"What capers!"
"When you've drunk enough you'll tell me why you killed your employer and where General Longorio has taken his wife. Yes, and everything else I want to know." Seizing the amazed Mexican, Dave flung him upon Morales's hard board bed, and in spite of the fellow's struggles deftly made him fast. When he had finished—and it was no easy job—José lay "spread-eagled" upon his back, his wrists and ankles firmly bound to the head and foot posts, his body secured by a tight loop over his waist. The rope cut painfully and brought a curse from the prisoner when he strained at it. Law surveyed him with a face of stone.
"I don't want to do this," he declared, "but I know your kind. I give you one more chance. Will you tell me?"
José drew his lips back in a snarl of rage and pain, and Dave realized that further words were useless. He felt a certain pity for his victim and no little admiration for his courage, but such feelings were of small consequence as against his agonizing fears for Alaire's safety. Had he in the least doubted José's guilty knowledge of Longorio's intentions, Dave would have hesitated before employing the barbarous measures he had in mind, but—there was nothing else for it. He pulled the canteen cork and jammed the mouthpiece firmly to José's lips. Closing the fellow's nostrils with his free hand, he forced him to drink.
José clenched his teeth, he tried to roll his head, he held his breath until his face grew purple and his eyes bulged. He strained like a man upon the rack. The bed creaked to his muscular contortions; the rope tightened. It was terribly cruel, this crushing of a strong will bent on resistance to the uttermost; but never was an executioner more pitiless, never did a prisoner's agony receive less consideration. The warm water spilled over José's face, it drenched his neck and chest; his joints cracked as he strove for freedom and tried to twist his head out of Law's iron grasp. The seconds dragged, until finally Nature asserted herself. The imprisoned breath burst forth; there sounded a loud gurgling cry and a choking inhalation. José's body writhed with the convulsions of drowning as the water and air were sucked into his lungs. Law was kneeling over his victim now, his weight and strength so applied that José had no liberty of action and could only drink, coughing and fighting for air. Somehow he managed to revive himself briefly and again shut his teeth; but a moment more and he was again retched with the furious battle for air, more desperate now than before. After a while Law freed his victim's nostrils and allowed him a partial breath, then once more crushed the mouthpiece against his lips. By and by, to relieve his torture, José began to drink in great noisy gulps, striving to empty the vessel.
But the stomach's capacity is limited. In time José felt himself bursting; the liquid began to regurgitate. This was not mere pain that he suffered, but the ultimate nightmare horror of a death more awful than anything he had ever imagined. José would have met a bullet, a knife, a lash, without flinching; flames would not have served to weaken his resolve; but this slow drowning was infinitely worse than the worst he had thought possible; he was suffocating by long, black, agonizing minutes. Every nerve and muscle of his body, every cell in his bursting lungs, fought against the outrage in a purely physical frenzy over which his will power had no control. Nor would insensibility come to his relief—Law watched him too carefully for that. He could not even voice his sufferings by shrieks; he could only writhe and retch and gurgle while the ropes bit into his flesh and his captor knelt upon him like a monstrous stone weight.
But José had made a better fight than he knew. The canteen ran dry at last, and Law was forced to release his hold.
"Will you speak?" he demanded.
Thinking that he had come safely through the ordeal, José shook his head; he rolled his bulging, bloodshot eyes and vomited, then managed to call God to witness his innocence.
Dave went into the next room and refilled the canteen. When he reappeared with the dripping vessel in his hand, José tried to scream. But his throat was torn and strained; the sound of his own voice frightened him.