t out the
place in which the captain's money was concealed. He might as well have
asked him to produce the philosopher's stone. However, pleading the
truth was of no use; his determined requisitor seconded the demand by
snapping a pistol at his breast; having missed fire, he recocked, and
again presented; but the fatal weapon was struck aside by Barbazan, who
reproved the rashness with a threat, and thus averted the steward's
impending fate. It was then with feelings of satisfaction he heard
himself ordered to go down to the hold, and in a moment he was bolted in
among his fellow sufferers.

The ruffians indulged in the pleasures of the bottle for some time
longer, and then having ordered down the females, treated them with even
less humanity than characterized their conduct towards the others. The
screams of the helpless females were heard in the hold by those who were
unable to render them assistance, and agonizing, indeed, must those
screams have been to their incarcerated hearers! How far the brutality
of the pirates was carried in this stage of the horrid proceeding, we
can only surmise; fortunately, their lives were spared, although, as it
afterwards appeared, the orders of Soto were to butcher every being on
board; and it is thought that these orders were not put into action, in
consequence of the villains having wasted so much time in drinking, and
otherwise indulging themselves; for it was not until the loud voice of
their chief was heard to recall them, that they prepared to leave the
ship; they therefore contented themselves with fastening the women
within the cabin, heaping heavy lumber on the hatches of the hold, and
boring holes in the planks of the vessel below the surface of the water,
so that in destroying the unhappy people at one swoop, they might make
up for the lost time. They then left the ship, sinking fast to her
apparently certain fate.

[Illustration: _Horrid abuse of the helpless women in the cabin._]

It may be reasonably supposed, bad as their conduct was towards the
females, and pitiable as was the suffering it produced, that the lives
of the whole left to perish were preserved through it; for the ship must
have gone down if the women had been either taken out of her or
murdered, and those in the hold inevitably have gone with her to the
bottom. But by good fortune, the females succeeded in forcing their way
out of the cabin, and became the means of liberating the men confined in
the hol