I AM TRIED AND TORTURED BY THE SPANIARDS.
My heart was sad enough and heavy enough, I warrant the reader, as
I turned my back upon the sea, and toiled through the dry hot sand
of the beach, followed by a group of the boat’s crew. There was no
one stirring in the town, only we heard the echo of songs, and the
jingle of glasses, from taverns or posadas, where drunken sailors
were carousing. Presently we passed through several very narrow
streets, not savoury by any means; for rotting garbage lay thick and
foul around, and overhead the far-projecting eaves, almost meeting
each other, seemed to have been built so as to keep the stenches
the better in. Once I heard the twangle of a guitar, or some such
instrument. This was as we passed a house, nearly hidden in orange
and other trees, and situated in a retired corner of an open space
amid gardens; and, looking for the musician, I saw beneath a balcony
the slender form of a young man, of just such a size and shape as my
gay cavalier Don José—that is to say, so well as I could judge in
the light of the newly-risen moon. But I had other fish to fry than
to attend to his love-making; for, to tell the truth, I felt by no
means certain that I would not be hanged for a spy. All the stories
of Spanish cruelty I had ever heard—and they were not a few—came up
into my head; and I think, when I called to mind the tortures they
ofttimes put their prisoners to, in order to make them reveal what
they knew of their comrades’ designs, I felt a greater sinking of
heart than even the idea of the halter gave me. But, notwithstanding,
my good Scots blood was but for a minute chilled; and then it rushed
with fiery force through all my veins, and involuntarily I raised my
voice, and made oath by all I worshipped, and all I loved, that they
might wrench my limbs out of me ere they got a word to their purpose.
‘What does the rogue say?’ inquired the lieutenant, for such he was
who walked behind. My sentinels answered that I spoke somewhat in
an outlandish gibberish they could not understand; and presently,
seizing me by each shoulder, they turned down a great arched gateway,
beneath a long straggling house, with pillars in the front, and a
flag over the roof. Here were sentries, who challenged our party and
received the countersign, and then we entered a large bare room on
the ground floor, which was dimly lighted by but one lantern, placed
at a desk, where a soldier, whom I judged to be a sergeant, was
writing. Along the sides of this room ran a slanting ledge of wooden
boards, on which hard bed full a score of soldiers lay sleeping in
their _ponchos_, or loose cloaks.
‘What springald have we here?’ said the sergeant, rising from his
writing, and flinging the full light of the lantern, which did not
cause any very great illumination, over me, as I stood, somewhat
pale, I daresay, and all dripping from my bath. But just at that
moment the lieutenant, who was my captor, entering, the sergeant
saluted after military fashion, and despatching one of his men, the
officer on duty presently walked in, having his uniform doublet
unbuttoned, and a silk napkin tied round his head, as though he had
been roused from an after-supper’s nap.
The officers made each other very ceremonious bows, and then he of
the sea delivered me formally up to he of the land, as a person
unable or unwilling to give any account of myself, and captured
from a strange boat in the harbour, one of the crew of which, at
all event, spoke English. The word made quite a sensation in the
guardroom. The half-waking soldiers rolled off their benches, and
came scowling and muttering about—the sergeant, bestirring himself,
went to his desk, and from a clash of iron there I concluded, and
justly, that he was selecting his heaviest pair of handcuffs—and the
officer with the napkin round his head, who did not appear altogether
sober, crossed himself very religiously, and, cursing me for a
damnable heretic, ordered the men back, telling them that they would
see me much better when I came to be hanged. He then demanded whether
I understood any Spanish? to which interrogatory, as I had previously
determined, I replied that I did a little; and then, to their great
astonishment, I asked very fiercely whether Great Britain and Spain
were at war, that an English mariner was to be dragged out of his
boat while giving offence to none, forcibly bound, and taken to a
Spanish watch-house.
‘_Madre de Dios_—here’s a goodly crowing,’ cried the officer of the
watch; ‘why, thou pernicious heretic and contemner of saints, thou
buccaneering and piratical rogue, for such I see thee with half an
eye, what business hast thou or any of thy pestilent countrymen to
sail these seas, which belong to His Most Catholic Majesty, the seas
of the Spanish Indies? I tell thee thou shalt be hanged, were it
for nothing else but rousing me from a comfortable doze; therefore,
bethink thee of thy sins, and that the more speedily, inasmuch as
their catalogue is, doubtless, long, and thy time as surely short.’
Having made this speech, the gentleman staggered slightly, and then,
recovering himself, looked round as if to say, ‘Who suspects that I
have taken too much to drink? if there be any, let him stand forth
and say so;’ then, shaking his head very gravely, he observed that
the world was getting wickeder every day, and added that he was much
concerned thereat. Here the sea lieutenant, as fearing a scandal,
broke in, and suggested that I should be at once taken before the
alcaide; but the sergeant, assuring him that that was out of the
question, inasmuch as his honour was then supping with his reverence,
the chief canon, and that, above all things, his honour disliked to
be disturbed at meal times—the captain of the guard interposed, and,
swearing that he respected the peculiarity of the alcaide, it being,
indeed, one in which he confessed himself a sharer, ordered the
sergeant to lock me carefully up until the morning, and to give me
the dirtiest cell and the heaviest irons, in honour of the Catholic
religion. Then, addressing me again, he said that I might make myself
easy, for he saw the gallows in my face; and so, taking the arm of
the naval lieutenant, he swaggered out. The sergeant then approached,
holding the irons; these consisted simply of two rings for the
wrists, connected by a chain about six inches long. There was no use
in resisting; so the cold, greasy-feeling metal speedily enclasped my
wrists, each ring locking with a smart snap.
‘How came it that your comrades deserted you, friend?’ quoth the
sergeant, in rather an amicable tone.
‘I will tell you nothing about my comrades,’ I replied; ‘I do not
want to be uncourteous, but you shall hear nothing from me on that
score.’
‘Hum!’ said the sergeant, ‘that is but a bad tone to take. We shall
see about that to-morrow. However, the thing is your own business,
not mine; so come along, and if you are used to lying hard, you can
sleep upon it.’
I followed my jailer, who really was not an uncivil man, through
several long passages, with great doors, studded like the doors of
tolbooths, with iron nails. The lantern cast a dim fickle glare in
these hot airless passages, and the cockroaches went whirring along,
dashing their horny bodies and buzzing wings against the glass
covering the light, and in our faces.
‘Here is your quarters, my Buccaneer,’ said the sergeant, stopping
at a door nail-studded like the rest, and marked No. 15. ‘There are
worse rooms in the place, so you have to thank me for this. Your
countrymen are not always so civil when we fall into their clutches.’
I hastened to assure him that he was quite mistaken in that matter,
but he cut me short, and, unlocking the door, made a sign for me
to enter, saying that there was a chair on which I could sleep if
I had a mind. Then he locked the heavy door behind me with a great
clang and crash, and shot two or three bolts, after which I heard
his footsteps die away as he walked back to the guard-room. The
cell or dungeon in which I was confined was a narrow, bare room;
the door paved with flagstones and very filthy. This I ascertained
by the first step I took. I felt the walls; they were composed of
large roughly hewn stones, very strong and dungeon-like. Up in one
corner, close to the roof, and almost ten feet from the floor, was a
small window, barred with iron. Through this a ray of bluish-tinted
moonlight streamed down, and showed me the chair which the sergeant
spoke of. I dragged it into a corner, and sitting down with a heavy
heart, I began, for the first time since I was taken, to meditate on
my situation. I had never before sat a prisoner in a jail, and the
gyves felt sad and strange upon my wrists. How silent, and dismal,
and hot, the place was! what a change from the breezy deck and the
clattering voices aboard the ’Will-o’-the-Wisp.’ I listened and
listened until I almost thought I could distinguish the deep hoarse
tones of Stout Jem and Nicky Hamstring’s cheering laugh. Was I ever
to see them again? I had my doubts of it. For the present, at all
events, our enterprise was balked. The Spaniards would doubtless send
out a squadron of their armadilloes. The schooner would be forced to
leave the coast, and when or where, even supposing I was to get scot
free out of the hands of my present jailers, I could meet her again,
was but a discouraging question to put to myself. To-morrow I was to
appear before the alcaide, and perhaps his court was but a stage on
the way to the gallows. To be strung up and choked at the end of a
rope—faugh! why did I not die upon a bloody deck, amid the thunder of
our guns, and with the anthem of my comrades’ cheers ringing through
my brain? Or, why was I not to take up my rest like my father before
me in the sea, which was my home, swept over by a stifling wave in
some wild mid-watch, or calmly sinking with the sinking ship? These
were not pleasant subjects to ponder on, but they would flow into my
head as water drains into a leaky vessel. I tried hard, but vainly,
to keep them out. I tried to sing a jolly sea song I had often heard
my comrades chant most lustily:
“Aloof! and aloof! and steady I steer,
’Tis a boat to our wish,
And she slides like a fish,
When cheerily stemm’d and when you row clear!
She now has her trim,
Away let her swim.
Mackerels are swift i’ the shine of the moon!
And herrings in gales when they wind us,
But timing our oars, so smoothly we run,
That we leave them in shoals behind us—
Then cry one and all!
Amain! for Whitehall!
The Diegos we’ll board to rummage their hold,
And drawing our steel, they must draw out their gold.”
The first verse of this song, called ‘Sir Francis Drake’s Triumph,’
I got through. In the first line of the second my voice choked as
though there were churchyard dust in my throat. I got up and walked
to and fro in the cell. Through the window I could see the little
square patch of blue sky, dotted as full of stars as the door behind
me was full of nail-heads. Through the opening there floated the rich
smell of flowers and herbs wetted with the cooling dews of the night.
There was a garden, belonging, probably, to the alcaide, or governor,
behind my prison. I tried, why, I know not, perhaps my nervous
restlessness impelled me, to clamber up and look out, but my fettered
hands forbade. So, at length, thinking it wisest to attempt to
compose myself to sleep, I flung me down on the bench, and though the
chill of my wet clothes sent shudderings through me, I at length fell
off into a disturbed doze, dreaming confused and frightful visions,
which every now and then woke me up with a great start.
