On the whole, I thought the best thing I could do was to wait quietly until the morrow. The night is often fruitful in ideas. I might be acquitted, after all, and if I attempted to bribe the turnkey before my examination, and he should betray me to his superiors, my condemnation would be a foregone conclusion. The mere attempt would be regarded as an admission of guilt.
A while later, the zambo turnkey (half Indian, half negro) brought me my evening meal—a loaf of bread and a small bottle of wine—and I studied his countenance closely. It was both treacherous and truculent, and I felt that if I trusted him he would be sure to play me false.
As it was near sunset I asked for a light, and tried to engage him in conversation. But the attempt failed. He answered surlily, that a dark room was quite good enough for a damned rebel, and left me to myself.
When it became too dark to walk about, I lay down in the hammock and was soon in the land of dreams; for I was young and sanguine, and though I could not help feeling somewhat anxious, it was not the sort of anxiety which kills sleep. Only once in my life have I tasted the agony of despair. That time was not yet.
When I awoke the clock of a neighboring church was striking three, and the rays of a brilliant tropical moon were streaming through the barred window of my room, making it hardly less light than day.
As the echo of the last stroke dies away, I fancy that I hear something strike against the grating.
I rise up in my hammock, listening intently, and at the same instant a small shower of pebbles, flung by an unseen hand, falls into the room.
A signal!
Yes, and a signal that demands an answer. In less time than it takes to tell I slip from my hammock, gather up the pebbles, climb up to the window, and drop them into the street. Then, looking out, I can just discern, deep in the shadow of the building opposite, the figure of a man. He raises his arm; something white flies over my head and falls on the floor. Dropping hurriedly from the grating, I pick up the message-bearing missile—a pebble to which is tied a piece of paper. I can see that the paper contains writing, and climbing a second time up to the grating, I make out by the light of the moonbeams the words:
“If you are condemned, ask for a priest.”