“He came on the minute; and this time, to our intense disgust, brought his guitar—said he thought we might like a little music—and without so much as by-your-leave opened up with negro melodies and native songs, the instrument resting in the hollow of his knee, one leg crooked over the other, a cigarette stuck tight to his lower lip.
“Hour after hour went by and still he sang on—French, German, Italian—anything and everything—rolling out the songs as if we had been so many classmates at a college supper. Charming, of course, had we not had a hole behind us and freedom within sight.
“Hints, yawns, even blunt proposals to let us go to bed, had no effect. Further than these we dared not go. We were afraid to turn him out bodily lest we should be suspected of trying to get rid of him for a purpose. To have let him into the secret was also out of the question. Better wait until he was gone.
“Would you believe it, he never left until broad daybreak, his confounded irritating cheerfulness keeping up to the last, even to his tossing his fingers to us in good-by, quite as he might have done to his sweetheart.
“At eight o’clock on that same morning, not more than two hours after he had left, there came a bang at the door with a sword-hilt, the bolts were drawn, and we were marched into the court-yard between five soldiers in command of a sergeant. Then came the orders to fall in, and we were pushed into the same room where, nearly a year before, we had been examined by the ruffian in shoulder-straps and sent back to our cell.
“And here I must say that, for the first time since our capture, I lost all hope. Five men for three of us, and two of the cartridges blank!
“The squad closed in and we were lined up in front of a table before another black-haired, greasy, villanous-looking reptile who read the death-warrant, as near as I could make out—he spoke so fast. Then he rose from his seat, bowed stiffly, and left the room. Next the sergeant saluted us, ordered his men to fall in, and left the room. Then the jailer stepped forward, shook our hands all around, and left the room.
“We were free!
“Outside, in the broad glare of the scorching sun, his boyish face in a broad grin, stood the consul, looking as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox.
“‘I am sorry you found me such a bore last night,’ he said, gay and debonair as an old beau at a wedding, ‘but there was nothing else to do. If I’d gone home earlier and let you crawl out of that hole, you would have been shot to a dead certainty. I knew a month ago you were at work on it, and when it was nearly finished I got permission to drop in on you. The plank that you ran up against I had put there with the help of the jailer. It was meant to keep you quiet until my mail got in. I was helpless, of course, to assist you until it did, being my government’s representative. It arrived yesterday, informing me that our State Department has taken up your cases with your government and has entered a formal protest. Now all of you come over to the consulate, and let me see what I can do to fix you out with some clothes and things.