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, Senor!" 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."

He spoke in a velvety voice, and walked away gently through the
darkness. Carlos followed with the lanthorn dangling at arm's length;
strangely enough he had not even looked at me. I suppose he was ashamed,
and I was too proud to speak to him, with my hands and feet tied fast.
The door closed, and I remained sitting in the darkness. Long small
windows grew into light at one end of the place, c