place crammed to suffocation had become
unbearable. The prisoners crowded towards the window, begging their
guards for a drop of water; but the soldiers remained lying in indolent
attitudes wherever there was a little shade under a wall, while the
sentry sat with his back against the door smoking a cigarette, and
raising his eyebrows philosophically from time to time. Gaspar Ruiz
had pushed his way to the window with irresistible force. His capacious
chest needed more air than the others; his big face, resting with its
chin on the ledge, pressed close to the bars, seemed to support the
other faces crowding up for breath. From moaned entreaties they had
passed to desperate cries, and the tumultuous howling of those thirsty
men obliged a young officer who was just then crossing the courtyard to
shout in order to make himself heard.

"Why don't you give some water to these prisoners?"

The sergeant, with an air of surprised innocence, excused himself by the
remark that all those men were condemned to die in a very few hours.

Lieutenant Santierra stamped his foot. "They are condemned to death, not
to torture," he shouted. "Give them some water at once."

Impressed by this appearance of anger, the soldiers bestirred
themselves, and the sentry, snatching up his musket, stood to attention.

But when a couple of buckets were found and filled from the well, it was
discovered that they could not be passed through the bars, which were
set too close. At the prospect of quenching their thirst, the shrieks of
those trampled down in the struggle to get near the opening became very
heartrending. But when the soldiers who had lifted the buckets towards
the window put them to the ground again helplessly, the yell of
disappointment was still more terrible.

The soldiers of the army of Independence were not equipped with
canteens. A small tin cup was found, but its approach to the opening
caused such a commotion, such yells of rage and pain in the vague mass
of limbs behind the straining faces at the window, that Lieutenant
Santierra cried out hurriedly, "No, no--you must open the door,
sergeant."

The sergeant, shrugging his shoulders, explained that he had no right
to open the door even if he had had the key. But he had not the key.
The adjutant of the garrison kept the key. Those men were giving much
unnecessary trouble, since they had to die at sunset in any case.
Why they had not been shot at once early in the morning he could