Across the Spanish Main - Harry Collingwood (best novels for beginners TXT) 📗

We must now move forward for a period of four months, during which time many changes have occurred.

When the men had escaped from the burning cathedral, Cavendish had mustered them in the plaza opposite, and found none missing except Roger and Harry.

These two were great favourites with the ship’s company, and many willing hands had gone back to bring them out of the smoking edifice; but no traces of them could be found. It was then thought that they might have missed their way on the road down from the fort, and search was made in that direction, but without success.

The town was then thoroughly searched, yet the two friends still remained missing. Eventually, therefore, Cavendish was most reluctantly compelled to sail without them, and many were the conjectures as to what fate could possibly have befallen them.

Since that time Cavendish had taken his fleet round the Horn, and sailed up the western coast of Spanish South America, arriving eventually off the coast of Peru. At Callao he had received news that a plate ship was expected to arrive shortly from Manila on her way to Acapulco, in Mexico, and he had determined to waylay and capture her. And, at the date to which this history has now arrived, he had just intercepted and captured her off the Mexican coast, and taken out of her all her vast treasure—the finest, richest prize that has ever been taken either before or since. And at this point the exigencies of the narrative demand that he must be left.

Meanwhile, our former acquaintance, Alvarez, whom we lost sight of at the Careenage, had successfully made his way through the Cuban jungle, and, arriving at the port of Matanzas, with the remainder of the men, had sailed thence to Vera Cruz, in Mexico, where he had received a high appointment from the viceroy, which he now held.

De Soto had travelled with him to Mexico, and, for so gallant a gentleman, had been singularly unfortunate. Alvarez had found it impossible to disabuse his mind of the idea that de Soto had the cryptogram in his possession, and, remembering what had been said by him about the Holy Office, had brought the fact before the notice of that body, repeating de Soto’s remarks and denouncing him as a heretic. The unfortunate man was thereupon seized, thrown into prison, and, under the direction of the villain Alvarez, dreadfully tortured, ostensibly to compel him to retract his words against the Inquisition, but really to enable Alvarez to wring from de Soto the cipher, as the price of his release from prison and torture.

The persistent and unwavering assertions of de Soto that he had not the paper, and knew naught of its whereabouts, were received with incredulity, and the unhappy man was tortured again and again to force from him the disclosure of its hiding-place.

The supposed burning of the cathedral at La Guayra had been merely a ruse to get rid of the spoilers. Several of the priests had hit upon the ingenious idea of setting fire to large quantities of damp straw in certain secluded parts of the building, and the smoke, drifting hither and thither through the interior, had caused the English to believe that the place was indeed on fire, and had occasioned their hasty flight. The disappearance of Harry and Roger, on the other hand, was purely due to chance, and had not, as might be imagined, been brought about by design.

The explanation was simple enough. It happened that the paving of one of the aisles had been undergoing repair at the time of Cavendish’s attack upon the town. One of the large paving-slabs was loose, and Harry and Roger, in their haste to escape, had trodden on it, causing it to tilt, and they had fallen into the vault below; their unconscious bodies being soon afterwards discovered by the priests, when the latter went to extinguish the burning straw upon the departure of the raiders.

They were recognised by the priest who had been present in the building during its spoliation, and who had uttered the warning to the sailors; and he hastened to impart the good news that two of the pirate heretics had fallen into their hands. Thereupon the two lads were promptly delivered over to the tender mercies of the Holy Office, who did with them what they would; but their ultimate fate was to be delayed until they should have been publicly exhibited and tortured in every town of importance in New Spain, as an example of what would happen should any heretic ever again dare to set foot upon their sacred territory.

The two poor lads had been branded and tortured publicly in the plaza at La Guayra—with every refinement of cruelty that yet stopped short of permanent injury,—and thence had been sent to Mexico to undergo similar treatment in its cities; after which they were to be returned to La Guayra to undergo the final punishment of burning alive at an auto-da-fé.

Our next meeting with the two lads, therefore, is as they sit, bowed head on hands, in their small and horribly dirty cell in the building of the Holy Inquisition in the town of Vera Cruz, in Mexico.

They had already been tortured cruelly at La Guayra; but their constitutions were strong and yet unbroken, and the sea voyage from La Guayra to Vera Cruz—during which they had been carefully nursed in preparation for the endurance of further torments—had done wonders in setting them up again; to such an extent, indeed, that they were now almost their old selves, except for the recollection of their sufferings, which they would never forget, and the scars from the instruments of torture, which would remain with them for the rest of their lives.

