"Such an event is, as you say, possible. In that case, your Mexican friends must be content to work their revenge upon my dead body, for I am determined that the living Charles Morton shall never become an object for Spanish vengeance to exhaust its ingenuity upon. But I must leave you for the present. I will come below again in a few minutes, to conduct you to your citadel." CHAPTER XX. Some writers make all ladies purloined, And knights pursuing like a whirlwind; But those, that write in rhyme, still make The one verse for the other's sake. HUDIBRAS. Morton and his companions had left the prison a few minutes past ten o'clock. It was nearly one when an officer, who was up and passing through the plaza for certain good reasons best known to himself, noticed, as he approached the guard-house, that there was an unusual degree of stillness about it; no sentry challenged as he drew near, and indeed there seemed to be none on post. Surprised at this, he entered the porch, or as it is called in New England, the "_pye_-azza," where he found the sentry seated, as before described, and snoring most lustily. Him he attempted to awaken by a very summary process; namely, by tumbling him from his seat upon the ground; but so stupified was the fellow with the drugged wine that he had drank, that after uttering certain unintelligible growlings, he again slept and snored. Passing into the interior, the officer found the corporal and his "brave compeers" as sound asleep and as motionless as the enchanted inhabitants of a fairy castle. After bestowing upon them several sound and hearty kicks, without producing any vivifying effects, he perceived that the door of the inner room, or prison, was wide open, and the room itself as empty as--an author's pockets. On further examination he found a basket, the remains of food, three or four empty bottles and drinking-cups, one or two full bottles, and a phial containing a small quantity of dark-colored liquid, with the qualities of which he did not think it prudent to make himself acquainted by experiment upon his own person; not possessing a particle of the philosophical courage and zeal of Sir Humphrey Davy, who gulped down poisonous gases till it became a matter of astonishment and mystery to his friends, as well as himself, how he contrived to find his way back into this world, after having strolled so far beyond its limits. The phial, however ignorant he was of the nature of its contents, explained, in connection with the empty bottles, the cause of the death-like sleep of the guard.