By now, Don Pedro, who had wakened or affected to waken from his sleep, thought that the time had come to interfere.
“Peace, little ones, peace!” he cried sleepily from his hammock. “Remember that the men are guests, and cease brawling. Let them go to bed, it is time for them to go to bed, and they need rest; by to-morrow your differences will be healed up for ever.”
“I take the hint,” said the señor, with forced gaiety. “Come, Ignatio, let us sleep off our host’s good wine. Gentlemen, sweet dreams to you,” and he walked across the hall, followed by myself.
At the door I turned my head and looked back. Every man in the room was watching us intently, and it seemed to me that the drunkenness had passed from their faces, scared away by a sense of some great wickedness about to be worked. Don Smith was whispering into the ear of José, who still held the knife in his hand, but the rest were staring at us as people stare at men passing to the scaffold.
Even Don Pedro, wide awake now, sat up in his hammock and peered with his horny eyes, while the Indian girl, Luisa, her hand upon the cord, watched our departure with some such face as mourners watch the out-bearing of a corpse. All this I noted in a moment as I crossed the threshold and went forward down the passage, and as I went I shivered, for the scene was uncanny and fateful.
Presently we were in the abbot’s chamber, our sleeping-place, and had locked the door behind us. Near the washstand, on which burned a single candle set in the neck of a bottle, sat Molas, his face buried in his hands.
“Have they brought you no supper, that you look so sad?” asked the señor.
“The woman, Luisa, gave me to eat,” he whispered. “Listen, lord, and you, Señor Strickland, our fears are well founded; there is a plot to murder us to-night, of this the woman is sure, for she heard some words pass between Don Pedro and a white man called Smith; also she saw one of the half-breeds fetch spades from the garden and place them in readiness, which spades are to be used in the hollowing of our graves beneath this floor.”
Now when we heard this our hearts sank, for it was terrible to think that we were doomed within a few hours to lie beneath the ground whereon our living feet were resting. Yet, if these assassins were determined upon our slaughter, our fate seemed certain, seeing that we had only knives wherewith to defend ourselves, for, though we had saved the pistols and some powder in a flask, the damp had reached the latter during the shipwreck, so that it could not be relied upon.
“I am afraid that we have been too venturesome in coming here,” I said, “and that unless we can escape at once we must be prepared to pay the price of our folly with our lives.”