r, Juanito, that we are kings now: and as kings we are bound to
find the reverend fathers' notions of bedding inadequate. Suppose you
collect us half-a-dozen of these mattresses apiece, while I go on and
explore."

I chose three cells for Sister Marta, Felipe, and myself, and set
about dragging beds and furniture from the others to make us really
comfortable. I dare say I spent twenty minutes over this, and, when
all was done, perched myself on a stool before the little window of my
own bed-room, for a look across the city. It was a very little window
indeed, and all I saw was a green patch beyond the northern suburbs,
where the rich merchants' gardens lay spread like offerings before a
broken-down shrine. Those trees no doubt hid trampled lawns and ruined
verandahs: but at such a distance no scar could be seen. The suburbs
looked just as they had always looked in early spring.

I was staring out of window, so, and just beginning to wonder why
Felipe did not return as he had promised, when there came ringing
up the staircase two sharp cries, followed by a long, shrill,
blood-freezing scream.

My first thought (I cannot tell you why) was that Felipe must have
tumbled downstairs: and without any second thought I had jumped off my
chair and was flying down to his help, three stairs at a bound, when
another scream and a roar of laughter fetched me up short. The laugh
was not Felipe's; nor could I believe it Brother Bartolome's. In fact
it was the laugh of no one man, but of several. The truth leapt on me
with a knife, as you might say. The buccaneers had returned.

I told you, a while back, of a small doorway in the inner wall of
the staircase. It was just opposite this door that I found myself
cowering, trying to close my ears against the abhorrent screams which
filled the stairway and the empty corridor above with their echoes. To
crawl out of sight--had you lived through those three weeks in Panama
you would understand why this was the only thought in my head, and why
my knees shook so that I actually crawled on them to the little door,
and finding that it opened easily, crept inside and shut it before
looking about me.

But even in the act of shutting it I grew aware that the screams and
laughter were louder than ever. And a glance around told me that I
was not in a room at all, but in the chapel, or rather in a gallery
overlooking it, and faced with an open balustrade.

As I crouched there on my knees, they coul