He could hold his breath no longer. His blood throbbed painfully in his temples. An awful nausea overcame him, and he gasped for air.
Then a sharp sound as of the discharge of a cannon sounded in his ears and he fought and struggled with the strength of a score of men for the precious air.
CHAPTER XX
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE STRONGHOLD
While Phil and O’Neil were being tortured by Espinosa, Lopez had kept watch from his station, guarding the trail leading up the precipitous mountain from the valley below. His eyes fascinatedly held upon the scene in front of him had nevertheless guardedly turned backward, scanning anxiously the wooded foothills below him and the vista of the river as it entered the cañon. As yet no signs of the rescuers were visible. He trembled when he saw that Espinosa had determined to give the midshipman the water torture. But few white men had survived its harshness. Lopez’s face wore an increasingly anxious look as the minutes dragged into hours. The sun had passed the meridian and was dipping slowly in the western sky. His own men had not left their posts; each understood his duty; Rodriguez’s faithful followers alone had been selected to guard this southern bastion of the stronghold. The faithful native could see a handful of Espinosa’s men at the howitzer mounted to command the approach by water and farther along the edge of the precipice small knots of men squatting under shelters of bamboo. These latter he knew were to dislodge great boulders, which had been delicately balanced ready to be thrown downward, five hundred or more feet, into the racing river. Those who dared to enter the treacherous waters of the cañon must run the gauntlet of these huge rocks, but Lopez knew that the Americans would take any risk to reach the trail leading away from the stronghold and further into the mountain fastness, over which the trapped insurgents would endeavor to escape.
Several hundred natives, their weapons in hand, had gathered about their cruel leader. Every eye was turned in rapt enjoyment toward the delighting spectacle of the torture of a despised American. None save Lopez and his faithful guards had observed the glint of steel far down in the valley below. None save he discerned two small white poles creeping along above the high trees on the river bank. He glanced uneasily toward the torture. Phil was on his back securely bound, while Colonel Salas held above his head a long bamboo cane filled with water.
Lopez whispered an order to a native sergeant and the latter noiselessly edged his way in the direction of the sailor, now apparently senseless, deserted by those who had been torturing him, now that they were being indulged in a more interesting spectacle.
Lopez, his heart beating and his bronze face set determinedly, watched the two topmasts of the gunboat as they traveled toward the bend in the river. The next second the “Mindinao’s” white bow came slowly, majestically from behind the land and turned gracefully up the river toward the cañon. At the foot of the trail khaki-clad figures suddenly appeared and mounted slowly up the narrow path. He could see the guides in front clearing and uncovering the treacherous man traps. His men had now seen the approaching deliverers and their black eyes snapped excitedly. Any one with half an eye would have known that something out of the ordinary was going forward. The eager brown soldiers of Rodriguez moved about restlessly, glancing excitedly down into the valley below them. Fortunately the leader and his followers were too absorbed in watching the suffering of poor Phil to take heed of the strange behavior of the deserters from Rodriguez.
Lopez saw the little gunboat stop suddenly in the river and he observed plainly groups of men at the bow guns. Then came a flash of flame from her white hull and a reverberation which shook the mountain stronghold to its foundation.
The tortured and half-dead Americans were forgotten; their captors had rushed away to see the meaning of this interruption. It was but the work of an instant for the watchful Lopez to sever with a few swift strokes of his bolo the cords that bound his white chief. O’Neil was likewise cut down, and the two nearly lifeless men were dragged to the safety of that part of the stronghold guarded by Lopez and his small band.
Shell after shell came speeding up from the gunboat, and meanwhile the khaki-clad soldiers, unobserved, toiled onward up the slope.