Suddenly the voice of the singer ceased, shut off into silence.

There was a half-frightened shout, a flapping of the sails as the square-rigged ship fell out of the night wind for a moment, and then a clamour of loud voices.

"Over the side! Over the side! The man from Lisbon's gone."

Johnnie had jumped to the port taffrail at the noise, and he saw what had happened. He saw the whole of it quite distinctly. A long, lithe figure had been balancing itself upon the bulwarks, giving its body to the gentle motion of the ship.

Suddenly it fell backwards, there was a resounding splash in the quiet sea, and something black was struggling and threshing in a pool of silver water. From the sea came a loud cry—"Socorro! Socorro!"

From the time the splash was heard and the cry came up to the forecastle the ship had slipped a hundred yards through the still waters.

Johnnie jumped up upon the bulwarks, held his hands above his head for a moment, judged his distance—ships were not high out of the water in that day—and dived into the phosphorescent sea.

He was lightly clad, and he swam strongly, with the long left-arm overhand stroke—conquering an element with joy in the doing of it—glad to be in wild and furious action, happy to throw off the oppression of the dreadful things which the little Spaniard had droned upon the deck. He got up to the man easily enough, circled round him, as he rose splashing for the third time, and caught him under the arm-pits, lying on his back with the other above him.

The man began to struggle, trying to turn and grip.

Johnnie raised his head a little from the water, sinking as he did so, and pulling down the other also, and shouted a Spanish curse into his ear.

"Be quiet," he said; "lie still! If you don't I'll drown you!"

Commendone was a good swimmer. He had swam and dived in the lake at Commendone since he was a boy. He knew now exactly what to do, and his voice, though half-strangled with the salt water, and his grip of the drowning man's arm-pits had their effect.

There was a half-choked, "Si, Señor," and in twenty to thirty seconds Johnnie lay back in the warm water of the Atlantic, knowing that for a few minutes, at any rate, he could support the man he had come to save.

It was curious that at this moment he felt no fear or alarm whatever. His whole mind was directed towards one thing—that the man he had dived to rescue would keep still. His mouth and nose were just out of the water, when suddenly there came into his mind the catch of an old song.

He heard again the high, delicate notes of the Queen's lute—"Time hath to siluer turn'd...."

Hardly knowing what he did, he even laughed with pleasure at the memory.

As that was heard, a strong, lusty voice came to him.

"I'm here, master, I'm here! We shall not be long now. Ah—ah-h-h!"

Hull, blowing like a grampus, had swam up to them.

"I'll take him, master," he said; "do you rest for a moment. They'll have us out of this 'fore long."

There were no life-belts invented in those days, and to lower a boat from the ship was long in doing. But the St. Iago was brought up with all sails standing, the boat at the stern was let down most gingerly into the sea, and four mariners rowed towards the swimming men. It was near twenty minutes before Hull and Commendone heard the chunk of the oars in the rowlocks. But they heard it at last. The tub-like galley shadowed them, there was a loud cry of welcome and relief, and then the two men, still grasping the inert figure of him who had fallen overboard, caught hold of the stern of the boat. Willing hands hauled the half-drowned man into the boat. Johnnie and Hull clambered over the broad stern, sat down amid-ships, and shook themselves.

The moonlight was still extraordinarily powerful, and gave a fallen day to this southern world.

As Commendone shot the water out of his ears, he looked upon the limp, prone figure of the man he had rescued.

"Dame!" he cried; "it is the torturer that we've been overboard for. Pity we didn't let him drown."

John Hull had turned the figure of the Spaniard upon its stomach and was working vigorously at the arms, using them like pump-handles, as the sailors got their oars into the rowlocks again, and pulled back towards the shivering, silver ship near quarter of a mile away.

"I'll bring the life back to him, master," said John Hull. "He's warm now—there! He's vomited a pint or more of sea-water as I speak."

"I doubt he was worth saving," Johnnie said in a low voice to his servant's ear. "Still, he is saved, and I suppose a man like this hath a soul?"

Hull looked at Commendone in surprise. He knew nothing about the man they had rescued; he could not understand why his master spoke in this way.

But with his usual dog-like fidelity he nodded an assent, though he did not cease the pumping motion of the half-drowned man's arms.