This was the first day of their imprisonment at Vera Cruz, they having only disembarked from the ship on that same morning.

They had just partaken of the scanty meal put into the cell by an unseen jailer, and were now occupied each with his own thoughts—which were none of the pleasantest—as they sat upon two low stones that served for chairs, which, with a larger block of stone for a table, constituted the sole furniture of the cell.

The cell itself was like a tomb. It was about ten feet long by eight broad and twelve high, lit by one small window which looked out on to a dirty, dingy quadrangle, surrounded on all sides by the buildings of the Holy Office. The unglazed window itself was barred up with stout iron bars, which were deeply sunk into the wall, the thickness of which was fully four feet, and much too thick and strong for them ever to dream of breaking through without the aid of tools, plenty of time, and no interruption. The ledge below the grating was foul, and piled high with the accumulated filth of years; and the cell walls were damp and slimy, covered with a growth of fungus nourished by the hot and steamy moisture. The building itself was some hundreds of years old, having been an Aztec temple before the Spaniards had taken it over and adapted it for its present purpose. The cell door, which had been of stone in Mexican times, consisted now of a thick and solid slab of teak, strongly bound with iron, and stout enough to resist the attack of a battering-ram.

Chancing once to glance upward and toward the door—having heard some slight sound outside,—Roger was just in time to catch sight of an eye—a dark, shining, and sinister orb—glued to a small hole in the door, which he had not before noticed, and which was apparently covered when not in use for spying purposes. It was evident that a watch, constant and strict, was to be maintained upon them, and that therefore any attempt at escape on their part, which they might be ill-advised enough to hazard, would be discovered at once and promptly frustrated. In fact, it appeared that escape was too absolutely hopeless and impossible to be thought of seriously. As Roger glanced up, the eye vanished, leaving them with the unpleasant sensation of being continually watched.

“We are being spied upon, Harry,” whispered Roger. “I saw an eye at the door just now.” And he indicated the place to his friend.

Harry rose and went toward the door, and as he did so both lads caught the sound of a retreating footstep.

“If we had anything suitable,” replied Harry, “we might close it up. But I suppose it would be quite useless for us to do so; they would only clear it out again, and very likely torture us for our pains.”

“Well,” remarked Roger, “if they do here, as they did at La Guayra—that is, always pass our food in through a trap in the wall, and never enter the cell,—we might risk doing it and see what happens. They can but open the hole once more. And we can make no plans, nor indeed can we do anything, while we are watched constantly; so we might try it at all events.”

At this moment, as they stood gazing at the tiny aperture, there was a slight click at the back of them, and, turning round quickly, they saw a platter of food and jug of water inside the cell, and close against the wall; but of the aperture through which it had been passed they could discover no trace in that dim light, even after close and careful examination.

“It is as we thought,” said Roger; “it seems to be the custom in these Spanish prisons never to allow the prisoners to see or speak to anyone, even the jailer. You may depend upon it that we shall never have anyone entering this cell until they come to conduct us to the torture-chamber.” And he shuddered; the recollection associated with the word “torture” was exceedingly unpleasant.

“In that case,” agreed Harry, “we will try the effect of plugging that hole, and see what happens. But first we had better take our meal while we have the chance.”

Their dinner consisted of a slab of some kind of coarse, dark-coloured, ill-flavoured bread, and a bowl of maize-meal porridge such as has constituted the staple food of the natives of that part of the world for centuries.

They ate their food, but, hungry as they were, found great difficulty in swallowing the porridge, so exceedingly unpalatable was it.

Hunger, however, provides an excellent sauce, and they managed between them to finish the supply, and then emptied the water pitcher forthwith, as they were very thirsty.

“Now to hit upon a good way to stop up that villainous spy-hole,” said Harry, and looked around the cell for something which would answer the purpose.

They could see nothing suitable until their eyes fell upon the accumulation of dirt upon the window-ledge.

“Ah! I have it!” ejaculated Roger; and, climbing on Harry’s shoulders, he reached down a handful of the dust.

“Now mix this,” he went on, “with that liquor left from the porridge. That contains a good deal of sticky matter, and will make this stuff hold together.”

They mixed the dirt and dust and floury water all together, and, leaving it for a time to harden slightly, found that the mass held fairly firmly together, and might make a reasonably good plug.

“We must, however, wait for darkness, Roger,” said Harry. “If we put this in after dark it will not be noticed until the morning, by which time it ought to have hardened sufficiently to prevent its being pushed out again. If we were to do it now, it would be noticed when our friend the spy comes