It wasn’t much, but somehow to the condemned Americans even this scrap of cheerful conversation, forced from despairing hearts, was something. They stepped forward with a new confidence and faced the gibes and missiles of the street crowds with stiff upper lips. It was not long before their guard turned into a filthy alleyway. Marching a short distance up this narrow thoroughfare, the sergeant halted his file of men before a big oak door, studded with huge nails. He opened it, and a rush of fetid air poured out from the dark interior on which the portal opened. It was the Dreadnought Boys’ first taste of the breath of a South American prison. The guard motioned for them to enter. They did so, stumbling half blindly into the odoriferous, gloomy place. The next instant the door clanged to, and they heard a metallic jangling, as the fastenings were secured on the outside. The middy, the full sense of their predicament breaking upon him at last, threw himself on a narrow bench at one side of the chamber. A ray of sun falling through a narrow, barred window high up illumined his shoulders. They were heaving. “Here, come over this way,” muttered Stanley. “It isn’t good to see an officer that way.” “Do you think they mean to shoot us?” asked Herc in a shaky voice. “No, sonny, I don’t. These dagoes are great on bluffs. I guess they just want to throw a scare into us. They wouldn’t dare to shoot four Americans at the word of a rat like that Chawedbone.” Although Stanley assumed a light and indifferent tone in the hope of cheering up his comrades, his feelings were anything but confident. Ned also, although he said nothing, could not help recalling outrages he had read of in the newspapers in which Americans had been executed by South American troops, without a chance to defend themselves. But Stanley’s confidence had its effect on Herc and Midshipman Stark. Soon they fell to discussing their situation earnestly. Stanley’s first move was to “get his bearings,” as he called it. With the aid of Ned’s shoulders he clambered up to the window and hung on by the bars. “I can see the sea, anyway,” he called down. “Is there any sign of the _Beale_?” asked the midshipman, with a wild hope for an instant that some chance might have brought her there. The boatswain’s mate shook his head soberly as he alighted once more on the cell floor. “No, sir, there ain’t,” he said, “and even if there were it wouldn’t do us any good.” “Isn’t there a chance of getting out?” Stanley hit the walls with his mighty fist. “Hear that?” he asked; “solid as Gibraltar, as the advertisements say. And to make sure we don’t gouge our way out they’ve got three of those tin soldiers marching up and down in front.” This was the death blow to their last lingering hope of escape. For a time they sat in silence, with bowed heads. Suddenly Stanley straightened up from the bench on which he had been sitting. “Hark!” he exclaimed.