"Perhaps he hath no soul, master," Hull said, "you know better than I. At any rate, we have got him out of this here sea, and so praise God Who hath given us the sturdiness to do it."

Commendone looked at his henchman and then at the slowly reviving Spaniard.

"Amen," he said.

CHAPTER X

"By your patience, ladies," he said, "I will make endeavour to improvise for you upon a theme. We have spent this day in seeing beauties such as sure I never thought to see with my mortal eyes. We are in the land of colour, of sweet odours; the balmy smells of nard and cassia are flung about the cedarn alleys where we walk. We have sucked the liquid air in a veritable garden of the Hesperides, and, indeed, I looked to see the three fair daughters of Hesperus along those crispèd shades and bowers. And we have seen also"—his voice was almost dreaming as he spoke—"the greatest church e'er built to God's glory by the hand of man. 'Tis indeed a mountain scooped out, a valley turned upsides. The towers of the Abbey Church at Westminster might walk erect in the middle nave; there are pillars with the girth of towers, and which appear so slender that they make one shudder as they rise from out the ground or depend them from the gloomy roof like stalactites in the cave of a giant."

Madame La Motte nodded, purred, and murmured to herself. The whimsical and studied Court language did not now fall upon her ears for the first time. In the fashion of that age all men of culture and position learnt to talk in this fashion upon occasion, with classic allusion and in graceful prose.

But to sweet Elizabeth it was all new and beautiful, and as she gazed at her lover her eyes were liquid with caressing wonder, her lips curved into a bow of pride at such dear eloquence.

Johnnie plucked the strings of the chitarrone once or twice, and then, his eyes half closed, began a simple improvisation in a minor key, the while he lifted his voice and began to sing his ballad of evening colours:

His voice faded away into silence; the mellow tenor ceasing in an imperceptible diminuendo of sound.

There was a silence, and then Lizzie's hand stole out and touched her lover's. "Oh, Johnnie," she said, "how gracious! And did those lovely words come into thy head as thou sangst them?"

"In truth they did, fairest lady of evening," he answered, bending low over her hand. "And sure 'twas thy dear presence that sent them to me, the musick of thy voice hath breathed a soul into this lute."

... They had arrived safely in Seville the night before, spending three days upon the journey from Cadiz, but travelling in very pleasant and easy fashion.

Mr. Mew, the mate of the St. Iago, had business in the city, and while the vessel was discharging its cargo at Cadiz he went up to Seville and took the four travellers with him on board an alijador—a long barge with quarters for passengers, and a hold for cargo, which was propelled partly by oars in the narrower reaches of the river, but principally by a large lug sail.

Don Perez had remained in Cadiz, but the tall and sinister young fellow whom Hull and Johnnie had rescued from the Atlantic came in the barge also. The fugitives from England had little to say to him, knowing what he was. Alonso—which was the man's name—had been profuse in his gratitude. His profuseness, however, had been mingled with a continuous astonishment, a brutish wonder which was quite inexplicable to Elizabeth.

"He seemeth," she said once to her esquire, "to think as if such a deed of daring as thou didst in thy kindness for a fellow-creature in peril hath never been known in the world before!"

Madame La Motte and Commendone, however, had said nothing. They knew very well why this poor wretch, who gained his food by such a hideous calling, was amazed at his rescue. They said nothing to the girl, however, dreading that she should ever have an inkling of what the man was.

On the voyage to Seville, a happy, lazy time under the bright sun, Johnnie could not quite understand an obvious friendship and liking which seemed to have sprung up between Alonso and Mr. Mew, who spoke Spanish very adequately.

"I cannot understand," he said upon one occasion to the sturdy man from the Isle of Wight, "I cannot understand, sir, how you that are an English mariner can talk and consort with this tool of hell."

Mr. Mew looked at him with a dry smile. "And yet, master," he said in the true Hampshire idiom and drawl, "bless your heart, you jumped overboard for this same man!"

"The case is different," Johnnie said; "'twas a fellow-creature, and I did as behoved me. But that is no reason to be friendly with such a wretch."

