Weary enough from the day's work, yet, when he and his fellow adventurers had exchanged good night, Mortimer Ferne went not to his quarters. Instead he passed through a dim corridor to the little cell-like room where was lodged Master Francis Sark, whom the English kept under surveillance, and who, under another name, had given to Pedro Mexia his knowledge of English speech and English history. What persuasion the Captain of the _Cygnet_ used, what bribe or promise or threat, what confidence that there was more to tell thereby like a magnet compelling any wandering information, is not known; nor is known what hatred of his conqueror, of a gallant form and a stainless name, may have uncoiled itself to poisonous ends in the soul of the small, smug, innocent-seeming man to whom he spoke; but at the end of a half-hour the Captain of the _Cygnet_ left his prisoner of the _San José_, moved swiftly and lightly down the corridor to his own apartment, where he crossed to the window and stood there with his eyes upon the fortress of Nueva Cordoba, rising shadowy upon its shadowy hill. So often had he looked upon it that now, despite the night, he saw with precision the squat, white walls, the dark sweep of the encircling tunal, and, strong clasp for that thorny girdle, the too formidable battery defending the one apparent opening. "Another path!" he said to himself. "Masked and hidden, unguarded, known only to their leaders.... To come upon them from the rear while, catlike, they watch the highway yonder!" His breath came in a long sigh of satisfaction. "What if he lies? Why should he lie, seeing that he is in our power? But if he does ..." Minutes passed and yet he stood there, gazing with thoughtful eyes at hill and fortress rising above the silent town. Finally he went over to Robin-a-dale, asleep upon a pallet, and shaking him awake, bade the lad to follow him but make no noise. To the sentinels at the great door, in the square, at the edge of the town, he gave the word of the night, and so issued with the boy from the huddle of flat-roofed houses, overhung by palm-trees, to the open plain.