The reader may be sure that I exhausted myself in compliments and thanks to my benefactor, whom the jailer obstinately refused to name, but about whom there was in my mind no doubt whatever. Neither was I in any great surprise, when I came attentively to consider the state of matters, at the mode in which the affair was to be arranged, and the easy compliance for some trifling bribe of the jailer. I called to mind how often I had been told that, in almost all Spanish prisons in the Indies, the jailers and magistrates were just as great rogues as the thieves they dealt with. Nay, I had no doubt but that the alcaide himself would have taken a bribe to let me go, as readily as the turnkey, only he would have been very like to break his engagement, and hang me after all; thus gratifying himself in both ways. As it was, I considered that my chances were very good. The turnkey did not at all seem to apprehend any interruption from his comrades. ‘We live in very good intelligence,’ quoth he; ‘and none of us cares to spoil the other’s game. There is but one man I dread, and he, I hope, is out of the way. Curses on that sharp-eyed clerk of the alcaide’s, he takes a pleasure in marring the best-laid schemes.’ But I swore within myself, that were I interrupted by this official, he would have small chance of ever looking out of his ferret-eyes again. I think the jailer understood what was passing in my mind, although I spoke not, for he smiled meaningly, as he said, peering into my face, with a curious expression on his own— ‘And this clerk is but a weak slip of a man after all. I warrant you a stout fellow would smash his brittle bones as easily as I would so many pipe-stems. However, that is no business of mine. In half an hour, Señor the Buccaneer, all will be ready.’ CHAPTER XXI. HOW I ESCAPE FROM THE SPANISH GUARDHOUSE—AM CHASED BY BLOOD-HOUNDS IN THE WOODS, AND HOW AT LENGTH I FIND A STRANGE ASYLUM. The clock, from a neighbouring church, struck two. My cell-door opened gently, and the turnkey appeared, carrying in his hand a tolerable-sized bundle, which I eagerly assisted him to undo. It contained a good suit, such as is commonly worn by Spanish sailors, with stout leggings fitted for scrambling in the woods, and a broad-brimmed and steeple-crowned felt hat. The doublet was tied round my waist with a broad silk sash, and into this I stuck a gleaming knife, similar to that carried by almost all Spaniards. But when the turnkey produced, from under his doublet, a short-barrelled carabine, or musquetoon—a _trabucco_, as he called it—with a fair supply of shot and slugs, I burst out into exclamations of gratitude. ‘Long live Don José!’ I cried. ‘I fear not the woods now; there is life and food within this hollow iron.’