The unmistakable air of “Back to Back Against the Mainmast” being
whistled openly in the street, caught Henry’s attention, and he was
crossing his big cell to the window when the grating of a key in the
door made him lie down quickly on the floor and feign sleep. Ignacio
staggered drunkenly in, bottle in hand, which he gravely presented to
Henry.
“With the high compliments of our good jailer, Pedro Zurita,” he
mumbled. “He says to drink and forget that he must stretch your neck
to-morrow.”
“My high compliments to Senor Pedro Zurita, and tell him from me to go
to hell along with his whiskey,” Henry replied.
The turnkey straightened up and ceased swaying, as if suddenly become
sober.
“Very well, senor,” he said, then passed out and locked the door.
In a rush Henry was at the window just in time to encounter Francis face
to face and thrusting a revolver to him through the bars.
“Greetings, camarada,” Francis said. “We’ll have you out of here in a
jiffy.” He held up two sticks of dynamite, with fuse and caps complete.
“I have brought this pretty crowbar to pry you out. Stand well back in
your cell, because real pronto there’s going to be a hole in this wall
that we could sail the _Angelique_ through. And the _Angelique_ is right
off the beach waiting for you.—Now, stand back. I’m going to touch her
off. It’s a short fuse.”
Hardly had Henry backed into a rear corner of his cell, when the door
was clumsily unlocked and opened to a babel of cries and imprecations,
chiefest among which he could hear the ancient and invariable war-cry of
Latin-America, “Kill the Gringo!”
Also, he could hear Rafael and Pedro, as they entered, babbling, the
one: “He is the enemy of brotherly love”; and the other, “He said I was
to go to hell—is not that what he said, Ignacio?”
In their hands they carried rifles, and behind them urged the drunken
rabble, variously armed, from cutlasses and horse-pistols to hatchets
and bottles. At sight of Henry’s revolver, they halted, and Pedro,
fingering his rifle unsteadily, maundered solemnly:
“Senor Morgan, you are about to take up your rightful abode in hell.”
But Ignacio did not wait. He fired wildly and widely from his hip,
missing Henry by half the width of the cell and going down the next
moment under the impact of Henry’s bullet. The rest retreated
precipitately into the jail corridor, where, themselves unseen, they
began discharging their weapons into the room.
Thanking his fortunate stars for the thickness of the walls, and hoping
no ricochet would get him, Henry sheltered in a protecting angle and
waited for the explosion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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