“Your counsel is good, Miss Starland, but suppose General Bambos should construe such action on my part as unfriendly?”
“Surely he cannot do so, unless you enter his territory, and that I am sure you have no thought of doing.”
“You know not the perfidy of that man,” was the commentary of the Dictator, his words inspired by jealousy.
When the Castle of Rest was reached it justified all that Señorita Estacardo had said of it, though it lacked moat and drawbridge and the other feudal accessories. It was of massive rock and stone, sixty or more feet in length and almost as broad. The lowest floor consisted of two large rooms, with broad openings instead of doors, rough and unfurnished and with walls several feet in thickness. At the time of its building, it would have resisted any armament that could have been brought to bear against it. The crevices between the stones throughout the structure had been filled with clay or adobe, which in the course of centuries had hardened to the consistency of rock itself. The second and third stories contained each four apartments, whose walls were of less thickness, but the whole constituted a veritable Gibraltar. Sloping stone steps connected each story, but only the rooms of the second contained anything in the nature of furniture.
It was evident that General Yozarro had given this portion recent attention, for the windows, tall, narrow and paneless, had been screened by netting with the finest of meshes, though none can be fine enough to wholly exclude the infinitesimal insects like the coloradilla, or red flea, whose bite is as the point of a red hot needle, the sand fly, and other devilish insects beyond enumeration. Matting was spread on the smooth stone floors, there were imported chairs of costly make, stands, a bureau and much of what constitutes the appointments of a modern residence in a tropical country. The doors were made of a species of wood, beautifully carved, but showing no effects of the tooth of time, except in the gray faded color, for paint had never touched them. They were powerful enough to defy a battering ram, fitted with enormous locks and heavy bars that could be slipped into the massive iron receptacles.
“Had that old buccaneer been given notice of the attack by his men,” said Miss Starland, when the building had been inspected from top to bottom, “he might have shut himself in one of these rooms and bade them do their worst.”
“Perhaps he did,” suggested General Yozarro.
“And yet the legend says he fell.”
“Starvation and thirst are enemies to whom the bravest must surrender.”
“It looks, General, as if you had been rejuvenating this fine old Castle.”