I ached and smarted with my head in a sack, with my mouth full of flour that had gone mouldy and offended my nostrils; I had a sense of ignominy, and I was extremely angry; I could see that the old Don was in his dotage--but Carlos I was bitter against. I was not really afraid; I could not suppose that the Riegos would allow me to be murdered or seriously maltreated. But I was incensed against Fate or Chance or whatever it is--on account of the ignominious details, the coarse sack, the mouldy flour, the stones of the tunnel that had barked my shins, the tightness of the ropes that bound my ankles together, and seemed to cut into my wrists behind my back. I waited, and my fury grew in a dead silence. How would it end--with what outrage? I would show my contempt and preserve my dignity by submitting without a struggle--I despised this odious plot. At last there were voices, footsteps; I found it very hard to carry out my resolution and refrain from stifled cries and kicks. I was lifted up and carried, like a corpse, with many stumbles, by men who sometimes growled as they hastened along. From time to time somebody murmured, “Take care.” Then I was deposited into a boat. The world seemed to be swaying, splashing, jarring--and it became obvious to me that I was being taken to some ship. The Spanish ship, of course. Suddenly I broke into cold perspiration at the thought that, after all, their purpose might be to drop me quickly overboard. “Carlos!” I cried. I felt the point of a knife on my breast. “Silence, Señor!” said a gruff voice. This fear vanished when we came alongside a ship evidently already under way; but I was handled so roughly and clumsily that I was thoroughly exhausted and out of breath, by the time I was got on board. All was still around me; I was left alone on a settee in the main cabin, as I imagined. For a long time I made no movement; then a door opened and shut. There was a murmured conversation between two voices. This went on in animated whispers for a time. At last I felt as if someone were trying, rather ineffectually, to remove the sack itself. Finally, that actually did rub its way over my head, and something soft and silken began to wipe my eyes with a surprising care, and even tenderness. “This was stupidly done,” came a discontented remark; “you do not handle a _caballero_ like this.” “And how else was it to be done, to that kind of _caballero?_” was the curt retort. By that time I had blinked my eyes into a condition for remaining open for minute stretches. Two men were bending over me--Carlos and O’Brien himself. The latter said: “Believe me, your mistake made this necessary. This young gentleman was about to become singularly inconvenient, and he is in no way harmed.”