ie, to part with the warmth of
sunshine, the taste of food; to break that material servitude to life,
contemptible as a vice, that binds us about like a chain on the limbs of
hopeless slaves. He showered blows upon his chest, sitting before us, he
battered with his fist at the side of his head till I caught his arm. We
could always sell our lives dearly, I said. He would have to defend the
entrance with me. We two could hold it till it was blocked with their
corpses.

He jumped up with a derisive shriek; a cloud of ashes flew from under
his stumble, and he vanished in the darkness with mad gesticulations.

"Their corpses--their corpses--their... Ha! ha! ha!"

The snarling sound died away; and I understood, then, what meant this
illusion of ghostly murmurs that once or twice had seemed to tremble
in the narrow region of gray light around the arch. The sunshine of the
earth, and the voices of men, expired on the threshold of the eternal
obscurity and stillness in which we were imprisoned, as if in a grave
with inexorable death standing between us and the free spaces of the
world.

CHAPTER NINE

For it meant that. Imprisoned! Castro's derisive shriek meant that. And
I had known it before. He emerged back out of the black depths, with
livid, swollen features, and foam about his mouth, to splutter:

"Their corpses, you say.... Ha! Our corpses," and retreated again, where
I could only hear incoherent mutters.

Seraphina clutched my arm. "Juan--together--no separation."

I had known it, even as I spoke of selling our lives dearly. They could
only be surrendered. Surrendered miserably to these wretches, or to the
everlasting darkness in which Castro muttered his despair. I needed not
to hear this ominous and sinister sound--nor yet Seraphina's cry. She
understood, too. They would never come down unless to look upon us
when we were dead. I need not have gone to the entrance of the cave
to understand all the horror of our fate. The _Lugarenos_ had already
lighted a fire. Very near the brink, too.

It was burning some thirty feet above my head; and the sheer wall on the
other side caught up and sent across into my face the crackling of
dry branches, the loud excited talking, the arguments, the oaths, the
laughter; now and then a very shriek of joy. Manuel was giving orders.
Some advanced the opinion that the cursed _Inglez_, the spy who came
from Jamaica to see whom he could get for a hanging without a priest,
was