Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/207

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. Cœur