In the morning I had some bread, stock-fish, and water for breakfast,
and was thereafter conducted before his worship the alcaide. The
chamber which was his court was a barely-furnished room, with a dais,
or raised step, on which was placed a long table. Behind it stood a
comfortable leather chair—the throne of justice. On one side of the
table there was a desk all strewed with papers, where sat the clerk.
There was no bar for the accused, who simply stood in the centre of
the floor, surrounded by his guards or jailers, while a few benches
round the walls furnished accommodation for the spectators. When
I entered, the alcaide seemed just to have taken his seat. He was
a burly, morose man; his swarthy face all torn and seamed by the
smallpox, and a blue scar rising up from one of his black bristling
eyebrows. He had great gold earrings, and his thick brown fingers
were gemmed with rings. The clerk, who sat near, next attracted my
notice. He was an old little man, and all his lean weasen face was
one pucker of wrinkles, out of which gleamed two greenish eyes,
sparkling like those of the ferret, as the creature fixes its long
front teeth in the jugular artery of its prey. As I gazed upon the
aspect of my judge, and his counsellor and assistant, I felt my
hopes of life and liberty oozing out of me at every pore. Two more
ill-looking gentlemen you might not find in a long day’s search.
The court was tolerably well filled with spectators, for the news
of an English pirate, as they called me, captured in the harbour,
had spread like wildfire, and I found myself the centre of a thick
mass of swarthy faces, and black gleaming eyes, and long curling
jet-black moustaches. The officer of the boat which had captured me,
was placed, out of compliment to his quality, upon a chair near the
judge, and close by him sat the military gentleman who had been so
certain of my being hanged when delivered to him over-night. This man
had very bloodshot eyes, and a fierce look; indeed, he seemed made
of the same kidney as the alcaide, to whom he frequently whispered,
in a hoarse, husky voice. The sergeant or the soldiers I did not see
at all. My jailers were mere ordinary turnkey-looking fellows, not
rougher or more brutal than most of their class. Just before the
proceedings commenced, who should enter but my old acquaintance,
for such I considered him, Don José! He made his way through the
crowd very cavalierly, and ascending the dais, was welcomed by the
dignitaries there, with whom he seemed tolerably well acquainted,
and presently had a chair brought him, and talked and laughed gaily,
until the alcaide hemming loudly, and settling himself in his seat,
the old ferret-eyed clerk took up his pen, and the court was formally
opened.
‘Bring up the prisoner!’ said my judge, and I was moved forward
nearly to the table.
The clerk peered at me with his green eyes.
‘I think the fellow is like one of the gang of that notorious thief
and murderer, called Morgan. If so, the proceedings need not last
long; the individual called Morgan, and all his band, being already
many times condemned for murder, sacrilege, treason, and robbery
committed by them on the high seas, in the islands, on the main, and
elsewhere.’
It was the clerk who spoke thus, in a thin squeak, like the cheeping
of rusty iron.
‘I said, when I saw him last night,’ added the army officer, ‘that
there was gallows written in the heretic’s face.’
‘Strong corroborative testimony that!’—said Don José, with a sneer,
which he seemed not to think it worth the trouble to conceal. ‘Worthy
alcaide, do you not think the case all but proved against the
prisoner? My most astute friend, Lopez’—here he bowed to the clerk,
who glanced back at him with wrathful eye,—‘and my warlike friend,
Guzman’—here he indicated the scowling officer—‘seem inclined to save
everybody, but the hangman, any trouble in the matter.’
The alcaide, whose perceptions appeared none of the quickest, looked
from one to the other of the speakers, with a grim smile, and then
asked whether I could talk Spanish; I answered I could; and so the
examination began. I told very truly my name and country; I said I
was a mariner on board a schooner, sailing under British colours. I
added, that I had been seized by an armed boat, and dragged out of my
own; that the assault had been made upon me and my boat, that there
was no law or justice for it, and that the Spaniards well knew.
Now, although I took this tone, I was very well aware that it would
serve me nothing. For, although England and Spain were at peace,
yet so were never Englishmen or Spaniards to the south of the line;
whichever fell into the other’s hands smarted for it; and that all of
us knew right well, and I had made up my mind accordingly.
‘Friend,’ quoth the spiteful clerk, ‘do not choke yourself with
big words, insomuch as we shall presently save you the trouble by
means of a gallows, which ever standeth in the court-yard, with a
convenient rope.’
‘I knew by his face it is what he would come to,’ replied Guzman.
‘Truly, friend,’ said Don José, addressing him, ‘you have a very
pretty knack at the telling of fortunes—much serving to encourage and
support your fellow-creatures at a pinch.’
‘Silence!’ proclaimed the alcaide, ‘the course of justice must not
be interrupted.’ The little clerk made a bow, and Don José laughed
outright.
‘Why did you enter in your boat the harbour of Carthagena?’ the judge
demanded.
I said, that not recognising his authority to ask I should not answer
the question.
‘Take down,’ said the alcaide, ‘that he denies the authority of the
king of Spain in this, his new empire.’
The clerk obeyed, with a sort of joyful chuckle.
