"Very well, senor," he said, then passed out and locked the door.
In a rush Henry was at the window just in time to encounter Francis face to face and thrusting a revolver to him through the bars.
"Greetings, camarada," Francis said. "We'll have you out of here in a jiffy." He held up two sticks of dynamite, with fuse and caps complete. "I have brought this pretty crowbar to pry you out. Stand well back in your cell, because real pronto there's going to be a hole in this wall that we could sail the Angelique through. And the Ang clique is right off the beach waiting for you. Now, stand back. I'm going to touch her off. It's a short fuse."
Hardly had Henry backed into a rear corner of his cell, when the door was clumsily unlocked and opened to a babel of cries and imprecations, chief est among which he could hear the ancient and invariable war-cry of Latin-America,
"Kill the Gringo!"
Also, he could hear Rafael and Pedro, as they entered, babbling, the one: "He is the enemy of brotherly love"; and the other, "He said I was to go to hell is not that what he said, Ignacio?"
In their hands they carried rifles, and behind them urged the drunken rabble, variously armed, from cutlasses and horse-pistols to hatchets and bottles. At sight of Henry's revolver, they halted, and Pedro, fingering his rifle unsteadily, maundered solemnly:
"Senor Morgan, you are about to take up your rightful abode in hell."
But Ignacio did not wait. He fired wildly and widely from his hip, missing Henry by half the width of the cell and going down the next moment under the impact of Henry's bullet. The rest retreated precipitately into the jail corridor, where, themselves unseen, they began discharging their weapons into the room.
Thanking his fortunate stars for the thickness of the walls, and hoping no ricochet would get him, Henry sheltered in a protecting angle and waited for the explosion.