The boatswain’s mate was so much in earnest that in spite of the gravity of the situation, Phil could not repress a smile. He suddenly paled, as the thought came to him of what the effects of O’Neil’s rough and ready diplomacy might be. He knew him for an unerring shot, and the leader of the insurrection would be the first to fall. Then their chance for life would indeed vanish.
He grasped the sailor’s hand and breathed:
“For your life take your hand from your revolver. They would shoot us down like dogs if we should give them half a chance.”
Securely bound the three captives were led back the way they had come, through inquisitive crowds of jeering soldiers. The news of the capture and the reasons for it spread rapidly before them. The guards commanded by the vice-consul had great difficulty in bringing them alive to their prison in Mariel. The infuriated soldiers would have torn them limb from limb.
The squalid prison was a relief after this nerve-racking ordeal. The guards, although saving them from fatal bodily injury, could not shield them from the vicious blows, taunts and insults showered on them from all sides. If it had not been for the fear Juarez had for General Ruiz, he would gladly have given them up to these wild beasts.
They were indeed in a sorry plight as they were roughly pushed into a cell of the prison and the heavy oaken door closed loudly behind them.
The lads were stunned. But a half hour ago, they were free men, enjoying their precious liberty in the bright world outside; full of boyish enthusiasm for their discoveries. Now they were held captive by a cruel tyrant who hated their race and to whom they had given good cause. He might, without a qualm of feeling, have them shot as spies. Their country was powerless to help them. In undertaking this duty they had relinquished their claim upon the protection of the United States.
O’Neil was the first to recover from these despondent thoughts. He glanced about their narrow prison, but his gaze failed to discover aught encouraging, so it returned and rested compassionately on the two lads.
They had thrown themselves full length on the rude benches that lined the walls of their cell and had given themselves up to melancholy reflections.
“It won’t do, sir,” O’Neil said, appealingly, to Phil, as the young man looked up with an expression of utter dejection; “you mustn’t give in, Mr. Perry; we ain’t dead yet, and what’s more, sir, we ain’t a going to be, either. Mrs. O’Neil’s son John has been in as tight places before and has come out with a whole hide—— Which is more than he is going to do this time,” he added with a grin, showing a deep cut in his thigh. “That little dago that I knocked down poked his bayonet in there.”