He awoke feeling thoroughly out of sorts. He had lain down almost fully dressed in case of emergencies, and the discomfort inseparable from a night in one’s clothes was aggravated by the clammy warmth of the atmosphere. His head was aching, his mouth was dry, and he was sticky all over—skin, clothes, and hair. He felt detestably unclean, and began to think longingly of the possibilities of a bathe in the tank.
As if in response to his thought, there came a hail from below his window, and, looking out, he saw Aguinaldo, standing at the water’s edge, clothed in a towel. The Spaniard’s face darkened as he noted Duckworth’s attire. Nevertheless, he wished him a fair good morning and courteously invited him to join him in a swim.
‘He can’t do me any mischief in that kit,’ thought Duckworth. ‘I wonder if I am wronging the fellow!’
He sent back a cheery reply, and in a few moments had swung himself out of the window and was by Aguinaldo’s side, similarly attired.
The tank was of considerable size—some forty feet in length by twenty across. It had obviously been hewn into its present rectangular formation, but no attempt had been made to polish the sides, which remained covered with small excrescences and seamed with minute fissures. Near one corner stood a crude apparatus—a sort of combination between a ship’s wheel and a lock-sluice, by which, Aguinaldo explained, they regulated the water which welled in through a crack in the centre and escaped into the bowels of the earth through an opening in the corner of the tank immediately below the wheel.
To Duckworth it seemed that the water was lower than it had been during the night—it was quite four feet below the edge—an impression doubtless due to the change of light. The fact was, however, vexatious. It had been his intention during his swim, quite unobtrusively, to get out of the water under the third casement from the left and take a glance at the interior. As it was, he perceived there was only one exit from the bath—by a rope ladder close to where he was standing. Whilst he was revolving these things in his mind, the Spaniard’s voice broke in.
‘I am wondering,’ he said, ‘whether it would be possible for a man to cover the entire length of the tank in one plunge. I have tried, and failed. The breadth is as much as I can do.’
Duckworth measured the distance with his eye. It was a sporting suggestion. He poised himself for a moment, and then launched his superb frame out in a magnificent header, neither did he move muscle till his fingers touched the limestone at the far side. When he had shaken the water from his eyes and turned, he saw Aguinaldo had drawn up the ladder.
‘Fairly trapped, Major!’ sneered the Spaniard. ‘Bah! what a fool you are! How you came to the lure of the uniform! It belonged to one Vavasour, of the 14th Dragoons. My merry men brought him in, but those thrice-accursed French have driven them away. That uniform hangs in yonder room as a memorial of an insult to a Spanish hidalgo, and yours shall hang there too.’
So the vision had not lied. Duckworth felt no fear, only a fierce remorse. Had he but verified his suspicions—and the Spaniard could not have prevented him—he would have brought the murderer to execution. As it was: