and the lives within it were ignored. Bluntly, the price of Sir Mortimer
Ferne's life was this--and this--and this!

The Admiral made reply that Honor was too dear a price for the life of
any English gentleman. He and Sir Mortimer Ferne declined the terms of
Don Luiz de Guardiola. The safety of his friend should, however, ransom
a city. Deliver the captive sound in life and limb, and the English
would withdraw from Nueva Cordoba, and proceed with their ships upon
their way. Reject this offer, let harm befall the prisoner, and Don Luiz
de Guardiola should see how John Nevil mourned his friends!

The Governor answered that his terms held. The evening before, the
English leader had been pleased to announce that if by moonrise of this
night he had not in hand fifty thousand ducats, Nueva Cordoba should lie
in ashes; now Don Luiz de Guardiola, more generous, gave Sir John Nevil
until the next sunrise to heap upon the quay at the Bocca all gold and
silver, all pearls, jewels, wrought work and other treasure stolen from
the King of Spain, to withdraw every English soul from the galleon _San
José_, leaving her safe anchored in the river and above her the Spanish
flag, to abandon town and battery and retire to his ships, under oath,
upon the delivery to him of the prisoner, to quit at once and forever
these seas. Did the first beams of the sun find the English yet in Nueva
Cordoba, then the light should also behold the death with ignominy of
the prisoner.

"He will not die with ignominy," spoke the Admiral when the herald had
come and gone. "Death cannot wear a form so base that he, nobly dying,
will not ennoble."

"Do you purpose, then, that he shall die?" demanded Baldry, roughly.