Читать «Cup of Gold (Золотая чаша)» онлайн - страница 92

Now from the little prison across the garden came a shrill voice praying to the Virgin. The penetrating sound charged the whole Palace with a fervent cacophony. Henry Morgan listened with shame-sharpened ears for mockery in the words or in the tone, but there was no mockery. Over and over, a shrill Ave Maria; the tone of a fearful, pleading sinner-Ora pro nobis. A shattered world, and the black skeleton of a golden city-Ora pro nobis. No mockery at all, but brokenhearted repentance reading its poor testimony on the dropping beads. A shrill woman's voice, piercing, insistent-it seemed to be digging at a tremendous, hopeless sin. She had said it was the sin of truthfulness. "I have been honest in my being, and that is a black lie on the soul. Forgive my body its humanity. Forgive my mind which knows its limitations. Pardon my soul for being anchored this little time to both. Ora pro nobis."

The mad, endless rosary cankered in Henry's brain. At last he seized his rapier and his hat and ran from the hail into the street. Behind him the treasure lay smiling under the slanting sun.

The streets about the Governor's Palace had not been touched by the fire. Captain Morgan walked along the paved way until he came to the ways of ruin. Here blackened walls had spilled their stones into the road. Those houses which had been made of cedar were vanished into the frames of smoking ashes which marked their places. Here and there lay murdered citizens grinning their last agony into the sky.

"Their faces will be black before the night," Henry thought. "I must have them removed or the sickness will come."

Dallying clouds of smoke still arose from the city, filling the air with the sickly odor of damp things burning. The green hills beyond the plain seemed incredible to Henry Morgan. He regarded them closely and then looked back at the city. This destruction which had seemed so complete, so awful, during the night, was, after all, a pitifully small and circumscribed destruction. Henry had not thought of the hills remaining green and standing. This conquest, then, was more or less unimportant. Yes, the city was in ruins. He had destroyed the city, but the woman who had drawn him to the Cup of Gold eluded him.

She escaped while she still lay in his power. Henry winced at his impotence, and shuddered that other people should know it.

A few buccaneers were poking about in the ashes, looking for melted plate which might have escaped the search of the night before. Turning a corner, Henry came upon the little Cockney Jones, and saw him quickly thrust something into his pocket. A flame of rage arose in Captain Morgan. Coeur de Gris had said that there was no difference between this epileptic dwarf and Henry Morgan.