"As for me," said I, with growing confidence, "I am, as you said, senores, only the page de escoba."
"Bah!" said the Spaniard, grinning, and showing a row of sharp white teeth, under a dirty and sable moustache; "though I said so, I knew better. A shipboy seldom has a watch like this," he added, displaying my gold repeater. "Now, we shall keep you; and if this seaman—after he has first sworn that he will not betray us—does not return to us here with five hundred dollars within two hours after sunset, par el"—(here he made a dreadful vow in Spanish), "we will toss you like a dead dog into the ventana of the mountain. Look down, and see what a journey is before you," he added, with a diabolical smile, as he dragged me to the beetling edge of the chasm, and forced me to look into it.
Our eyes had now become so accustomed to the light of the gallery or grotto, that the rays of sunshine falling through the fissure above us were sufficient to disclose a portion of the vast profundity on the verge of which we stood.
From the earth's womb, far, far down below, there came upward a choking steam, with a hollow buzzing sound, which deepened at times to a rumble.
This steam or mist rose and fell on the currents of air; sometimes it sank so low that nothing but a black and dreary void met the eye, which ached in attempting to pierce it. Anon the steam would rise in spiral curls from that gloomy bed below, where doubtless the fires of the now almost extinct volcano seethe their embers in the waves of the ocean.
The words "have mercy," were on my lips, but I could not utter them; nor would they have availed me. Ignorant of what the ruffian said, and believing he was about to thrust me in, poor Tom Lambourne, in the fulness of his heart, uttered a howl of dismay; and at that moment the sentinel, whom the gang had left at the entrance to their lurking-place, came hurriedly in, with alarm expressed in his glittering eyes, and a finger placed, as a warning, on his hairy lip.
"Para! Paz! Silenzio!" (hold—peace—silence), he exclaimed, and added that four officers from the garrison of Santa Cruz had dismounted in the ravine, unbitted their horses, and had seated themselves under a tree to smoke.
This information was received by the band with oaths and mutterings of impatience; and by us with mingled emotions of hope and agony—hope that they might be the means of our escape or rescue; and agony to know that such means were so near, and yet could avail us nothing; for on the slightest sound being made by either of us, there were the Albacete knives of our captors on one hand, and the ventana—that awful ventana—on the other, to insure forever the silence and oblivion of the grave.
Not the least of my sufferings was from the cord which secured my wrists. Already the skin was swollen, cut, and bleeding in consequence of the tightness with which these wretches had bound me.