Father Salví, pale and with a wild look, rose to his feet laboriously, made a sign with his hand and left the sala with vacillating steps. In the street, he saw a girl, leaning her back against the wall, rigid, immovable, listening attentively, looking into space, her marble-like hands extended along the old wall. The sun was shining full upon her. She was counting, it seemed without breathing, the sharp blows and listening to that heart-rending groan. She was Tarsilo’s sister.
In the meantime, the scene was continuing in the sala. The unfortunate fellow, overcome with pain, had become silent and waited for his punishers to tire. At last, the soldier breathless, let fall his arm. The alferez, pale with wrath and astonishment, made a signal for them to unloose him.
Doña Consolacion then arose and whispered something into her husband’s ear. He nodded his head, signifying that he understood.
“To the well with him!” said he.
The Filipinos know what that means. In Tagalog they call it timbain. We do not know who could have been the inventor of this method of punishment, but we are of the opinion that he must have lived long ago. In the middle of the tribunal yard there was a picturesque stone-wall, roughly made out of cobble stones, around a well. A rustic apparatus of bamboo in the form of a lever serves to draw out the vile, dirty and bad smelling water. Broken dishes, refuse and all sorts of filth collected there, since the well was a common receptacle for everything that the people threw away or found useless. An object which fell into the place, no matter how good it may have been, was thereafter surely lost. However, the well was never closed up. At times, prisoners were condemned to go down and make it deeper, not because it was thought that the work would be useful in any way, but because the work was so difficult. If a prisoner went down in the well once, he invariably contracted a fever, from which he died.
Tarsilo contemplated all the preparations of the soldiers with a firm look. He was very pale and his lips were trembling or murmuring a prayer. The haughtiness of his desperation seemed to have disappeared, or at least to have weakened. A number of times he bent his head, fixed his eyes on the ground, resigned to his suffering.
They took him to one side of the stone wall. Doña Consolacion followed smiling. The unfortunate wretch glanced enviously toward the pile of dead bodies, and a sigh escaped from his breast.
“Speak now!” said the directorcillo again. “They will certainly drown you. At least, die without having suffered so much.”
“When you come out of this, you will die,” said a cuaderillero.
They took the gag out of his mouth and hung him by his feet. He had to go down head first and remain under the water some time just like a bucket, except that a man is left under the water a longer time.