"I shall write them a fair warning," continued Taltavull, with a frown, "and if the poor fellow is not instantly released I shall give orders to blow up the Cathedral, the _Lonja_, and the Moorish palace where the Captain-General resides. I do not think that they will press matters to extremes after that. The Cathedral is one of the finest specimens of Gothic ecclesiastical architecture extant in the Spanish dominions; the Exchange is certainly the finest piece of Gothic secular work in the world; and the old Saracen palace is a thing these miserable _bourgeois_ set immense store upon. It would be a tremendous blow to take them away, but if they press me I shall not spare the lesson. I've already wired our head office in Barcelona for a consignment of dynamite." "I wish you hadn't such confoundedly destructive notions, old chappie," said Haigh. "It's the one drawback to you as a companion. Good-night, and give me a day's warning when you're going to blow anything up!--Good-night, Cospatric--or, rather, good-morning." CHAPTER XIV. HEREINGEFALLEN! It did not seem that I had been very long turned in when Haigh came to my bedroom and woke me. "Come across to my room," said he, "and see our anarchist shipmate in the process of going crazy." "Whatever do you mean?" I asked, sitting up. "I don't quite know whether I mean what I say, but anyway, come and see for yourself." So I flung off the quilted coverlet, and pattered over the tiled floor on my bare feet, and across the corridor, and saw the anarchist dressed in his long black frockcoat, and apparently in nothing else. He was dancing with fury, reeling out a continuous string of the most venomous Spanish oaths--which, by a peculiar irony of a man of his creed, are drawn almost exclusively from an ecclesiastical basis--and at intervals pounding with one bony fist at a crumpled letter which lay in the palm of the other. Had I not witnessed the fact with my eyes, I should not have imagined it possible that he could so lose his self-possession. I knew him to be a man of strong emotions, but I had always believed him capable of keeping them under iron control. "We have been fooled, laughed at, betrayed!" he screamed. "The wretch that holds the Recipe has been playing with us. 'Us' do I say? He might have played with you and been forgiven. You are but tools; you do not even belong to the inner brotherhood. But he has trifled with me; he has dared to make sport of me--Taltavull--whose edicts have caused thrones to totter, whose hand will soon sweep all thrones away. That can never be forgiven. He cannot live and expiate that insult." From one of his pockets the old man drew a revolver and held it up, resting the barrel on a crooked arm, and aligning the sights at an imaginary enemy. "You two, my comrades, must help me in this just vengeance."