Confess or--"

A slight quiver passed up the taut rope from the racked limbs, but the
body of Senor Hirsch, enterprising business man from Esmeralda, hung
under the heavy beam perpendicular and silent, facing the colonel
awfully. The inflow of the night air, cooled by the snows of the Sierra,
spread gradually a delicious freshness through the close heat of the
room.

"Speak--thief--scoundrel--picaro--or--"

Sotillo had seized the riding-whip, and stood with his arm lifted up.
For a word, for one little word, he felt he would have knelt, cringed,
grovelled on the floor before the drowsy, conscious stare of those fixed
eyeballs starting out of the grimy, dishevelled head that drooped very
still with its mouth closed askew. The colonel ground his teeth with
rage and struck. The rope vibrated leisurely to the blow, like the long
string of a pendulum starting from a rest. But no swinging motion was
imparted to the body of Senor Hirsch, the well-known hide merchant on
the coast. With a convulsive effort of the twisted arms it leaped up a
few inches, curling upon itself like a fish on the end of a line. Senor
Hirsch's head was flung back on his straining throat; his chin trembled.
For a moment the rattle of his chattering teeth pervaded the vast,
shadowy room, where the candles made a patch of light round the two
flames burning side by side. And as Sotillo, staying his raised hand,
waited for him to speak, with the sudden flash of a grin and a straining
forward of the wrenched shoulders, he spat violently into his face.

The uplifted whip fell, and the colonel sprang back with a low cry of
dismay, as if aspersed by a jet of deadly venom. Quick as thought he
snatched up his revolver, and fired twice. The report and the concussion
of the shots seemed to throw him at once from ungovernable rage into
idiotic stupor. He stood with drooping jaw and stony eyes. What had he
done, Sangre de Dios! What had he done? He was basely appalled at his
impulsive act, sealing for ever these lips from which so much was to
be extorted. What could he say? How could he explain? Ideas of headlong
flight somewhere, anywhere, passed through his mind; even the craven and
absurd notion of hiding under the table occurred to his cowardice.
It was too late; his officers had rushed in tumultuously, in a great
clatter of scabbards, clamouring, with astonishment and wonder. But
since they did not immediately proceed to plunge their swords into his
breast,