At length, after a sleepless night of intense anxiety on the part of the prisoners, and, as has been said, more than one unavailing effort to elude the vigilance of their guards, the morning dawned of the day which was to see those prisoners begin to die; and with the rising of the sun the excitement and hilarity of the village became still more pronounced. The crowds grew more dense, the laughter and conversation louder; the people had donned their holiday attire—such as it was—and the children chased each other with joyous shouts in and out of the throng. Then a meal was brought to the prisoners; and while they were partaking of it a sudden clamour of drums and horns arose, and the laughing, chattering crowd seemed to dissolve as suddenly from the vicinity of the prison hut, leaving it plunged in an atmosphere of silence, save for the monotonous banging of the drums, the blare of the horns, and a low, humming murmur which might be that of a multitude of people conversing in low, hushed voices.
“That means that our time has come, I suppose,” remarked Stukely, as he set down the food of which he had been partaking. “Well, keep up your courage, lad; and remember that if we are to die we will do so in a fashion which the Mayubuna will never forget, so long as they are a people. There are wives now who will be widows before the sun goes down; for they shall never torture me to death; nor you, either, lad, if I can help it. We have our hands free, and a Devon man can do much with his hands alone, when put to it; but my plan is to watch our chance, and snatch the first weapon that comes to hand, and make play with it. They will no doubt shoot us down with their arrows, rather than let us escape; but that kind of death will be infinitely preferable to one of lingering torture—if die we must.”
“Yes,” agreed Dick; “and you may depend upon me to—”
He was interrupted by the arrival of a messenger who summoned them and their guards to follow him; whereupon they rose to their feet and, completely hedged in by sixteen fully armed men, were marched toward the centre of the village, ultimately arriving in the square where they had previously been interviewed by the cacique. And a curious sight the square presented on this occasion, for it and the long street which ran through it from end to end of the village were packed with people who had come, in response to an invitation, from all the villages within a radius of twenty miles, to see the two white men die. They were ranged right along what may be called the main street, in a dense crowd some eight or ten deep, for a distance of a quarter of a mile, and were arranged in two compact lines, with a clear lane of about six feet wide between the two lines of people. Through a gap which had evidently been left open in one of these lines for that especial purpose, the two prisoners were conducted into this lane and led to one extremity of it, where upon a raised platform sat the cacique, with five men, presumably the caciques of neighbouring villages, on either side of him. The Englishmen were marched up to this platform and there left face to face with the cacique and his friends, the guards retiring through the gap by which they had entered, which thereupon was immediately closed.
For the space of a full five minutes or more Phil and Dick stood facing the cacique, while a profound and impressive silence fell upon that vast crowd of Indians, broken only by the rustle of the wind in the tree-tops, and a faint rumble caused by the movement of the naked feet of the assembled multitude, who were in the grip of an excitement so intense that they apparently found it impossible to stand quite still, but must needs continually shift the weight of their bodies from one foot to the other.
At length, when the pause had become almost unbearably impressive, the cacique rose to his feet and, lifting his hand to command attention, spoke.
“White men,” he said, “ye have told me a story which may or may not be true. Ye have declared yourselves to be the enemy of the Spaniards and the friend of the Indian; but how have ye shown your friendship for us? By causing the death of seventeen men of the Mayubuna, by creating seventeen widows and forty-six fatherless children, for whom the rest of the villagers must now provide food. For this great wrong ye are doomed to die; and it rests with yourselves whether your death shall be quick, or whether it shall be one of long-drawn-out torment.
“Ye see this great lane of people stretching right through the village, and ye will note that each man of the front rank is armed with a club. Now, your doom is this. Ye shall start from where ye now stand, and shall run to the farther end of the lane of people; and as ye run each man on either hand shall smite ye as often as he may with his club. If ye can hold out against the blows which ye will receive, and retain strength enough to reach the other end of the lane without falling by the way, then your death shall be quick; but if ye fall, then he who falls will be tied to a stake and slowly done to death for the pleasure of the spectators. You understand? Then—go!”
During this brief address the two Englishmen had been thinking hard and rapidly. Phil’s first thought had been to force his way up on to the platform, seize the cacique, and threaten him with instant death unless the man would consent to give them both immediate liberty; but he instantly discarded the idea, for as the thought flashed through his mind he noticed that the Indians in front of the platform were all fully armed; and for an unarmed man to force a passage through that hedge of deadly spears, ten deep, was a simple impossibility. Then he threw a glance along the lane which he and Dick were to traverse, and which was hedged in on either side by serried ranks of Indians, each armed with a heavy club about three feet long. The Indians were by no means powerfully built, and, individually, looked by no means formidable; and the thought came to him that if he and Dick, instead of starting to race at top speed from end to end of the lane, were each to snatch a club from the nearest man, and then, back to back, fight their way slowly along the lane, they might possibly contrive to reach the end of it without being beaten to the earth, after which who knew what unforeseen possibilities might arise? It was not a particularly hopeful plan, but it was the best that suggested itself on the spur of the moment; moreover, both he and Dick were experts at quarter-staff play, and they would at least be able to make a fight for it, so he hastily communicated his plan to Dick while the cacique was speaking, and received Dick’s murmured acceptance of it at the precise moment when the cacique uttered the word “Go!”