"Look you, Master Commendone," said Mr. Mew, "every man to his trade. I would burn both hands, myself, before I'd live by sworn torturing. But, then, 'tis not my trade. This man's father and his brother have been doing of it almost since birth, and they do it—and sure, a good Catholic like yourself," here he smiled dryly, "cannot but remember that 'tis done under the shield and order of Holy Church! The damned old Pope hath ordered it."

Johnnie crossed himself. "The sovereign Pontiff," he said, "hath established the Holy Office for punishment of heretics. But the punishment is light and without harshness in the states of His Holiness. In Spain 'tis a matter very different. It was under the Holy Father Innocent IV that this tribunal was created, and the Holy Office in Spain differed in no wise from the comparatively innocuous——"

"What is that, master? That word?"

"It meaneth 'harmless,' Master Mew. What was I saying? Oh, that it differed nothing at all in Spain from the harmless Council which was to detect heresy and reprove it. But during the reign of our good King Edward IV the Holy Office was changed in Spain. The Ebrews were plotting, or said to be plotting, against the realm, and they had come to much wealth and power. Pope Sixtus made many protests, but the right of appointing inquisitors and directing the operation of the Holy Office in Spain was reserved to the Spanish Crown. And from this date, Master Mew, Holy Church at any rate hath disclaimed to be responsible for it. That was then and is now the true feeling of Rome. 'Tis true that in Spain the Church tolerates the Inquisition, but its blood-stained acts are from the Crown and such priests as are ministers of the Crown."

Father Chilches had taught Johnnie his history, truly enough. But it seemed to make very little impression upon the mate.

"Art a gentleman," he said, "and know doubtless more than I, but such peddling with words and splicing of facts are not to my mind. The damned old Pope say I, and always shall, when it's safe to speak! But the pith of our talk, Master Commendone, was that you would not have me give comradeship with this Alonso. I see not your point of view. He is of his time and must do his duty."

The mate snapped a tarry thumb and finger with a tolerant smile. "You've saved him, so that he may go on with his torturin'," he said, "and I like to talk with him because I find him a good fellow, and that is all about it, Master Commendone."

Johnnie had not got much small change from his conference with the mate, but when they arrived at Seville, he saw him and the man called Alonso no more, and his mind was directed upon very other things.

They arrived at the city late at night, and their mails were taken to the great inn of Seville known as the Posada de las Muñecas, or house of puppets, so called from the fact that in days gone by, at the great annual Seville fair, a famous performance of marionettes had taken place in front of it.

The Posada was an old Moorish palace, as beautiful under the sunlight as an Oriental song, and when they rose in the morning and Johnnie had despatched a serving-man to find if Don José Senebria was in residence, he and his companions wakened to the realisation of a loveliness of which they had never dreamed.

The sky was like a great hollow turquoise; the sun beat down upon the Pearl of Andalusia with limpid glory, and played perpetually upon the white and painted walls. The orange trees, only introduced into Spain some five-and-twenty years before from Asia, were globed with their golden fruit among the dark, jade-like leaves of polished green; feathery palms with their mailed trunks rose up to cut the blue, and on every side buildings which glowed like immense jewels were set to greet the unaccustomed northern eye. The Posada was a blaze of colour, half Moorish, half Gothic, fantastic and alluring as a rare dream.

Johnnie heard early in the morning that Don José would be away for two days, having travelled to his vineyards beyond the old Roman village of Sancios. The day therefore, and the morrow also, was left to them for sight-seeing. Both he and Elizabeth had in part forgotten the cloud of distress under which they had left their native land. The child often talked to him of her father, making many half-shy confidences about her happy life at Hadley, telling him constantly of that brave and stalwart gentleman. But she now accepted all that had happened with the perfect innocence and trustfulness of youth. Upon her white and stainless mind what she had undergone had left but little trace. Even now she only half realised her ravishment to the house with the red door, and that Madame La Motte was not a pattern of kindness, discretion, and fine feeling would never have entered Lizzie's simple mind. She was going to be married to Johnnie!—it was to be arranged almost at once—and then she knew that there need be no more trouble, no weariness, no further searchings of heart. She and Johnnie would be together for ever and ever, and that was all that mattered!

Indeed, under these bright skies, among the gay, good-humoured, and heedless people of Seville, it would have been very difficult for much older and more world-weary people than this young man and maid to be sad or apprehensive.

