Commendone stood in the ante-chamber of the torturers.
He wore the garment of black linen, the hood of the same, with the two circular orifices for his eyes.
John Hull kept touching him with an almost caressing movement—John Hull, a grotesque and terrible figure also in his torturer's dress.
Alonso moved about the place hurriedly, putting this and that to rights, looking after his instruments, but with a flitting, bird-like movement, showing how deeply he was excited.
The room was a long, low place. The ceiling but just above their heads. A glowing fire was at one end, and shelves all round the room. At one side of the fire was a portable brazier of iron, glowing with coals, and on the top of it a shape of white-hot metal was lying.
Alonso came up to Commendone, a dreadful black figure, a silently moving figure, with nothing humanly alive about him save only the two slits through which his eyes might be seen.
"Courage, Señor," he whispered, "it will not be long now."
Johnnie, unaware that he himself was an equally hideous and sinister figure, nodded, and swallowed something in his throat.
John Hull, short, broad, and dreadful in this black disguise, sidled up to him.
"Master," he whispered, "it will soon be over, and we shall win away. We have been in a very evil case before, and that went well. Now that we are dressed in these grave-clothes and must do bitter business, we must make up our minds to do it. 'Tis for the sake of Mistress Elizabeth, whom we love—Jesus! what is that hell-hound doing?"