qualitied like a dream by the flooding moonlight. A snake stretching
across their path, Sir Mortimer drew his sword, but the creature slipped
away, kept before them for a while, then turned aside into its safe
home. They came to the place they were seeking. Here was the cactus,
taller than its fellows, and gaunt as a gallows-tree, and here the
projecting end of a fallen cross. Between showed no vestige of an
opening; dark, impervious, formidable as a fortress wall, the tunal met
the eye. Ferne, attacking it with his sword, thrust aside a heavy
curtain of broad-leaved vine, came upon a network of thorn and spike and
prickly leaf, hewed this away, to find behind it a like barrier.
Evidently the man had lied!--to what purpose Sir Mortimer Ferne would
presently make it his business to discover.... There overtook him a
sudden revulsion of feeling, depression of spirit, cold and sick
distaste of the place. Tom and breathless, in very savagery over his
defeated hope and fool's errand, he thrust with all his strength at the
heart of this panoplied foe. His blade, piercing the swart curtain, met
with no resistance. With an exclamation he threw himself against that
thick-seeming barrier, and so, with Robin-a-dale behind him, burst into
a narrow, secret way, masked at entrance and exit, and winding like a
serpent through the tunal which surrounded the fortress of
Nueva Cordoba.



VI

"Now Neptune keep the plate-fleet at Cartagena!" whistled Arden. "When I
go home I'll dress in cloth of gold, eat tongues of peacocks, and drink
dissolved pearls!"