CHAPTER XLIX.
EL CALABOZO DE INFIERNO.
An ordinary man, suddenly placed in the position in which Jack Ashley finds himself, would perhaps exhaust his strength in useless imprecations upon his oppressors, and finish by sinking into utter hopelessness as to his fate.
But, as was intimated when the reader first made his acquaintance, Jack Ashley is not an ordinary man. The practice of self-restraint has enabled him to retain to a remarkable degree his self-possession at more than one exciting moment, and his sublime confidence in himself is never wanting.
Clearly his arrest has been arbitrary and unofficial. He has not even been searched. His watch and money, his papers, even his revolver, are upon his person.
“And best of all, they have not deprived me of this incomparable solace,” he says, as he draws a cigar from his pocket and lights it at the smoky little lantern in the cell. Then he throws himself on the wretched straw couch, to think of some way out of the snare into which he has stumbled.
Isabel Harding has undoubtedly imparted to Truenos all she knows, all she suspects. But suspicion is not proof. And the strongest suspicion would not have warranted, much less likely have caused, such an outrage upon a citizen of the United States.
Plainly there is some private villainy back of it all. Then a light flashes through his brain.
Juanita! In his selfish though natural consideration of his own unpleasant position he has forgotten for the nonce the Pearl of the Antilles, the one woman who has ever stirred his light heart to a love that, once given, means all of life to him.
He sees it all now. Don Quesada gone, his daughter unprotected, worse than unprotected as the companion of Isabel Harding, and at the mercy of Captain Raymon Huerta, who has haunted her for weeks and forced his unwelcome attentions upon her! The only man who could lend a defending arm locked fast in a Cuban jail, with the prospect of being garroted before another sun goes down!