It had all been a feast, a never-ending feast for eye and ear. They had stood before pictures which were world-famous—they had seen that marvellous allegory in pigment, where "a hand holds a pair of scales, in which the sins of the world—set forth by bats, peacocks, serpents, and other emblems—are weighed against the emblems of the Passion of Christ our Lord; and eke in the same frame, which is thought to be the finer composition, Death, with a coffin under one arm, is about to extinguish a taper, which lighteth a table besprent with crowns, jewels, and all the gewgaws of this earthly pomp. 'In Ictu Oculi' are the words which circle the taper's gleaming light, while set upon the ground resteth a coffin open, the corpse within being dimly revealed."

They had walked through the long colonnade in the palace of the Alcazar, to the baths of Maria de Padilla, the lovely mistress of Pedro the Cruel, "at the Court of whom it was esteemed a mark of gallantry and loyalty to drink the waters of the bath after that Maria had performed her ablutions. Upon a day observing that one of his knights refrained from this act of homage, the King questioned him, and elicited the reply, 'I dare not drink of the water, Sire, lest, having tasted the sauce, I should covet the partridge.'"

All these things they had done together in their love and youth, forgetting all else but the incomparable beauties of art and nature which surrounded them, the music and splendour of Love within their hearts.

... A serving-man came through the patio.

"Puedo cenar?" Johnnie asked. "A qué hora es el cenar?"

The man told him that supper was ready then, and together with the ladies Johnnie left the courtyard and entered the long comedor, or dining-hall, a narrow room with good tapestries upon the walls, and a ceiling decorated with heads of warriors and ladies in carved and painted stucco.

It was lit by candle, and supper was spread for the three in the middle of one great table, an oasis of fruit, lights, and flowers.

"Este es un vino bueno," said the waiter who stood there.

"It is all good wine in Spain," Johnnie answered, with a smile, as the man poured out borgoña, and another brought them a dish of grilled salmon.

They lifted their glasses to each other, and fell to with a good appetite. Suddenly Johnnie stopped eating. "Where is John Hull?" he said. "God forgive me, I have not thought of him for hours."

"He will be safe enough," Madame La Motte answered, her mouth full of salmón asado. "Mon Dieu! but this fish is good! Fear not, Monsieur, thy serving-man can very well take care of himself."

"I suppose so," Johnnie replied, though with a little uneasiness.

"But, Johnnie," Elizabeth said, "Hull told me that he was to be with Master Mew, the mate of our late ship, to see the town with him, so all will be well."

Johnnie lifted his goblet of wine; he had never felt more free, careless, and happy in his life.

"Here," he said, "is to this sweet and hospitable land of Spain, whither we have come through long toils and dangers. 'Tis our Latium, for as the grandest of all poets, Vergil yclept, hath it, 'Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum, tendimus in Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas ostendunt.'"

"And what may that mean, Monsieur?" asked Madame La Motte, pulling the botella towards her. "My Credo, my Paternoster, and my Ave are all my Latin."

"It means, Madame," Johnnie answered, "that we have gone through many troubles and trials, through all sorts of changes in affairs, but we approach towards Latium, which the poet meaneth for Imperial Rome, where the fates will let us live in peace."

"In peace!" Elizabeth whispered.

"Aye, sweetheart mine," the young man answered; "we have won to peace at last. Thou and I together!"

For a moment or two they were all silent, and then the door of the comedor was suddenly opened, not quietly, as for the entrance of a serving-man, but flung open widely and with noise.

They all turned and looked towards the archway of the door.

In a moment more six or seven people pressed into the room—people dressed in black, people whose feet made no noise upon the floor.

Ere ever any of them at the table realised what was happening, they found themselves gripped by strong, firm hands, though there was never a word spoken.

Before he could reach the dagger in his belt—for he was not wearing his sword—Johnnie's arms were bound to his side, and he was held fast.

It was all done with strange deftness and silence, Elizabeth and the Frenchwoman being held also, each by two men, though their arms were not bound.

Johnnie burst out in indignant English, then, remembering where he was, changed to Spanish. "In God's name," he cried, "what means this outrage upon peaceable and quiet folk?"

