great wall of stone; and in this she unlocked a great iron door, and so they passed through a garden in which there were many arbours and fountains, until they stood at the summit of a rough flight of stone stairs; and here she left them before the man could speak another word to her, or the lad could touch her hand again.
The steps brought them upon the beach, which they found quite deserted; but walking quickly towards their own haven, as they judged, they presently saw the dark shape of a ship's boat; and they observed instantly that it was the longboat, in which the nigger, Joe, rowed, and Burke sat at the tiller.
At this sight, the fact being clear beyond dispute, Messenger stood quite still and stamped angrily with his foot upon the sand.
"Curse them!" said he; "they're showing full in the light!" With this he began to run along the shore, and the skipper, seeing him, gave a low whistle and put the boat's head toward the beach. She touched a moment later; but as the four greeted each other a great shout rose up from the sand, and a horde of men, swarming fiercely about the party, had laid the whole of them flat upon their backs and bound them before they realized even whence the attack came.
XXII. THE HALL OF THE FOUNTAINS
When the work was done, and the four Englishmen lay upon the beach, stiff with the ropes which bound them, the Spaniards who had achieved such a quick capture began to display their exultation with deep guttural cries. Some stood above the captives and uttered the shrill exclamations for many minutes; others ran along the beach calling loudly to their fellows on the cliffs above that the work was done; others, again, brought torches, which they thrust almost into the faces of the prisoners under the pretence of examining them. Nor was the band lacking the picturesque—numbering, as Messenger computed, at least thirty men, all armed with the cuchillo and with muskets, and clothed in garments which represented at once the tawdry splendour of the southern taste and the warmer fashion of the mountain country. Here were rateros in the gaudy cloaks of the Iberian; hulking seamen in long mantles of rich and faded silk; bearded men whose sashes shone with hues of intense red and aggressive yellow; swarthy Galicians in the black zamarra; simple peasants who capered in the torch-light; even boys who yodledat the victory. And for a long space they kept up the tow-row and the din, and threatened the bound men with their knives or their cudgels.
That there was any merit in the capture is not to be conceded. Messenger's own record, from which this present account is chiefly written, establishes the simplicity of it. "I lay it," says he, "entirely to my own folly in getting upon the roof of the rock-house that we were taken. The Spaniards must have watched for us upon the shore all day, and Burke's madness in coming out of the haven gave them the clue they waited for. When they did spring upon us, it was with the dash of a cavalry charge. I had three men upon my back and three at my throat before I could put a hand upon my pistol; and scarce had I touched the floor when a fellow whipped a slip-knot round my arms, and pinned them so that the rope cut my flesh."
The record of the others is to the same effect; and in one matter, at any rate, their thoughts were very similar. That this was the supremity of their disaster was as plain to them as the faces of the swarthy horde who gibbered upon the sand; but whether the Spaniards had actually come upon the gold—or, indeed, knew any thing of its history—they could not tell. It was sufficient for them that they were irreparably in the power of a babbling crew who seemed to restrain themselves from immediate murder with personal pain; and they could only conclude, with overwhelming bitterness, that