A horrible fear overcame the lad. The water cure was to be given him. He was to be half drowned. To be made to feel all the torturing sensations of a drowning man; not once but many times, until his spirit was broken and he would answer questions which would make him traitorously injure his own cause. His eyes opened, and he saw dimly Espinosa’s mocking face above him. The sun had flamed forth from under a cloud and burned down unmercifully on his staring eyes. He noted vaguely that it had passed the meridian. Then a terrible fear came into his mind. Where were the gunboat and the soldiers? Surely by this time they would have made their presence known. Had the gunboat run aground and the expedition been delayed? Would a delay mean death to him and O’Neil or only one more awful day of diabolical torture? “If you will cease torturing my man,” Phil said with difficulty through his wedged jaws, “I will answer your questions.” Espinosa laughed cruelly. “So you would dictate your own terms,” he cackled. “Colonel Salas, just a few cupfuls. Captain Perry seems thirsty.” Phil swallowed the water as it was poured down his throat, holding his breath long intervals at a time. It seemed to him that the water was never ending; he had swallowed quarts and yet he drank. Finally he could swallow no longer and yet the cruel hand above him poured the liquid without ceasing into his wide open mouth. The water splashed and ran out. He managed yet to breathe by contracting the muscles of his throat and then taking a slow breath but even then he felt the irritation of a few drops of water in his lungs and he knew if he coughed, as he must in a second, that all the water in his throat and mouth would enter his windpipe and fairly choke him. A feeling of suffocation oppressed him, as if a heavy weight lay pressing on his chest. He knew as yet he had not suffered, that this was but a taste of what was to come. Once more, this time as if from a great distance, he heard the cold, sinister voice of the half-breed. “Before it is too late,” he said, “will you answer my questions?” Phil opened his eyes and gazed at his tormentors. Then he closed them and steeled himself to what was to come. He felt his nose held securely by muscular fingers and his head thrown back, making a reservoir of his mouth, which was kept full of water.