This meeting and the cheerful words spoken to us by the old man did
somewhat revive our hopes, more especially when we heard from our guards
that he was a person of some distinction in that city. So we parted,
Pharaoh and I, and were prisoned in solitary dungeons.

For the next three or four weeks I saw no man save my jailers, who fed
me chiefly on bread and water, or on maize, crushed and boiled, which
food did speedily bring me to a low and miserable condition. Indeed,
what the noisomeness of my cell and the loneliness of my state failed to
do the bad food speedily accomplished, so that within a month of my
imprisonment I became a weak and nerveless creature, and was ready to
weep at a rough word.

About three weeks before Easter I was taken before the Inquisitors and
put to the question. Now, I had expected and dreaded this ordeal, and
was not in over good a state to face it when at last it came upon me.
Nevertheless I made shift to summon my courage so that I might show a
bold front to my oppressors.

The Inquisitors sat in a small apartment hung round with black and
lighted by torches, and there was that in their appearance which was
calculated to strike terror into the stoutest heart. Behind a table, set
upon a dais, sat the Chief Inquisitor, with his assistant on one side of
him and his secretary on the other. They were all robed in black, and
their thin, ascetic faces looking out from the dark recesses of their
cowls, had in them neither mercy nor pity, nor indeed aught but
merciless resolution. There were other robed and cowled figures in the
room, but I noticed none of them particularly save the monk Bartolomeo,
who stood there ready to make accusation against me.

There was an interpreter in the apartment, a half-breed named Robert
Sweeting, whose name I desire to put on record, because he did me a
kindness at the risk of his own life. To this man the Inquisitors
addressed their questions, and through him I answered them to the best
of my ability.

They set out by asking me the full particulars of my presence in Mexico,
which questions I replied to with very great delight, as they afforded
me an opportunity of having my say as to Captain Manuel Nunez and his
fellow-villain Frey Bartolomeo, whom I did not spare, though he stood by
and heard me with an unmoved countenance. Indeed, I spake so plainly
concerning him that the Chief Inquisitor stopped me.

"It is not seemly," said he, "to speak in disrespe