“To the two Englishmen at present imprisoned in the Inquisition at Vera Cruz. It is known all through the city here that the man Alvarez, who calls himself governor of the town and viceroy of the province, intends to have you both burnt alive at an auto-da-fé in the plaza five days from now. It was intended that you should be exhibited and tortured in public here, and sent back to La Guayra for final execution; but the news has come that your countryman, Cavendish, has captured a plate fleet of nineteen ships near Acapulco, and the populace demand that you should both be sacrificed in revenge, to which Alvarez has consented. Unless you can escape before the expiry of the five days you are doomed. There is one chance for you, if you can take it, and I am here to assist you. You can trust me implicitly. I am an English sailor who was made to renounce my religion through torture, and I am now in service here; but I have not forgotten my country. To escape, you must contrive to lower a thin cord from the window, the thinner the better, so that I can communicate with and send small articles to you. Leave this cord hanging from your window, at midnight on the third night from now, without fail; I can do nothing until then. I have contrived to get this message concealed in your food on this one occasion, but I shall never be able to do so again. So you must somehow or another manage to lower to the ground the thin cord of which I told you. Without that I cannot aid you.
“I shall wait here for a time, so that you can throw down a note saying you have received my message; but say no more besides that. If I do not hear from you now, I shall return on the third night, and the cord must be in its place by then. For the present, farewell!
“From a true friend.”
This was a long message; but the man who wrote it had done so in such small letters that it occupied but little space. So small, indeed, was the writing that it was as much as they could do to decipher it.
When they had finishing reading this remarkable communication, the lads looked at each other for a moment in utter amazement.
Suddenly Roger ejaculated: “Ah, of course! Now I have it, Harry! The man that we saw waiting below the window—he was the person who wrote this; and he was waiting for the answer, as he said in the note. That is why he seemed to expect us to throw him something. Oh, why, why did we not think of looking sooner? But, of course, we expected nothing of the kind. Anyhow he says he will return on the third night from now. But where, Harry, are we going to get that cord that he wants us to hang from the window? Our escape hinges upon our getting it; and yet—where is it to come from? It is utterly impossible for us to get hold of a cord or line of any sort, so far as I can see. I wonder who the fellow is; and can we trust him?”
“Well,” replied Harry, “you saw what he wrote in that message. In five days from now, unless we can meanwhile escape, we are doomed to die an awful death. The man would, I should say, have no object in betraying us; because, if we are already sentenced to death, they do not need any excuse for executing us. And I do not see what the man has to gain by deceiving us. No, Roger, I think the man is genuine enough; and in any case, if we are to suffer death, we may as well die in the attempt to escape as wait here for death to come to us. Is it not so, my friend?
“But perhaps we had better put off the further discussion of this until we have eaten the food. If, when they come to put in our next supply, they find this still uneaten, they may suspect that something is amiss, and remove us to another cell, or even separate us; either of which happenings would put an end for good and all to our chances of escape. Besides, we can talk as we are eating. Come, Roger, wake up, man, and fall to! Eat as much as you can, for we shall need all our strength to go through with what is before us.”
Roger saw the wisdom of Harry’s argument, and, replacing the food on the table, whence it had fallen in their eagerness to read the message, they set to, and very soon demolished the whole of it, replacing the platter, as usual, when they had finished, by the side of the trap, to be removed when the next meal was put in.
“Now,” remarked Harry, “let us resume our discussion of this strange business, Roger. So far as I can see, the matter stands— Hullo! what’s that? Did you hear that, Roger?” he suddenly interjected.
“Yes,” replied Roger, “I did. What can it be, I wonder?”
There had come a slight sound from the direction of the grating, as of some hard substance striking against the iron bars.