CHAPTER XX.
I AM TRIED AND TORTURED BY THE SPANIARDS.
My heart was sad enough and heavy enough, I warrant the reader, as I turned my back upon the sea, and toiled through the dry hot sand of the beach, followed by a group of the boat’s crew. There was no one stirring in the town, only we heard the echo of songs, and the jingle of glasses, from taverns or posadas, where drunken sailors were carousing. Presently we passed through several very narrow streets, not savoury by any means; for rotting garbage lay thick and foul around, and overhead the far-projecting eaves, almost meeting each other, seemed to have been built so as to keep the stenches the better in. Once I heard the twangle of a guitar, or some such instrument. This was as we passed a house, nearly hidden in orange and other trees, and situated in a retired corner of an open space amid gardens; and, looking for the musician, I saw beneath a balcony the slender form of a young man, of just such a size and shape as my gay cavalier Don José—that is to say, so well as I could judge in the light of the newly-risen moon. But I had other fish to fry than to attend to his love-making; for, to tell the truth, I felt by no means certain that I would not be hanged for a spy. All the stories of Spanish cruelty I had ever heard—and they were not a few—came up into my head; and I think, when I called to mind the tortures they ofttimes put their prisoners to, in order to make them reveal what they knew of their comrades’ designs, I felt a greater sinking of heart than even the idea of the halter gave me. But, notwithstanding, my good Scots blood was but for a minute chilled; and then it rushed with fiery force through all my veins, and involuntarily I raised my voice, and made oath by all I worshipped, and all I loved, that they might wrench my limbs out of me ere they got a word to their purpose.
‘What does the rogue say?’ inquired the lieutenant, for such he was who walked behind. My sentinels answered that I spoke somewhat in an outlandish gibberish they could not understand; and presently, seizing me by each shoulder, they turned down a great arched gateway, beneath a long straggling house, with pillars in the front, and a flag over the roof. Here were sentries, who challenged our party and received the countersign, and then we entered a large bare room on the ground floor, which was dimly lighted by but one lantern, placed at a desk, where a soldier, whom I judged to be a sergeant, was writing. Along the sides of this room ran a slanting ledge of wooden boards, on which hard bed full a score of soldiers lay sleeping in their ponchos, or loose cloaks.
‘What springald have we here?’ said the sergeant, rising from his writing, and flinging the full light of the lantern, which did not cause any very great illumination, over me, as I stood, somewhat pale, I daresay, and all dripping from my bath. But just at that moment the lieutenant, who was my captor, entering, the sergeant saluted after military fashion, and despatching one of his men, the officer on duty presently walked in, having his uniform doublet unbuttoned, and a silk napkin tied round his head, as though he had been roused from an after-supper’s nap.
The officers made each other very ceremonious bows, and then he of the sea delivered me formally up to he of the land, as a person unable or unwilling to give any account of myself, and captured from a strange boat in the harbour, one of the crew of which, at all event, spoke English. The word made quite a sensation in the guardroom. The half-waking soldiers rolled off their benches, and came scowling and muttering about—the sergeant, bestirring himself, went to his desk, and from a clash of iron there I concluded, and justly, that he was selecting his heaviest pair of handcuffs—and the officer with the napkin round his head, who did not appear altogether sober, crossed himself very religiously, and, cursing me for a damnable heretic, ordered the men back, telling them that they would see me much better when I came to be hanged. He then demanded whether I understood any Spanish? to which interrogatory, as I had previously determined, I replied that I did a little; and then, to their great astonishment, I asked very fiercely whether Great Britain and Spain were at war, that an English mariner was to be dragged out of his boat while giving offence to none, forcibly bound, and taken to a Spanish watch-house.
‘Madre de Dios—here’s a goodly crowing,’ cried the officer of the watch; ‘why, thou pernicious heretic and contemner of saints, thou buccaneering and piratical rogue, for such I see thee with half an eye, what business hast thou or any of thy pestilent countrymen to sail these seas, which belong to His Most Catholic Majesty, the seas of the Spanish Indies? I tell thee thou shalt be hanged, were it for nothing else but rousing me from a comfortable doze; therefore, bethink thee of thy sins, and that the more speedily, inasmuch as their catalogue is, doubtless, long, and thy time as surely short.’
Having made this speech, the gentleman staggered slightly, and then, recovering himself, looked round as if to say, ‘Who suspects that I have taken too much to drink? if there be any, let him stand forth and say so;’ then, shaking his head very gravely, he observed that the world was getting wickeder every day, and added that he was much concerned thereat. Here the sea lieutenant, as fearing a scandal, broke in, and suggested that I should be at once taken before the alcaide; but the sergeant, assuring him that that was out of the question, inasmuch as his honour was then supping with his reverence, the chief canon, and that, above all things, his honour disliked to be disturbed at meal times—the captain of the guard interposed, and, swearing that he respected the peculiarity of the alcaide, it being, indeed, one in which he confessed himself a sharer, ordered the sergeant to lock me carefully up until the morning, and to give me the dirtiest cell and the heaviest irons, in honour of the Catholic religion. Then, addressing me again, he said that I might make myself easy, for he saw the gallows in my face; and so, taking the arm of the naval lieutenant, he swaggered out. The sergeant then approached, holding the irons; these consisted simply of two rings for the wrists, connected by a chain about six inches long. There was no use in resisting; so the cold, greasy-feeling metal speedily enclasped my wrists, each ring locking with a smart snap.
‘How came it that your comrades deserted you, friend?’ quoth the sergeant, in rather an amicable tone.
‘I will tell you nothing about my comrades,’ I replied; ‘I do not want to be uncourteous, but you shall hear nothing from me on that score.’