A BATTLE ON LAND AND WATER.
It was about eight o’clock in the morning that the door of the prison cell was opened and Gilbert Burnham and I were ordered to march out into a larger apartment.
The order was given by a Spanish officer who spoke fairly good English, and the officer was backed up by a guard of eight men, all well armed.
“They are going to run no chances on us now,” remarked the newspaper correspondent, as he arose from the floor, upon which he had been resting.
“We had better be as civil as possible,” I answered. “If we anger them they have it in their power to make us mighty uncomfortable.”
“I’ll keep as civil as my hot-headedness will permit,” he grumbled.
We were led from one end of the fort to the other, where there was a narrow room, provided with a small, square table and half a dozen benches. At the table sat several officers I had seen before. One was a particularly ugly-looking fellow, and Burnham nudged me and said this chap was the fellow he had knocked down.
“And he’s got it in for me,” he added.
I was marched to the front of the table, and the officer who could speak English forced me to clasp my hands behind me. This done, one of the officers at the table asked a number of questions in Spanish.
“No habla V. castellano? [Do you not speak Spanish?]” he asked me.