‘On what voyage were you bound?’ I was next asked.
I remained mute.
‘We shall make him find his tongue presently,’ grinned the clerk;
‘even though we should squeeze it out of his thumbs.’
I guessed the meaning of this hint, but still held my peace.
‘Where was your ship when you came into the harbour?—speak, sir!’
thundered the alcaide, ‘or it will be the worse for you.’
But I answered very quietly, but firmly, that these were matters on
which he could not expect me to give him any satisfaction. At this
the little ferret-eyed man grinned and rubbed his hands, after which
he took down my answer, very formally.
‘Dost thou know—thou heretical rogue—that the very shadow of the
gallows is upon thee!’ cried the alcaide. ‘If thou valuest thy
life, at the rate of a brass maravedi, make a clean breast of it.
Confess—speak the designs of the pirates, thy comrades, and it may be
that we will have pity on thy youth; and instead of cutting short thy
days, send thee to labour for some lengthened space in the mines of
Darien.’
There was a pause after this alternative had been offered to me. Then
I collected my thoughts and spoke thus:—
‘I am in your power, and I can make no resistance to your will, but I
pray the judge to consider whether he, a Spanish gentleman, being in
the hands of his enemies, would feel that he did right in betraying
staunch comrades for the sake of his own life. As to your threats, I
fear them but little; I am of a race having stout hearts and tough
sinews, and I tell you, Spaniards, that if I come to evil in your
hands, there will be those left behind me, who will dearly wreak my
death on all men of your nation, whom the fortune of war may fling
into their hands. I speak this not in idle braggadocio; I am young,
and it is hard for me to leave this world, in whom are many I love
well; but I will not save my life by turning a traitor from fear.
There have been Spaniards ere now in my power, and I let them go.
They had not even to ask their lives—they were granted freely. We
English and Scotch mariners love not to spill defenceless blood—we
rather fight with swords and pikes than with halters. But if you be
bent upon my death, I warn you again, that many a Spanish throat
will bleed for it, ere the bark in which I was a mariner see Jamaica
again.’
I spoke this with a warm energy, which surprised myself, and a better
flow of words than I thought I could muster in Spanish. Don José
struck his hand upon the table as I finished, and cried vehemently
out——
‘Well said, by the soul of a Cid! Pedro-y-Monte, you must not hang
this spark. It will do you no good, man. The youth hath a spirit, and
bears himself boldly. Pedro, you must let the fellow go. What, man!
he will not take Carthagena from you; I will insure that, although
my warlike friend Guzman may not feel himself justified in saying so
much, on behalf of his own valour.’
The officer so alluded to, turned rapidly from red to white, and
white to red. He mumbled and grumbled to himself, and then forced
out somewhat about its being known; that he, a simple soldier, could
not compete in word-sallies and figures of speech with so renowned a
courtier as Don José. He was interrupted by the alcaide, who said
that it was ever his pleasure to honour so honourable and great a
gentleman as Don José; but here was a matter in which he but spoke
the written words of the law, and these words said that the doom of
pirates was death.
‘Yes, I grant thee,’ exclaimed my unexpected advocate; ‘but is the
youth a pirate? You go too fast, good Master Alcaide. Justice is
blind; but you see more than there is to behold!’
The alcaide, who evidently wished to keep well with Don José, and
who as evidently wished to string me up, began to get very red in
the face, and to mutter half-suppressed words of passion. Just then,
the ferret-eyed man whispered him at one ear, while Captain Guzman
possessed himself of the other. After listening for a few seconds,
the judge seemed to decide what he should do; accordingly, he hemmed
twice, and began in a loud pompous style—
‘The court,’ he said, ‘hath been in an unseemly manner interrupted
by a noble person now present. Such irregularities cannot in any way
be permitted, even to the highest of the land; and it is therefore
craved that the noble person in question do refrain henceforth from
interrupting the course of justice.’
Don José, at this laughed scornfully, and flung himself back in his
chair, which he balanced upon the hinder legs, twisting and twirling
his moustache at the same time, with the air of a man who deems
his company vastly beneath him, and curling his lip as he did when
relating the miracle of Our Lady of the Hill blowing up the ‘Oxford’
man-of-war.
The wrinkled man next took up the speech. Peering with the bitterest
glances out of the corner of his blinking eyes at Don José, he
squeaked out, that those suffering banishment for offences committed
against the law, were not the most proper supporters of the authority
of his Majesty.
The hidalgo answered, by removing his sombrero, and bowing, with a
wonderful air of mock gravity and condescension, to his reprover.
Then the examination recommenced:
‘Did you not arrive with your comrades off this peaceful coast in an
armed ship, your intent being to kill, sink, burn, and destroy?’ the
alcaide next demanded, with ruffled brow, and a savage eagerness in
his speech.
I remained mute. ‘Silence gives consent,’ said the clerk. Don José
shrugged his shoulders, and leisurely used a golden pick-tooth. The
clerk wrote down something, probably an entry, that I had confessed
that such were our intentions.
‘Were you not taken in the act of playing the spy in the harbour of
Carthagena?’ roared the alcaide again.
