DRAKE. The more I see of this river the better I like it—the very haven for a pirate ship. CHIRUCA. Here, then, I leave you, noble Drake. To morrow (_pointing to the mountains_) before those mountain tops are red with the rising sun, we shall meet at the junction of the streams. Adieu! (_he prepares to leap_) DRAKE. Stop! Won’t you have a boat? CHIRUCA (_waving his hand declining_). Adieu! Adieu! (_he leaps overboard and swims ashore_) DRAKE. Marvellous speed. These Indians are amphibious. They can swim like beavers. _Scene changes_. SCENE IV.—TWO STREAMS MEETING AT A POINT OF LAND, _On which grows a tall solitary Palm_, _its feathered branches waving in the morning air_. _The densely wooded banks reflected in the still water_. _The horizon in the background_, _a Sierra of lofty mountains_. _The sun rising and illumening their tops and sending his rays along one of the streams_. _A canoe coming down the shining river_. _Enter_ DRAKE, OXENHAM, MOON _the carpenter_, _and others in a boat from the side_. DRAKE (_after a pause looking round_). I don’t see our dark-visaged friends; I hope there is no mistake. One cannot exactly apprehend treason. These Symerons hate as well as fear the Spaniards, and would neither aid nor trust them. OXENHAM. True, General, our foes are theirs. From them they have nothing to expect but the slavery of their race or death. Gold they value not—thus cruelty and treachery defeat themselves. Spain can never be trusted. To us they look as friends to aid them in their vengeance. DRAKE. What a tide of Spanish blood is due to them—a nation crushed, tortured, massacred, enslaved, driven from such a paradise as this, or seeing it blasted before their eyes. Such is conquest; such a foreign yoke, (_aside_) England, look well to it! There are men, and Englishmen, who would thus degrade their native land, the glorious and the free! OXENHAM. It seems not like the wickedness of man—not to speak of Policy—Spain clothes herself with hate and terror. Her soldiers have the air of fiends from hell; their mission to destroy. MOON. There is no danger, General. This is the spot—the junction of the two streams, and the solitary cocoanut tree on the point. OXENHAM. Right, Moon, all right. There it is rearing aloft its head like a mighty standard—its giant plumes just waving in the morning air—no mistake! DRAKE. What a picture! How strangely beautiful! An there were here some limner of Nature’s Physiognomy, with cunning to throw her wondrous effigy on his magic canvas; that dark still water, noiseless and deep, stealing snakelike through the monstrous foliage, mirrored in its glassy surface; that proud Sierra; the distant horizon, and the rising sun, tinging with purple glory its snowy tops, sending the sheen of silver along the opening river.