"A murderer," the old man hissed now, raising his voice, "not four-fold, but four thousand-fold. See," and he pointed his fingers at Jaime, "see in him the man who sacked Maracaibo, Guayaquil, Campeachy; the man who has burnt men and women alive in their houses like pigs in a stye, sunk countless Spanish and French ships, plundered, murdered, ravished--the arch-villain of the Caribbean Sea--not dead, but alive, and trapped at last. The buccaneer, filibuster, pirate--Gramont!"
Amidst their voices--their shouts and cries--for all in Spain had known that awful name, though its owner had long been deemed dead and lost at sea--I heard a cry--it was a scream--from Juan; I saw him reel as he stood by my left side, then stagger heavily against me, supported from falling to the floor only by my unwounded arm around him.
He had fainted.
And, as I held up the drooping form, I learnt the secret hidden from me for so many days. I knew now what it was that Sir George Rooke had earlier learnt. I penetrated the disguise of Juan Belmonte.
CHAPTER XXIII.
SENTENCED TO DEATH.
I lay within a darkened cell in the prison which formed part of the ramparts of Lugo. Lay there, a man doomed to death; sentenced to be burnt at the stake, as a spy taken in a country at war with my own. To be burnt at the stake on some Sunday morning, because that day was always a day of festival, because all Lugo would be there to witness, because from all the country round the peasants would come in to see the Englishman expire in the flames.
Doomed to death!
Yet not alone. By my side--his right hand nailed to an upright plank! (so the sentence had run) to which our bodies were to be fastened by chains--was to stand that other man, Gramont--the pirate and buccaneer who, as Eaton had testified, had been called the Shark of the Indies.
I had been tried first by the Alcáide of Lugo and the principal Regidór, assisted by the Bishop of the province, an extremely old man--and had been soon disposed of. Evidence was forthcoming--there was plenty of it in Lugo in the shape of French sea-captains and sailors from the Spanish galleons--that I had fought with the English at Vigo; also, that I had slain men betwixt the border and here. And, again, there was the evidence of Eaton that I had travelled from Rotterdam as the undoubted bearer of the news that the galleons were approaching Spain.