The ci-devant sergeant was garbed and equipped like Alvaro, and had evidently acquired very much the air of a well-bred cavalier.
Excepting Alosegui, who stared about him with an air of drunken stupidity, the robbers were completely sobered, and remained on their knees, crying for mercy,—mercy in the name of the Holy Virgin, of her Son, of the Saints, and in the name of Heaven; but stern looks and charged bayonets were the only, and certainly fitting reply, and one by one they were stripped of their poniards and pistols, which were broken and destroyed by the soldiers. Narvaez alone scorned to kneel, but he stood scowling around him with a dogged, sullen, and pale visage, while his knees quaked and trembled violently.
"Alvaro," said Stuart, "look upon this sulky ruffian, who is too proud, or perhaps too frightened, to kneel."
"Cifuentes of Albuquerque!" cried the stern cavalier, in a tone almost rising into a shriek. "Dios mio! the destroyer of Catalina, of my poor sister! Ah, master-fiend! most daring of villains! Heaven has at last delivered you to me, that you may receive the reward of your long life of crime. At last you shall die by my hand!" He was about to run him through the heart, but checked the half-given thrust.
"No!" he continued, "you shall not die thus. To fall by my sword is a death fit for a hidalgo or cavalier. Thou shalt pass otherwise from this earth to hell, and die like a dog as thou art!"
Taking his heavy Toledo sabre by the blade, he aimed a blow at Narvaez, which demolished his lower jaw, and laid him on the floor. Upon the throat of the writhing robber he placed the heel of his heavy jack-boot, and watched, without the slightest feeling of compunction or remorse, the horrible distortions and death-agonies exhibited in his visage, and from his compressed throat withdrew not his foot till he had completely strangled him, and he lay a blackened, bloated, and disfigured corse on the floor.
"At length Catalina is avenged!" exclaimed the cavalier, turning with fierce exultation to Stuart, who had witnessed without regret or interference the retribution which had so suddenly hurled the once-formidable Narvaez to the shades.
The fears of the banditti were renewed on beholding this terrible scene, and again they implored piteously to be spared, offering to become Alvaro's slaves, imploring that they might be sent to dig in his mines in Estremadura, or sent to the galleys, or any where,—but, oh! to spare their wretched lives, and they would offend against God and man no more. The stern cavalier listened as if he heard them not. He ordered them to be pinioned; and Lazaro Gomez appearing with a huge bundle of the cords with which he bound his mules' packages, tied the ladrones in pairs, binding them hard and fast back to back.
Meanwhile some of the soldiers were ransacking the tower "from turret to foundation-stone," expecting to find vaults and strong rooms piled with vast heaps of treasure. But the soldados were wofully disappointed; not a cross or coin fell into their hands, save what they obtained in the pouches of the thieves, whom they pricked remorselessly with their bayonets and otherwise maltreated, to force them to reveal where their plunder was deposited.
Whether the wretches were obstinate, or had nothing to conceal, I know not; but the exasperation of the soldiers was greatly increased when they discovered that they should return without the gold, the jewellery, and the consecrated images, with which they hoped to have stuffed their havresacks.