LITMIR.BIZ

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claim Ignacio's safeguard. The lieutenant could but be grateful to a man who removed his superior in his favour, and, moreover, brought him a fortune.

      He had no more than assumed this trying position, being drenched to the skin at the very first instant of exposure, before Matasiete at last, with many misgivings pulling at his toes, lifted his head above the flooring, and, with indescribable joy, saw there was no one there.

      "Well, Captain?" was the half-ironical inquiry from below.

      "There is no one, you asses!" was the polite reply, in a gleeful tone.

      Gladsden sighed in relief as deep as the captain's.

      "Stand from under!" added the latter, putting his knife in its sheath. "I am coming down."

      The Englishman was saved!

      He prepared to return within his nook. The imminent danger was over. The rain was unpleasant, and the uneasiness of horses beneath him, which he heard whinnying as if they scented him, as was probable, offered the chance of exciting the curiosity of a Mexican, who would infallibly descry him if he looked up outside. So he wished to cut short the feeling of fatigue which already attacked his wrists and shoulders. But, at the first movement, what he believed a mere fancy was confirmed as fact: the bar was set with an unalterable firmness which spoke volumes for the mason of old, but the metal, in which too much copper had been alloyed, or deteriorated by the weather, was slowly bending, arching over the abyss!

      No time was there to spare. He began by shifting his grip, moving one hand inwards and bringing the outer up to it, to overcome the curve in the rod. He looked to the socket to make sure that it still held, when his anxious eyes met another pair in the very gap. They were the Mexican robber's!

      Matasiete had smelt the powder, at least, he had, in a final and idle sweeping round of the visual ray, perceived the gun of the Englishman, which he had, nevertheless, concealed with unusual and creditable care in the angle of floor and wall.

      Now, Matasiete placidly leaning on the sill of the window, so to call it, fixed his ferocious eyes on Gladsden, gleaming with delight at having so complete a chance to avenge on another his companions' taunts of cowardice.

      "The owl!" he said ironically.

      "You devil!" returned Gladsden, in English, for in such critical moments a man does not display his linguistical acquirements.

      Devil, indeed! Matasiete drew his knife and slowly leaned outward in order to slash the poor wretch's fingers to anticipate their relaxing the grasp on the overdrooping bar.

      The other made an offer to let go with one hand in the hope to get at a pistol to blow out the fiend's brains at a snap shot, but the impossibility of the feat was immediately so impressed upon him, that he grasped with a double hold once more in deeper desperation.

      "Oh! Any death but this waking nightmare!" he ejaculated, as a kind of prayer.

      Before his fingers should be pinched by his own weight, between the metal and the brickwork, he thought, by a final spurt of strength, to leap up and seize the grinning demon.

      "No, you don't!" cried the captain, guessing his aim, and leaning well out over him, gleaming steel in hand, "Thou shalt die like a dog."

      He lifted his arm to strike. Gladsden shuddered in his anguish – his grasp did not relax, rather was it cramped, but he was thrust by his body coming sidewise to the wall, from that direction, and slid thus perforce to the end of the bar downwards. He closed his eyes not to see the knife and fiendish eyes, not to hear the devilish laugh, when a sharp shot resounded below, a bullet shrieked beside his tingling ear, and louder than the cry which the feeling of falling through space wrung from the brave man, seemed the shriek of captain Matasiete, "creased" through the prominent nose.

      Gladsden descended, like a rock loosened from a sierra summit, upon the plain below. Instead of the solid earth, however, he fell upon a warm yielding substance – the backs of a couple of horses. Clutching the mane of one at random – not the one on which he had landed, and of which he all but broke the back and so left paralysed – he was instantly carried away by the frightened steed.

      Behind him, as he was borne helter-skelter over the prairie, converted into a shallow lake, he heard the clamour of the Mexicans startled by the shot, and later by a stampede in reality of their horses. It seemed to him, stunned in a measure though he was, that in the thick of the swarm of quadrupeds madly in flight like his own, but in another direction, there was a figure, black and bowing its head between its steed's ears, with a white object across the saddlebow.

      But it was a mere glimpse! A new Mazeppa, he went careering on an unchained thunderbolt over the prairie, whilst the old Tower quivered in a fresh onset of the tempest.

      CHAPTER VIII.

      THE "LITTLE JOKER."

      There rode a charming little sailing vessel in Guaymas Port. It flew the Chilian flag, was about a hundred and twenty tons register, and was named La Burlonilla, or "Little Joker," which might be interpreted innocently, or as a tacit allusion to the pea used in "thimblerig." She was so coquettish, so fine of run, so light and buoyant, and yet carried a good spread of sail, that the experienced Gladsden reckoned she would do her twelve knots an hour without shipping enough water to drown the purser's cat. But there seemed to be some mystery attending the ownership. The shipkeeper allowed no one to inspect her closely, far less to board her, even threatening our Englishman with a blunderbuss. He heard at the Heaven-and-Liberty Tavern that she was consigned to don Stefano Garcia, kinsman of the general Garcia, mixed up with the intrigues of Santa Anna, a rich merchant-banker, and hide dealer. It was easy to make his acquaintance by constituting him his banker, for a remittance of a goodly amount which came on, via New York and Mexico, just when he most wanted funds to enable him to ascertain what truth dwelt in Pepillo's story.

      Besides, as an old resident of Sonora, he was just the man to help him to find the relict of the bandolero of captain Matasiete, though the reason for this search he took care not to impart to señor Garcia.

      With an affability which was even noticeably extreme, don Stefano accepted the double trust, and begged his new client to come out to his villa soon and dine with him – a pleasant habitude with bankers all the world over.

      Gladsden accepted the invitation. During the dinner – not bad for the place – the guest learnt that the goleta commanded a fancy price, say, twenty thousand dollars, and then would only be sold – not hired – if the owner, a capricious Chilian, rejoicing in the numerous and sonorous appellatives of don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna y Almagro de Cortes, had not changed his intention of living upland on an estate which would shortly become his through a marital alliance.

      After the repast, five or six friends of the host came in, and among them the bearer of the long titles, just taxing our pen again.

      In token of pretensions to be regarded as an unofficial, but all the more important representative of Chili, this dignitary wore a rich costume trimmed with gold, an immense cocked hat, after the style borne by Nelson's enemies who were admirals at Trafalgar, bullion epaulettes that covered his upper arms, high boots coming up over the knee, not to mention a colossal sabre. Under this accoutrement, nevertheless, Gladsden thought no stranger was displayed; and, in fact, before he spoke, he recognised the individual who had grinned at him, like Quasimodo at Claude Frollo, dangling from the cathedral turret, out of the gaplike window of the Indian tower. The master of the Little Joker, the Chilian agent, was the captain of the Upper Sonora ravagers – Matasiete himself. The crease across his nose was an additional token.

      Spite of his emotion, the Englishman hoped he had not betrayed the act of quick identification, all the more as don Aníbal, etc., making no sign of recognition, turned to chatting with the others without paying the foreigner any more heed. From a glance which he intercepted between the banker and the pretended Chilian, Gladsden was soon of the impression that there was a complete understanding there. He even jumped to the conclusion that the stranger in the Heaven-and-Liberty Tavern had been instructed to volunteer the hint that had caused our ever imprudent Briton to form acquaintance with the robber's banker.

      "They are a deeper set than I imagined," thought he. "The rogue is a pirate on land and sea. When

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