I still remained mute. What need was there of speech? The alcaide
and the clerk consulted together; then the former made a sign to one
of the turnkeys, who stood by me. The man nodded and withdrew. This
motion did not escape Don José, who forthwith rose up, and said very
briskly—
‘Señor Monté, beware you do not somewhat transcend your commission.
I have not lost my interest at the court of Castile. That youth may
be a pirate, but you have in noways proved it. Besides he hath borne
himself both modestly and manfully. I am of a house which hath ever
protected the weak against the strong; and I swear, by your Lady of
the Hill, that if the youth come to wrong, you and your underlings
shall answer and abide the consequence!’
At this, there was a loud and threatening murmur among the
spectators; and the turnkeys, thinking that Don José might attempt
a rescue single-handed, gripped me tightly. As for the alcaide, his
grim and disfigured features grew white, and worked and grinned with
spite, while the little wrinkled man, shaking with rage, whispered
tremulously to his superior. In a minute the alcaide burst out. He
started off his seat, and with his fists clenched, and the shaggy
hairs of his moustache bristling for very passion, he roared out—
‘A pretty thing—a pretty thing I that I am thus crossed and insulted
in my own court; that my warnings and reproofs are set at naught, and
I am threatened on the very judgment-seat! Caramba! Let those who do
so look to it. Who dare come between me and—’
‘And your prey, kite!’ said Don José, with the old bitter sneer
gleaming on his face.
The alcaide foamed at the mouth, and bellowed rather than spoke.
‘The pirate—the pirate shall die the death! I say it! Here prevail no
traitors’ counsels!’
‘Whoso says I am a traitor,’ cried Don José, ‘lies in his foul
throat, and I will push the words back into his lungs with my sword!’
So saying, he advanced upon the judge.
‘Guards—guards!’ screamed out the clerk. ‘Turn out the guards! Where
are the soldiers? Treason! The life of the alcaide is in danger!’
At the same time, the mob in the court, who had hitherto remained
passive, burst into loud execrations, and clenched fists and gleaming
knives were shaken at Don José. The latter drew himself up with that
majestic motion and gesture, which your high-bred Spaniard knows how
to assume, and curling his thin lip, and flashing his black eyes upon
the roaring crowd, stood, unmoved as a stone statue in the aisle of a
minster.
Meantime, the alcaide entirely threw off all appearance of a judge’s
impartiality.
‘Townsmen!’ he shouted, ‘are we to be insulted, spit on, and because,
forsooth, our contemner is a noble of Castile?—are we to cower as
meek as flogged hounds before his highness? I say the fellow before
us is a pirate. He is, at all events, an Englishman, which means the
same thing. He is a heretic and a buccaneer-spy, and he shall strap
for it. Holy Mother! shall we turn loose the rogue to prey upon our
vitals? I hate him—I hate his race! they have spoiled great ventures
of precious merchandise; they have captured ships I equipped; they
have harried treasures I amassed; they pillage and harass our lawful
trade; they intrude themselves on our coasts, and in our seas; they
have burnt Panama; they have taken Nicaragua; they have taken Santa
Maria; they have taken Gibraltar in Venezuela; they have raged and
thirsted for our blood; they are the enemies of our faith, and of our
nation; and so may my right hand wither, may my right arm wither from
socket to wrist, but those of the murthering pirates who come within
my grasp, shall go thieving no more! Said I well, townsmen—said I
well?’
This furious tirade was answered by a great shout from the people,
who crowded round me, cursing and flashing their broad-bladed knives
in my face. One fellow raised his arm to strike; I saw the swell of
the moving muscles, and the glitter of the poised knife, when Don
José, with one bound leaped from the dais, and scattering the crowd,
as a charge of horse scatters broken infantry, he dashed up the arm
raised to stab, and drawing his rapier, the mob fell back from him,
while he shouted in tones which rung like trumpet-notes——
‘Hounds that you are!—would you murder in cold blood an unarmed and
manacled man?’
There was dead silence for near a minute. ‘Alcaide of Carthagena,’
continued my defender, ‘look well to yourself—what I have done, was
that the ends of justice might be served, and I will answer for my
acts. I can do no more—I leave this man in your hands—you shall be
answerable for your treatment of him. Make way there, and permit me
to go forth.’
Again the mob yielded a passage. ‘He speaks like a king,’ said one
fellow. ‘Truly, he hath the bearing of an emperor,’ murmured another.
And so, still holding his unsheathed rapier in his hand, his features
being calm and composed, save that there was on his forehead a slight
flush, and a hot sparkle gleaming in his eye, he passed through the
yielding crowd, who instinctively fell back before him—walking with
the port of a conqueror, who enters a fallen city—this man—a banished
libertine—but still a grandee in whose veins ran the haughty blood of
Old Castile!
As Don José disappeared, I felt that it was all over with me. His
advocacy failing, I stood in a position much worse than before. I
was the cause that a friendship, or at least an intimacy, had turned
to a bitter enmity, and that the alcaide had been publicly insulted
on the judgment-seat. Therefore, I tried to compose my mind, so as
to withdraw it from things of the world, which already began to
seem like matters in which others might have an interest, but which
possessed none for me—like things, indeed, which were but dreamings,
wherein, to him who stands upon the last step of life, is nought,
save only deceitfulness and vanity. I was roused from this fit of
musing by the harsh voice of the alcaide, who, having now recovered
his composure, thought proper, perhaps, to smooth down somewhat of
his last oration.
