"You old scoundrel!" cried McKay, putting his revolver to his head. "Come on! do you understand? Come on, or you are a dead man!"
The gesture was threatening, not that McKay had any thought of firing. He knew a pistol-shot would raise a general alarm. Still the old man, although trembling in every limb, would not move.
"Come on!" repeated McKay, and with the idea of dragging him forward he seized him fiercely by the beard.
To his intense surprise, it came off in his hand.
"Cursed Englishman!" cried a voice with which he was perfectly familiar, and in Spanish. "You are at my mercy now. You dare not fire; your life is forfeited. The enemy is all around you. I have betrayed you into their hands."
"Benito! Can it be possible?" But McKay did not suffer his astonishment to interfere with his just revenge.
"On your knees, dog! Say your prayers. I will shoot you first, whatever happens to me."
"You are too late!" cried Benito, wrenching himself from his grasp, and whistling shrilly as he ran away.
McKay fired three shots at him in succession, one of which must have told, for the scoundrel gave a great yell of pain.
The next instant McKay was surrounded by a mob of Cossacks and quickly made prisoner.