Here the hoarse and panting wretch again ceased his roarings, and the padre timidly opened the door.
“Ha! who’s that? Babette?”
“No, my son, it is your good Padre Ricardo, come to console you.”
What the maimed villain replied to the priest, and what means the holy father took to allay the passion and assuage the sorrows of the man lying helpless in the dungeon, or whether successful in his mission, is not important to state in detail. An hour later, however, the priest seemed relieved in body and spirit as he retired from the loathsome hole, and shooting the bolt as he closed the door, cautiously felt his way along the dark and narrow passage. Presently, as he turned an angle, a ray of light from the loopholes of the great stone vault beneath the pirate’s dwelling lighted his pathway; and a moment after, with a hearty sigh of satisfaction, he seized a cord above his head and gave it a jerk. A bell sounded above, and then a large, square-hinged trap-hatch fell down, swinging gently to and fro from the beams above. At the same time the padre put his arms about a square wooden stanchion which supported the floor of the saloon, and then painfully sticking his toes in some deep-cut notches at the sides, he slowly began to mount upward. When, however, his oily shaved crown appeared nearly at the level of the floor, a vigorous grasp was laid on his shoulders, and he was pulled up like a flapping lobster and rolled into the apartment. It was Captain Brand who kindly assisted the holy father, and it was the captain’s hollow laugh which saluted him in his torn and soiled raiment, as, with difficulty, he regained his perpendicular.
“Laugh not, hijo mio, at my sorrowful plight,” said the bruised Ricardo, with some asperity; “I have met with dangers of venomous serpents, and been stabbed cruelly by those villainous cactus.”
“But I raised the beam, my padre, the moment you made the signal.”
“You did, my son; but what I suffered in the cavern was as nothing to what I endured when I entered the dungeon of the English Gibbs. Jesus Maria, what an infidel he is!”
“You did not find his spirit subdued, then, by bread and water?”
“Far from it, my friend. He rages like a wild beast. He consigns your body and soul to everlasting torments! But, what is more impious still,” went on the padre, as he crossed himself, “he damned your holy father, and hoped I would roast in hell!”
“But he confessed, Ricardo, and you gave him absolution?”