‘Despite,’ quoth he, ‘despite the ill-advised attempt of a noble
person, now gone forth, to bar the proceedings of this court, the
prisoner may depend upon it he shall receive just judgment at our
hands.’
The clerk grinned to himself, and bowed to his master, who called
upon him to read a decree of the court which it seems had just been
written. It was to this effect:—
‘The accused, a Scots mariner, by name Leonard Lindsay, a buccaneer,
or pirate of the sort called Brethren of the Coast, unlawfully in
arms against his Most Christian Majesty, having refused to answer
certain interrogatories put to him in open court, it is decreed that
his examination be continued in private.’
By the hum which arose, and the broken words I could catch uttered
around me, when this decree was read, I was presently aware of its
real meaning. It signified interrogatory by torture. I clenched my
teeth, and made a great effort to show no sign—not even by the tremor
of a finger—of flinching. The turnkeys touched me on the shoulder,
and I walked mechanically out between them. We passed through divers
corridors, I taking but little notice, however, where we went, until
we arrived in a bare chamber; here there was a heavy table of plain
wood and one or two benches, but most part of the room was occupied
with some machines or apparatus, the nature of which I guessed,
but the forms whereof were concealed by a coarse linen cloth flung
over them. This cloth was stained with patches of blood. Beside the
table stood two men; one of them, a thin, mean-looking personage,
poorly dressed in a worn doublet, with a cold passionless face and
stony eyes. The other was portly and pleasant-looking, and seeing me
advance, eyed me from head to foot, saying at the same time, ‘Hum! a
goodly patient.’
‘_El medico_,’ whispered one of my conductors. He had no cause to
tell me of the profession of the doctor’s companion. Close behind me
came the alcaide, his clerk, and the ruffianly captain. The naval
gentleman was not there, and on the ferret-eyed man asking for him,
an attendant said that senor, the lieutenant, had been sent for in
haste from the harbour. Our group was now ranged in a circle, I being
opposite to the alcaide, the executioner standing on one side of
me, and the doctor on the other. The clerk carried an open book for
writing in, and a turnkey beside him held the ink-bottle.
‘Accused,’ said the alcaide, ‘do you still refuse to reply to the
questions put to you in open court, and which shall now be rehearsed
by the clerk?’
I said I would not put him to the trouble of reading them—I would
tell nothing.
‘Take off his handcuffs,’ said the magistrate. They were removed. The
executioner looked inquiringly at his patron.
‘I am not a cruel man,’ said the latter, drawling out his words, as
though longer to enjoy my suspense and horror. ‘I would not wrench
thy handsome limbs so as to spoil their symmetry. No, no; gentle
means at first, Mr. Provost-Marshal—a squeeze or so on the nerve of
the thumb, no stout-hearted Buccaneer can complain of.’
Instantly the provost-marshal, as though he had anticipated this
commencement, whipped from his pocket a little instrument of iron.
It was a thumb-screw, a ‘thumbikin,’ as my countrymen called it, and
long was it remembered with curses in many a strath, and on many a
hill side, in my native land. For the dragoons of James Graham, of
Claverhouse, were wont to carry them in their pouches or haversacks;
and, many a long year after I had left the Spanish Indies, when I
talked to old Scotchmen about my adventures there, and told them of
the alcaide and the provost-marshal of Carthagena, they would reply,
‘Ay, ay, we know somewhat of such torments. Even here, in Scotland,
many a joint was wrenched, and many a bone splintered, of the men who
in the old troublous days stood staunchly up under the blue banner,
and bore faithful testimony for a broken covenant and a persecuted
kirk.’
But I must hasten with the tale of my own trials.
‘Do your duty, provost-marshal,’ said the alcaide, gloating on the
accursed iron machine; ‘but let us have all things in moderation—one
thumb at a time; the prisoner cannot say that we have no bowels.’
Fortunately for me, as it turned out afterwards, the executioner
stood upon my left. He laid hold of the hand nearest to him with
cold, clammy-feeling fingers, which touched my flesh, to my thinking,
like small twining snakes or worms, and with great dexterity slipped
the iron apparatus upon my thumb, turning at the same time a screw,
so as to make it press tight. The next twist I knew would produce
torture.
‘Accused,’ began the alcaide again, ‘if you choose to tell us what
you know of your comrades’ designs we will, even although your
obstinacy hath been great, proceed no further in this business; if
not, in the name of the law and the king I ordain the provost-marshal
to proceed.’
I said not a word, but drew a long breath, and nerved myself, trying
to fix and resolutely wind up my mind and body to endure. There was a
pause for a minute, and then the alcaide nodded. The provost-marshal
stepped forward, grasped my wrist with his left hand, and then, at
the same time looking steadily into my eyes, twisted the screw round
with a rapid wrench, and instantly a pang, a throb of pain horribly
keen, cut, as it were with a knife, from the thumb up the arm to the
shoulder-blade. I felt a hot flush come out upon my face, and then,
the first agonizing jerk over, a horrible tingling began, pricking
the limb as though myriads of red-hot needles had been thrust into it.
