“Captain,” Steve broke in eagerly. “If it’s Espato who has captured Phil, what’s to prevent our mustering out some of the boys and going after him?”
“Say, why couldn’t we?” added Dick and Tom looked his eagerness.
The Captain smiled but slowly shook his head.
“It wouldn’t be any use, boys,” he said, adding, as he saw how their faces fell. “I hate to discourage you but you know as well as I do that Espato has a dozen hiding places in the mountains and to try to find the one in which Phil is imprisoned would be decidedly like hunting for a needle in a haystack. Not but what I’d like first rate to get a hack at Espato,” and his eyes flashed and his figure straightened after the manner of a good soldier.
Reason being against them, the boys were forced to give up their idea of a dashing rescue and fell to work on the rather discouraging problem of raising the ten thousand dollars of Phil’s ransom.
“Anyway, the main thing is to know that Phil’s alive,” said Dick, stoutly. “What’s ten thousand dollars beside that fact, anyway.”
“A mere bag of shells,” returned Steve, trying to sound cheerful and quite failing as he added, dolefully, “But I wish some kind little bird would whisper to us where the filthy lucre can be found.”
And meanwhile, knowing nothing of all this, Phil was suffering as acutely as if every moment had really been his last. Every time voices sounded without his dungeon the thought flashed through his mind that they had come to take him to the torture chamber.
But as the hours passed, afternoon darkening into dusk and nothing startling happened, he began at first to wonder, then to take heart of hope.
Perhaps something had happened—something to his advantage. It was not like Espato to delay his vengeance in this manner. He liked to punish his prisoners while still his temper was in the red hot stage, so that vengeance might be all the sweeter. Surely, by this time his temper had begun to cool——.