His voice was loud and angry, but there was fear in it as he cried out. The answer came from a tall figure which came noiselessly through the door, a figure in a cassock, with a large gold cross hung upon its breast, and followed by two others in the dress of priests.

"Ah, Mr. Commendone, we meet again," came in excellent English, as the man removed his broad-brimmed felt hat.

"You have come a long way from England, Mr. Commendone, you and your—friends. But the arm of the King, the hand of the Church, which are as the arm of God Himself, can stretch swiftly and very far."

Johnnie's face grew dead white as he heard the well-remembered voice of Father Diego Deza. In a flash he remembered that King Philip's confessor and confidential adviser had told him that he was to leave England for Spain on the morning of the very day when he had rescued Elizabeth from shame.

His voice rattled in his throat and came hoarsely through parched lips. He made one effort, though he felt that it was hopeless.

"Don Diego," he said, "I am very glad to see you in Spain"—the other gave a nasty little laugh. "Don Diego," Johnnie continued, "I have offended nothing against the laws of England. What means this capture and durance of myself and my companions?"

"You are not in England now, Mr. Commendone," the priest replied; "but you are in the dominion of His Most Catholic Majesty; you are not accused of any crime against the civil law of England or of this country, but I, in my authority as Grand Inquisitor of the Holy Office in Seville—to do which duty I have now come to Spain—arrest you and your companions on charges which will be afterwards disclosed to you.

"Take them away," he said in Spanish to his officers.

There was a horrid wail, echoing and re-echoing through the long room and beating upon the ear-drums of all who were there....

Madame La Motte had heard all that the priest had said in English. She shrieked and shrieked again.

"Ah-h-h! C'est vrai alors! L'inquisition! qui lance la mort!"

With extraordinary and sudden strength she twisted herself away from the two sombre figures which held her. She bent forward over the table, snatched up a long knife, gripped the handle firmly with two fat white hands, and plunged it into her breast to the hilt.

For quite three seconds she stood upright. Her face of horror changed into a wonder, as if she was surprised at what she had done. Then she smiled foolishly, like a child who realises that it has made a silly mistake, coughed loudly like a man, and fell in heavy death upon the floor.

CHAPTER XI

It was not dark with the darkness that ordinary men know. At no time, in all probability, has any man or woman escaped a long sleepless night in a darkened room. The candle is out; the silence begins to nibble at the nerves; there is no sound but the uneasy tossing upon the bed. It seems, one would rather say, that there is no sound save only that made by the sufferer. At such hours comes a dread weariness of life, a restlessness which is but the physical embroidery upon despair. The body itself is at the lowest pitch of its vitality. Through the haunted chambers of the mind fantastic thoughts chase each other, and evil things—evil personalities it almost seems—uncoil themselves and erect their heads.

But it is not really darkness, not really despair, as people know when the night has gone and dawn begins. Nor is it really silence. The ear becomes attuned to its environment; a little wind moans round the house. There is the soft patter of falling rain—the distant moaning of the sea.

Furniture creaks as the temperature changes; there are rustlings, whispers, unexplained noises—the night is indeed full of sound.

Nor is it really darkness, as the mind discovers towards the end of the sick and restless vigil. The eye also is attuned to that which limits and surrounds its potentialities. The blinds are drawn, but still some faint mysterious greyness creeps between them and the window. The room, then, is a real room still! Over there is the long mirror which will presently begin to stir and reflect the birth-pangs of light. That squat, black monster, which crouches in the corner of the dark, will grow larger, and become only the wardrobe after all. And soon the air of the chamber will take on a subtle and indefinable change. It will have a new savour, it will tell that far down in the under world the sun is moaning and muttering in the last throes of sleep. The blackness will go. Dim, inchoate nothingness will change to wan dove-coloured light, and with the first chirpings of half-awakened birds the casement will show "a slowly glimmering square," and the tortured brain will sink to rest.

Day has come! There is no longer any need for fear. The nervous pain, more terrible than all, has gone. The heart is calmed, the brain is soothed, utter prostration and despair appears, mercifully, a thing of long ago.

Some such experience as this all modern men have endured. To John Commendone, in the prison of the Inquisition where he had been put, no such alleviation came.

For him there was no blessed morning; for him the darkness was that awful negation of light—of physical light—and of hope, which is without remedy.