‘Do you still refuse to answer the question?’ said the alcaide. I
bowed. He nodded, as before, and round again went the screw. This
time the agony was fearful. I ground my teeth, my knees shook, and I
felt the cold sweat start out in beads among the roots of my hair.
The involuntary desire to scream was almost overmastering, but I
curbed it with a mighty effort, swallowing down, as it were, the
anguish, by violent efforts of the muscles of the throat. All this
time the group who surrounded me preserved silence. There was a grim
smile upon the face of the alcaide, but the ferret eyes of his clerk
were gleaming with excitement, and his features were twisting with
very pleasure. The doctor and the provost-marshal behaved like two
men engaged in a perfectly-indifferent matter.
Again the alcaide questioned me, again I made the same reply, and
again the provost-marshal wrenched round the screw. This time, amid
the slight squeak of the revolving iron, all heard the crackle of
the bone; the skin too, had given way beneath metallic pressure, and
a gush of black bruised blood spurted over the iron and the thin
fingers of the provost-marshal, and then dropped in thick plashy
globules upon the floor. Almost at the same instant a mist came up
before my eyes, and hid the fierce faces which surrounded me. I
tottered, and leant upon the surgeon, and a cold feeling of sickness
almost unto death gripped my very being, and seemed to stop the
fountains of life. It was the very depth of that suffering which drew
from me the only low shuddering moan I uttered. But hardly had the
sound escaped than there was a tramp of footsteps rushing into the
room, and a loud voice which cried—
‘Señor the alcaide is wanted upon the beach; a schooner with English
colours set, which hath been hovering in the offing all the morning,
is standing in for the harbour, as though she would carry the galleon
even under the very guns of the batteries.’
And in an instant, as though to roar a chorus to the words of the
messenger, the heavy reports of great guns shook the ill-fitting
casements of the chamber; and a great and confused jangle of many
bells, and the echoes of a shouting crowd, came floating together
upon the air. I started up—the mist cleared from before me—even the
sense of pain and sickness left me, and looking with exultation on
the pale and scared faces of my tormentors, I shouted, ‘Huzza! for
the bold Brethren of the Coast! Courage, comrades! courage, and the
day is our own!’
‘Send the fellow back to his cell,’ said the alcaide, very hurriedly.
‘Captain Guzman, turn out your guard. We will finish with him when we
have finished with his comrades in the harbour. Perhaps there will be
more to deal with presently.’
‘The more the merrier,’ said the ferret-eyed clerk, and they shuffled
hastily out together. Meantime, the provost-marshal unscrewed his
thumbikin with as much coolness as he had adjusted it. My hand was
all bloody and swollen. The doctor looked at it, felt the thumb with
his fingers, and then said, ‘My good fellow, your comrades came to
your aid just in time; another wrench and that hand would be of small
use to you for the rest of your life.’
The provost-marshal, who was wiping the blood from his instrument,
smiled meaningly. ‘Why, good doctor,’ quoth he, ‘considering what is
like enough to be the extent of the youngster’s life, I do not see
the great hardship of disabling him.’
The doctor shrugged his shoulders, and walked out. The only turnkey
who remained clapped his hand on my shoulder, and I followed him,
binding up my lacerated hand with a kerchief. I was presently
conducted to the same cell as that which I had already occupied; but,
to my great astonishment, instead of shutting me in and leaving me to
my meditations, the man first cast a rapid glance up and down the
corridor, and then closing the door upon both of us, caught me by the
collar of the doublet, and whispered:—
‘You have a good friend. Keep up your heart, and you may yet have a
chance for your life.’
The blessed words fell upon my ears like rain on parched herbage.
‘Who—who is it? Of whom do you speak?’ I cried, eagerly.
‘Of one who gave a shining doubloon to tell you so much; and he bade
me add, too, that you should hold yourself in readiness for a quick
journey.’
