“I’m afraid we are lost!” I cried, and stopped, half in and half out of the hole. Then the prison door was banged open, and the rays of a lantern flared into the cell.
The American I had discovered promptly showed fight by leaping on the intruder. But this was madness, as the soldier was backed up by four others, all armed with pistols and guns. In the meantime another light flashed from outside the hole, and I felt myself caught, very much like a rat in a trap.
“De donde viene V.? [Where do you come from?]” demanded a cold, stern voice, and I felt myself grabbed by the hair. Realizing that resistance was useless, I gave myself up, and immediately found myself surrounded by a dozen Spanish soldiers. In the meantime Jorge had made good his escape.
The soldiers marched me around to the entrance of the fort, where an officer began to question me in Spanish. He could speak no English, and as soon as he found my command of Spanish was very limited he sent off for an interpreter. Then I was taken inside the fort and consigned to one of the prison cells.
My feelings can be better imagined than described. Bitterly I regretted having started on my midnight quest without notifying Captain Guerez. My hasty action had brought me to grief and placed me in a position from which escape seemed impossible. What my captors would do with me remained to be seen. That they would treat me in anything like a friendly fashion was out of the question to expect. It was likely that they would hold me as a prisoner of war.
Presently the door of the cell was opened, and somebody else was thrown in bodily and with such force that he fell headlong. The door was banged shut and bolted, and the crowd which had been outside went away.
The new arrival lay like a log where he had been thrown, and for a few minutes I fancied he must be dead from the way he had been treated.
I bent over him, and in the dim light of the early dawn made out that it was the American I had sought to rescue. I placed my hand over his heart and discovered that he still breathed, although but faintly.
There was nothing at hand with which I could do anything for him. My own pockets had been turned inside out by my captors, and even my handkerchief, with which I might have bound up an ugly wound on his brow, was gone. I opened his coat and vest and his shirt around the neck, and gave him as much air as I could.
“Oh!” he groaned, as he finally came to his senses. “Oh! Don’t kick me any more! I give in!”