He did not know how long it had been since he was caught up suddenly out of the rich room where he was dining with his love—dining among the scent of flowers, with the echo of music in his ears, his whole heart suffused with thankfulness and peace.

He did not know how long it had been; he only remembered the hurried progress in a closed carriage from the hotel to the fortress of the Triana in the suburbs, which was the prison and assize of the Holy Office.

In all Europe in this era prisons were dark, damp holes. They were real graves, full of mould, animal filth, the pest-breeding smells. It was the boast of the Inquisition, and even Llorente speaks of it, that the prisons were "well-arched, light and dry rooms where the prisoners could make some movement."

This was generally true, and Commendone had heard of it from Don Perez.

It was not true in his case. He had been taken hurriedly into the prison as night fell, marched silently through interminable courtyards and passage-ways—corridors which slanted downwards, ever downwards—until in a dark stone passage, illuminated only by the torches which were carried by those who conducted him, he had come to a low door, heavily studded with iron.

This had been opened with a key. The wards of the lock had shot back with a well-oiled and gentle click. He had bent his head a little as they pushed him into the living tomb—a box of stone five feet square exactly. He was nearly six feet in height; he could not stand erect; he could not stretch himself at full length. The thing was a refinement of the dreadful "little-ease" of the Tower of London and many other secular prisons where wretches were tortured for a week before their execution. He had heard of places like them, but he realised that it was not the design of those who had him fast to kill him yet. He knew that he must undergo an infinity of mental and bodily torture ere ever the scarred and trembling soul would be allowed to wing its way from the still, broken body.

He was in absolute, complete darkness, buried in a box of stone.

The rayless gloom was without any relief whatever; it was the enclosing sable of death itself; a pitchy oblivion that lay upon him like a solid weight, a thing obscene and hopeless. And the silence was a real silence, an utter stillness such as no modern man ever knows—save only the few demoniac prisoners in the cachot noir of the French convict prisons of Noumea.

Once every two days—if there indeed were such things as days and hours in this still hell—the door of the cell was noiselessly opened. There was a dim red glow in the stone corridor without, a pitcher of water, some black bread, and every now and then a few ripe figs, were pushed into the box.

Then a clang, the oily swish of the bolts, and another eternity of silence.

The man's brain did not go. It was too soon for that. He lay a fortnight—ten thousand years it seemed to him—in this box of horror.

He was not to die yet. He was not even to lose his mind; of that he was perfectly aware. He was no ordinary prisoner. No usual fate was in store for him; that also he knew. A charge of heresy in his case was absurd. No witnesses could be brought who, speaking truth, could condemn him for heresy. But what Don Perez had told him was now easily understood. He was in a place where there was no appeal, a situation with no egress.

There was not the slightest doubt in his mind that a dreadful vengeance was to be taken upon him for his treatment of the King of Spain. The Holy Office was a royal court provided with ecclesiastical weapons. Its familiars had got him in their grip; he was to die the death.

As he lay motionless day after day, night after night, in the silence—the hideous silence without light—the walls so close, pressing on him, forbidding him free movement, at every moment seeming as if they would rush together and crush him in this night of Erebus, he began to have visitors.

Sometimes a sulphurous radiance would fill the place. He would see the bowing, mocking figure of King Philip, the long yellow face looking down upon him with a malign smile. He would hear a great hoarse voice, and a little woman with a shrivelled face and covered with jewels, would squeak and gibber at him. Then, with a clank of armour, and a sudden fresh smell of the fields, Sir Henry Commendone would stand there, with a "How like you this life of the pit, Johnnie?" ... "How like you this blackness, my son?"

Then he would put up his hands and press these grisly phantoms out of the dark. He would press them away with one great effort of the will.

They would go, and he remained trembling in the chill, damp negation of light, which was so far more than darkness. He would grope for the pieces of his miserable food, and search the earthen pitcher for water.

And all this, these tortures beyond belief, beyond understanding of the ordinary man, were but as soft couches to one who is weary, food to one hungered, water to lips parched in a desert—compared with the deepest, unutterable descent of all.

The cold and stinking blackness which held him tight as a fossil in a bed of clay was not the worst. His eyes that saw nothing, his limbs that were shot with cramping pain, his nostrils and stomach that could not endure this uncleaned cage, were a torture beyond thinking.

