The young officer obeyed, and rousing himself for a supreme effort as his last before complete inaction set in, he strove hard. The hands seemed like steel bands about his wrists, and his struggle sent the blood coursing once more through his nerveless arms. Then, with a perfect avalanche of stones falling from the crumbling side, he strove and strained, and, how he knew not, found foothold, drew himself up, and half crawling, half dragged by the buccaneer as he backed up the slope, reached the level part of the passage between the entrance and the doorway of the inner temple, where he subsided on the stones, panting, exhausted, and with an icy feeling running through his nerves. "Commodore Junk," he whispered hoarsely as he lay in the semi-darkness, "you have saved my life." "As you saved mine." Those two lay there in the gloomy passage listening to the solemn whisperings and lappings of the water, which seemed to be continued for an almost interminable time before they died out, and once more all was silent. But the expectancy remained. It seemed to both that at any moment the miserable would-be assassin might rise to the surface and shriek for help, or that perhaps he was still above water, clinging to the side of the cenote, paralysed with fear, and that as soon as he recovered himself he would make the hideous gulf echo with his appeals. By degrees, though, as the heavy laboured panting of their breasts ceased, and their hearts ceased beating so tumultuously, a more matter-of-fact way of looking at their position came over them. "Try if you can walk now," said the buccaneer in a low voice. "You will be better in your own place." "Yes--soon," replied Humphrey, abruptly; and once more there was silence, a silence broken at last by the buccaneer. "Captain Armstrong," he said softly, at last, "surely we can now be friends!" "Friends? No! Why can we?" cried Humphrey, angrily. "Because I claim your life, the life that I saved, as mine--because I owe you mine!" "No, no! I tell you it is impossible! Enemies, sir, enemies to the bitter end. You forget why I came out here!" "No," said the buccaneer, sadly. "You came to take my life--to destroy my people--but Fate said otherwise, and you became my prisoner--your life forfeited to me!" "A life you dare not take!" cried Humphrey, sternly. "I am one of the king's officers--your king's men." "I have no king!" "Nonsense, man! You are a subject of His Majesty King George." "No!" cried the buccaneer. "When that monarch ceased to give his people the protection they asked, and cruelly and unjustly banished them across the seas for no greater crime than defending a sister's honour from a villain, that king deserved no more obedience from those he wronged."