"'Fall to the lot of the fortunate rascal to whom the happy dice assigns her,' said the Jew lieutenant of the gang, pushing forward and jostling me, with such insolence that I had some difficulty in keeping my hands from his throat.
"'Hark you, Master Potter,' he continued, in his husky Spanish, which I cannot imitate. 'We cast lots for the women we capture, if they be young and handsome. The men we poniard, if they cannot ransom their heads and hides, and then we bury them honourably in the chasm of the Tagus. The bones of some stout fellows are bleaching there, so you will find yourself in good company, I promise you I owe you a grudge for the stroke your 'cajado' dealt on my pate yesterday, and so claim the first blow to-day. Arrojarse, camarados! fall on!'
"He unsheathed his poniard and grasped the potter by the collar of his buckram doublet; but the descending blow was arrested by the uplifted arms of Teresa, who hung upon the villanous dog of Israel with the determination, if not with the strength, of a tigress, and poured forth a succession of cries and threats, which astonished even the intended assassin; then, sinking upon her knees, the winning girl pressed the murderer's hideous paw to her beautiful lips, beseeching him, in those accents to which a woman in deadly terror can alone give utterance, to spare her brother, her Perez, her dear and only brother, and she would become the servant, the slave, of the robber for her whole life.
"'Oh, spare my brother; spare him! O Señor Judio; O Señor Don Julian, Caballeros, gracias, bandidos, por Nuestra Señora Santissima!'
"'My slave? Demonios!' chuckled the ruffian Jew; 'that you may be at all events, or I may make short work with you, and so disappoint some honest fellow here. Off, off with you!' and he shook her from him with so much violence, that on sinking to the floor, the blood gushed from her mouth and nostrils.
"The Jew again raised his dagger, but Perez, filled with fury at the treatment of his sister, snapped, as if it had been a straw, the cord that bound him, and, grappling with the athletic ruffian, dashed him on the floor where he placed a foot upon his breast, and trod him down as one would do a serpent. The blood of the potter was up; grasping another by the sash, he hurled him back with such force that the bandit was instantly slain; for, on staggering, his head came so violently in contact with an angle of the wall, that in a moment his brains were dashed out, and he presented a dreadful spectacle as he lay, breathless and quivering, with his battered skull empty, as if struck by a grapeshot, and his blood and brains forming an oozy pool beside him.
"Even the banditti seemed struck with horror for a moment, and a stillness ensued. They glared at their dead comrade and at each other, heedless of the groans and struggles of the half-stifled Zendono. The voice of the girl was again heard supplicating, for I had raised her up; and she implored me to save her brother, for he had done no wrong, but shed blood only in his own defence, and now remained motionless and terrified at his own temerity. The faint and half-articulate voice of Teresa recalled the band from the spell which, as I have said, their comrade's death had cast around them; and simultaneously they rushed with their knives upon the poor potter, and, pierced at once by innumerable and reiterated wounds, he sunk lifeless among their feet; and long after the last vital spark had fled, they continued to stab and slash, and otherwise mutilate the corpse until its bloody garments hung about it in tatters.
"'Tonnere!' thought I, 'if my friend the hidalgo has neither the cash nor the inclination to ransom me, I shall be in a bad way.'
"By order of Don Julian, who had watched this scene of butchery with folded arms and an immovable aspect, the body was tossed over the window, from whence I heard it falling heavily from rock to rock before it reached the deep, dark water of a tributary of the Tagus, that struggled through a chasm in the cliffs, two hundred feet below.
"While the half-drunken banditti cursed and yelled like fiends, they cast the dead body of their comrade after that of the unfortunate potter, then wiped and sheathed their poniards; and all traces of the horrible occurrence disappeared, save the red blood gouts upon the floor, which these European Thugs never thought of cleansing; but trampled to and fro among that frightful puddle as heedlessly as if it had been so much spring water spilt by accident.