Many a time he thought of the mercy of Bishop Bonner and Queen Mary—the mercy that let a gentleman ride under the pleasant skies of England to a twenty minutes' death—God! these were pleasant tortures! His own present hopelessness, all that he endured in body—why, dear God! these were but pleasant tortures too, things to bite upon and endure, compared with the Satanic horror, the icy dread, the bitter, hopeless tears, when he thought of Elizabeth.

He had long since ceased praying for himself. It mattered little or nothing what happened to him. That he should be taken out to torture would be a relief, a happiness. He would lie in the rack laughing. They could fill his belly with water, or strain the greasy hempen ropes into his flesh, and still he would laugh and forgive them—Dr. Taylor had forgiven less than they would do to him, he would forgive more than all for the sake of Christ and His Maid-Mother. How easy that would be! To be given something to endure, to prove himself a man and a Christian!

But to forgive them for what they might be doing, they might have done, to his dear lady—how could he forgive that to these blood-stained men?

Through all the icy hours he thought of one thing, until his own pains vanished to nothingness.

Perchance, and the dreadful uncertainty in his utter impotence and silence swung like a bell in his brain, and cut through his soul like the swinging pendola which they said the familiars of the Holy Office used, Elizabeth had already suffered unspeakable things.

He saw again a pair of hands—cruel hands—hands with thick thumbs. Had hands like these grasped and twisted the white limbs of the girl he loved? Divorced from him, helpless, away from any comfort, any kind voice, was it not true—was it true?—that already his sweetheart had been tortured to her death?

He had tried over and over again to pray for Elizabeth, to call to the seat where God was, that He might save the dear child from these torments unspeakable.

But there was always the silence, the dead physical blackness and silence. He beat his hands upon the stone wall; he bruised his head upon the roof of darkness which would not let him stand upright, and he knew—as it is appointed to some chosen men to know—that unutterable, unthinkable despair of travail which made Our Lord Himself call out in the last hour of His passion, [Greek: Êli, Êli lamà sabachthaní]

There was no response to his prayers. Into his heart came no answering message of hope.

And then the mind of this man, which had borne so much, and suffered so greatly, began to become powerless to feel. A bottle can only hold a certain amount of water, the strings of an instrument be plucked to a certain measure of sound, the brain of a man can endure up to a certain strain, and then it snaps entirely, or is drowsed with misery.

Physically, the young man was in perfect health when they had taken him to his prison. He had lived always a cleanly and athletic life. No sensual ease had ever dimmed his faculties. And therefore, though he knew it not, the frightful mental agony he had undergone had but drawn upon the reserve of his physical forces, and had hardly injured his body at all. The food they gave him, at any rate for the time of his disappearance from the world of sentient beings, was enough to support life. And while he lay in dreadful hopelessness, while his limbs were racked with pain, and it seemed to him that he stood upon the very threshold of death, he was in reality physically competent, and a few hours of relief would bring his body back to its pristine strength.

There came a time when he lay upon his stone floor perfectly motionless. The merciful anodyne that comes to all tortured people when either the brain or body can bear no more, had come to him now.

It seemed but a short moment—in reality it was several hours—since his jailors, those masked still-moving figures, had brought him a renewal of his food. He could not eat the bread, but two figs upon the platter were grateful and cooling to his throat, though he was unconscious of any physical gratification. He knew, sometime after, that sustenance had been brought to him, and that he had a great thirst. He stretched out his hand mechanically for the pitcher, rising from the floor and pressing the brim to his lips.

He drank deeply, and as he drank became suddenly aware that this was not the lukewarm water of the past darkness, but something that ran through his veins, that swiftly ran through them, and as the blood mounted to his brain gave him courage, awoke him, fed the starved nerves. It was wine he was drinking! wine that perhaps would be red in the light; wine that once more filled him with endeavour, and a desperate desire which was not hope but the last protest against his fate.

He lay back once more, by no means the same man he had been some little time agone, and as he reclined in a happy physical stupor—the while his brain was alive again and began to work—he said many times to himself the name of Jesus.

"Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!"—it was all he could say; it was all he could think of, it was his last prayer. Just the name alone.