‘But, tell me,’ I interrupted—when we heard the voice of the
provost-marshal without, calling, ‘Lazarillo, Lazarillo, what keeps
you?’ The turnkey made but one bound of it to the door, locked the
cell with a clash, and hurried away, leaving me with an aching
hand, but a palpitating and a very grateful heart. All was not yet
over with me. I had still a right to the rays of the sun. The black
grave, which in my mind I had seen for the last hour continually
yawning before me, was gone. Most blessed of the moods of the heart,
Hope, slid again into my being, and sent the hot blood dancing
madly through my veins. I paced up and down the cell wildly. I
tried to leap at the barred window. The pain of my lacerated flesh
I remembered no more; and clenching both fists, I vowed that, once
without these walls, it was only a dead body which the Spaniards
would bring back. The roar of the conflict in the harbour, which
still continued, worked me up to the highest pitch of excitement. I
sought to distinguish, in fancy, between the guns of our enemies and
those of my friends; and every time I heard the sharp ring of the
smaller metal, which I concluded was fired from aboard the schooner,
I broke out in rhapsodies, calling upon the ball to fly truly home
to its mark, and to hit that pestilent alcaide or his ferret-eyed
clerk. At length I began to cool down, and get somewhat ashamed of
my fervour. Besides, the noise of cannonading abated—the reports of
the guns coming fainter and fainter, as if the fight were being
carried on more to seaward. From this I judged that the schooner
had been beaten off. Indeed, I could expect no other termination
of the attack, which, when I came to think of it in sober earnest,
appeared to me to be little short of madness, and I wondered how
Stout Jem had come to attempt it. From these matters I began to think
more reasonably of my own situation. I little doubted but that my
unknown friend was no other than Don José, who appeared to my mind
to be as singular a mixture of base and generous; qualities as a
man could be composed of. But how was he to help me? Was the mode
of escape to be by force or escalade? To cut the window-bars would
require a file, and to mount to them a ladder. Then, my left hand
was in a bad condition for either working or clambering, and even
should I succeed in making my way into the city, whither was I to go
next? I had no place of refuge, but the woods, and without arms or
ammunition, little hope of aught but a lingering death there, either
by starvation or wild Indians. Indeed, the more I mused, the more
gloomy after all my prospects seemed.
The excitement at the first notion of escape thus passed away. My
wounded hand, although not altogether disabled, was very stiff and
painful, and I had not even the means of washing away the clotted
blood. So, sitting, in no merry mood, pondering, upon my bench, the
slow hot hours crept by. The sunlight came in a fiery stream where
the blue moonbeam had lain the night before. The buzz of insects and
the rustling of rich foliage, waved by the fresh sea-breeze, sounded
cheerily from without, and sometimes a puff, stronger than common,
would find its way into the hot cell, and play round my cheeks and
nostrils, bringing with it the cool, fresh savour of the ocean.
It might have been about one o’clock, when the friendly turnkey
unlocked the door and entered, carrying with him a very fair dinner
of meat and roasted plantains, to which was added a small measure of
generous Spanish wine. I entreated him, all in a breath, to give me
more information touching my projected escape, and also as respected
the fate of the schooner. In regard to the latter affair, the man
said, he believed that the attack had only been a sort of a feint, or
bravado, and that, after some cannonading, a boat with a white flag
had put off from the schooner, which had thereupon ceased firing; but
the Spaniards not being willing to come to any truce with pirates
and sea-robbers, as they called us, had continued to fire upon the
boat, and a ball breaking the oars on one side, and very narrowly
missing the boat herself, those in her pulled round and back to the
schooner. A small squadron of armadilloes then got under weigh, and
the schooner had nothing else for it than to stand out to sea, the
armadilloes following her, and both exchanging long shots at each
other. This I afterwards understood to be a very fair account of the
enterprise, which was indeed undertaken only in the hope of wresting
me out of the Spaniards’ hands. But I had other friends at work, as
the reader will see. The turnkey, who was, or rather pretended to
be, in some agitation at the thought of the work which he had been
bribed to undertake, now told me that about two o’clock, at the hour
when most of the inhabitants of Carthagena are in use to take their
siesta, or day-sleep he would be with me again.
‘You may be thankful,’ quoth he, ‘that you were not taken as
prisoner to the fort, where, indeed, there would be little chance
of escape, let you have what friends you might; but this is not a
regular prison, being only a sort of guardhouse, attached to the
alcaide’s mansion, for the convenience of keeping accused persons for
examination. Therefore, once out of your cell, and furnished with
the pass-word, you will have little ado in making your flight to the
woods, where you must shift for yourself—he who has paid me to peril
my place in the matter having no refuge to offer you.’
The reader may be sure that I exhausted myself in compliments and
thanks to my benefactor, whom the jailer obstinately refused to name,
but about whom there was in my mind no doubt whatever. Neither was I
in any great surprise, when I came attentively to consider the state
of matters, at the mode in which the affair was to be arranged, and
the easy compliance for some trifling bribe of the jailer. I called
to mind how often I had been told that, in almost all Spanish prisons
in the Indies, the jailers and magistrates were just as great rogues
as the thieves they dealt with. Nay, I had no doubt but that the
alcaide himself would have taken a bribe to let me go, as readily
as the turnkey, only he would have been very like to break his
engagement, and hang me after all; thus gratifying himself in both
ways. As it was, I considered that my chances were very good. The
turnkey did not at all seem to apprehend any interruption from his
comrades. ‘We live in very good intelligence,’ quoth he; ‘and none of
us cares to spoil the other’s game. There is but one man I dread, and
he, I hope, is out of the way. Curses on that sharp-eyed clerk of the
alcaide’s, he takes a pleasure in marring the best-laid schemes.’
But I swore within myself, that were I interrupted by this official,
he would have small chance of ever looking out of his ferret-eyes
again. I think the jailer understood what was passing in my mind,
although I spoke not, for he smiled meaningly, as he said, peering
into my face, with a curious expression on his own—
‘And this clerk is but a weak slip of a man after all. I warrant you
a stout fellow would smash his brittle bones as easily as I would so
many pipe-stems. However, that is no business of mine. In half an
hour, Señor the Buccaneer, all will be ready.’