ceived 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-fe.

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
constit