hall you go free. You are your Admiral's dearest friend; you are high
in the English council. Even before you became my prisoner was there not
a general attack planned for to-night? Tell me its nature and the hour.
What force will be left upon the ships? What will be the word of the
night? Tell me if you know aught of a secret way by which the battery
may be flanked!'

"Well, he was silent, and Don Luiz stamped upon the floor. 'You are too
slow of speech, senor. Miguel, make him speak. I have no time to
loiter here!'"

Mexia moistened his lips with his wine. "What do you ask with your white
faces and great eyes, senors?... Oh, yes, he was made to speak--to cry
out to the Lutheran's God, to gasp his defiance to Don Luiz waiting with
folded arms--to wander, as they sometimes do, thinking friends about
him, making appeal to the living and the dead to pluck him out of hell!
at last, with froth upon his lips, to murmur like a child who knows not
War nor one of its usages; like a heretic who communes with God
direct.... I am no better than I am, but I know courage when I see it,
and I tell you, Don Alonzo, that in his torment and his weakness that
man was strong to sweep clear his mind of aught that was to De
Guardiola's purpose. If nature must give voice to her anguish, then,
with bound hands, he kept her far from the garden of his honor. This
until the very last, when he lost knowledge indeed of what the tongue
might say, and bit at his bound arms struggling to hold his peace. Then
De Guardiola signed for the turn of the screw."

At the end of the table, a few moments before, a man had left his place
with no noise, and stooping was now slowly making his way behind the
forward bent row of guests, towards the table of honor. Mexia, making
full stop, drank his wine, and, leaning back in his chair, stared
thoughtfully before him. Amongst his auditors there was an instant of
breathless expectation, then Drake cried impatiently, "Make a
finish, man!"

"There is no more," said Mexia. "He never told, never betrayed. When he
awoke from that momentary swoon there was surcease of torment, there
were Miguel and his fellows making ready to take leave of the day's
work; his bonds were loosed, wine held to his lips; Don Luiz stood over
him with a smile, and still smiling sent for the Commandant of the
battery. All that Desmond had brought to Don Luiz was told over, orders
were written and sent in haste, naught was left undone that De