Night fell and grew late. The worst of the fire had passed to the southward. Around him the flames barely reached above the blackened walls, though the glare from the doors revealed the desolation of the court. It was hideous and infernal, and he was seized with a frantic longing to be away from its horror, but hours dragged before he could even quit the pool. Slowly, however, the fire subsided, and he mounted the steps unheeded by his fellow refugees. Now he could see the entrance, with fragments of the doors hanging to the hinges and still feebly burning. He would attempt it. He found his sword and shield, among the leafless stalks of the bushes, and after a final plunge in the pool, left the court. Filling his lungs, he bolted through the door and into the street. It was full of embers, starting into flame and swirled about by eddies of hot wind. He could see but a short distance ahead, but with a hurried prayer he dashed forward through the stifling heat. The end of the street was not far, but before he had reached it his feet and legs were blistered. In his struggles for breath, and in the dread doubt whether he would attain his goal, he hardly felt the pain, but rushed blindly on, ploughing up a spray of fire in his passage. At length, the foot of the street, and he staggered into the open, across the quay, and down the steps to the stream. At the farther end of the bridge was the falconet with its gunners. The fire had not crossed the rivulet, but the heat had driven them to the opposite side. One of the cannoneers beheld Cristoval rushing through the fiery dusk of the street, and his affrighted exclamation drew the attention of his mates. They saw the arch-fiend, clad in red-hot steel, with blazing eyes, and brandishing a sword of flame, charging toward them through a burst of fire. There was one gasping yell, and they fled into the darkness. *CHAPTER XXXV* _*The Lurking Morisco*_ During the half-hour it took the sergeant commanding the gun to reassemble his panic-stricken cannoneers, Cristoval was passing slowly down the Tullamayu, secure in its shadows. In his thankfulness for escape from death his scorched feet and legs seemed naught, and he was eager only to pass the fire ahead, cross the city to the other stream, and find the Amarucancha. To find the Amarucancha; for not an instant did his purpose flag, nor would while he had strength to creep.