me ask you
once more, and for the last time, will you or will you not afford me the
information I require?"

"No, Senor Englishman, I will _not_! I am a Spaniard and Morillo is a
Spaniard, and nothing you can do shall induce me to betray a fellow-
countryman! Is that plain enough for you?"

"Quite," I answered, "and almost as satisfactory as though you had
replied to my question. You have as good as admitted that you can, if
you choose, tell me what I want to know; now it remains for me to see
whether there are any means of compelling you to speak. Take him away
for'ard, and keep a sharp eye upon him," I continued, to the sailor who
had him in charge. "And as you go pass the word for the carpenter to
rig the grating. Perhaps a taste of the cat may loosen this gentleman's
tongue."

"The cat?" exclaimed the half-breed, wheeling suddenly round as he was
being led away; "do you mean that you are going to flog me?"

"Certainly, unless you choose to speak of your own free will," answered
I.

"Very well, then, I _will_ speak; and your blood be on your own head!"
he hissed through his clenched teeth. "I will direct you how to find
Morillo, and when you have found him he will amply avenge your insult to
me, and your audacity in seeking him; he will make your life such an
unendurable torment to you that you will pray him, with tears of blood,
to put you out of your misery. And I shall be there to see you suffer,
and to laugh in your face as he refuses to grant you the boon of a
speedy death."

"That is all right," I answered cheerfully, "I must take the risk of the
fate you have so powerfully suggested. And now, that matter being
disposed of, I shall be glad to hear from you how I am to find your
friend."

The fellow regarded me in stupid surprise for a moment, as though he
could not understand his failure to terrify me by his vaguely awful
threat; then, with a gesture that I interpreted as indicative of his
final abandonment of me to the destruction that I seemed determined to
court, he said--

"Do you know anything of the Grenadines, senor?"

"No," I answered, "nothing, except that they exist, and that they form a
practically unbroken chain of islets stretching between the islands of
Saint Vincent and Grenada."

"That is so," he assented. "One of the most important of these islets
is situate about thirteen miles to the northward of Grenada, and is
called Cariacou. It is supposed to be uninhabited, but