. And
now, having been captured arms in hand amongst Royalists, he could
expect no other fate but to be shot as a deserter.

Gaspar Ruiz, however, was not a deserter; his mind was hardly active
enough to take a discriminating view of the advantages or perils
of treachery. Why should he change sides? He had really been made a
prisoner, had suffered ill-usage and many privations. Neither side
showed tenderness to its adversaries. There came a day when he was
ordered, together with some other captured rebels, to march in the front
rank of the Royal troops. A musket, had been thrust into his hands.
He had taken it. He had marched. He did not want to be killed with
circumstances of peculiar atrocity for refusing to march. He did not
understand heroism, but it was his intention to throw his musket away at
the first opportunity. Meantime he had gone on loading and firing, from
fear of having his brains blown out, at the first sign of unwillingness,
by some non-commissioned officer of the King of Spain. He tried to set
forth these elementary considerations before the sergeant of the
guard set over him and some twenty other such deserters, who had been
condemned summarily to be shot.

It was in the quadrangle of the fort at the back of the batteries which
command the road-stead of Valparaiso. The officer who had identified him
had gone on without listening to his protestations. His doom was sealed;
his hands were tied very tightly together behind his back; his body was
sore all over from the many blows with sticks and butts of muskets which
had hurried him along on the painful road from the place of his capture
to the gate of the fort. This was the only kind of systematic attention
the prisoners had received from their escort during a four days' journey
across a scantily watered tract of country. At the crossings of rare
streams they were permitted to quench their thirst by lapping hurriedly
like dogs. In the evening a few scraps of meat were thrown amongst
them as they dropped down dead-beat upon the stony ground of the
halting-place.

As he stood in the courtyard of the castle in the early morning, after
having been driven hard all night, Gaspar Ruiz's throat was parched, and
his tongue felt very large and dry in his mouth.

And Gaspar Ruiz, besides being very thirsty, was stirred by a feeling
of sluggish anger, which he could not very well express, as though the
vigour of his spirit were by no means equal to the strength