And very speedily the prayer was answered. Out of the depths he cried—"De profundis clamavit"—and the door opened, as it opened to the Apostle Paul, and the place where he was was filled with red light.

For a moment he was unable to realise it. He passed one wasted and dirty hand before his eyes. "Jesus!" he said again, in a dreamy, wondering voice.

He felt himself lifted up from where he lay. Two strong hands were under his arms; he was taken out of the stinking oubliette into the corridor beyond.

He stood upright. He stretched out his arms. He breathed another air. It was a damp, fœtid, underground air, but it seemed to him that it came from the gardens of the Hesperides.

Then he became conscious of a voice speaking quietly, quickly, and with great insistence.

The voice in his ear!

... "Señor, we have had to wait. You have had to lie in this dungeon, and I could do nothing for you—for you that saved my life. It hath taken many days to think out a plan to save you and the Señorita. But 'tis done now, 'tis cut and dried, and neither you nor she shall go to the death designed for you both. It hath been designed by the Assessor and the Procurator Fiscal, acting under orders of the Grand Inquisitor, that you shall be tortured to death, or near to it, and that to the Señorita shall be done the same. Then you are to be taken to the Quemadero—that great altar of stone supported by figures of the Holy Apostles—and there burnt to death at the forthcoming auto da fé."

"Then what,"—Johnnie's voice came from him in a hollow whisper.

"Hush, hush," the other voice answered him; "'tis all arranged. 'Tis all settled, but still it dependeth upon you, Señor. Will you save your lady love, and go free with her from here, and with your servant also, or will you die and let her die too?"

"Then she hath not been tortured?"

"Not yet; it is for to-night. You come afterwards. But you do not know me, Señor; you do not realise who I am."

At this Johnnie looked into the face of the man who supported him.

"Ah," he said, in a dreamy voice, "Alonso!—I took you from the sea, did not I?"

Everything was circling round him, he wanted to fall, to lie down and sleep in this new air....

The torturer saw it—he had a dreadful knowledge of those who were about to faint. He caught hold of Johnnie somewhere at the back of the neck. There was a sudden scientific pressure of the flat thumb upon a nerve, and the sinking senses of the captive came back to him in a flood of painful consciousness.

"Ah!" he cried, "but I feel better now! Go on, go on, tell me, what is all this?..."

One big thumb was pressed gently at the back of Johnnie's head. "It is this," said the voice, "and now, Señor, listen to me as if you had never listened to any other voice in this whole world. In the first place, you have much money; you have much money to be employed for you, in the hands of your servant, and from him I hear that you are noble and wealthy in England. I myself am a young man, but lately introduced to do the work I do. I am in debt, Señor, and neither my father nor my brother will help me. There is a family feud between us. Now my father is the head sworn-torturer of the Holy Office; my brother is his assistant, and I am the assistant to my brother. The three of us do rack and put to pain those who come before us. But I myself am tired of this business, and would away to a country where I can earn a more honest and kindly living. Therefore if thou wilt help me to do this, all will be well. There is a carrack sailing for the port of Rome this very night, and we can all be aboard of it, and save ourselves, if thou wilt do what we have made a plan of."

"And what is that?" Johnnie asked.

"'Tis a dangerous and deadly thing. We may win a way to safety and joy, or it may be that we perish. I'll put it upon the throw of the die, and so must you, Señor."

Johnnie clutched Alonso by the arm. "Man! man!" he said, "there is some doubt in your voice. What is it? what is it? I would do anything but lose my immortal soul to save the Señorita from what is to be done to her to-night."

"'Tis well," the other answered briefly. "Then now I will tell you what you must do. 'Tis now the hour of sunset. In two hours more the Señorita will be brought to the rooms of the Question. Thy servant is of the height and build of my father. Thou art the same as regards my brother. If you consent to what I shall tell you, you and your servant will take the place of my brother and father. No one will know you from them, because we wear black linen garments and a hood which covereth our faces. I will go away, and I will put something in their wine which will send my father and my brother to sleep for long hours—sometimes we put it in the water we give to drink to those who come to us for torture, and who are able, or their relatives indeed, to pay well for such service. My people will know nothing, and you, with Juan thy servant, will take their places. Nor will the Inquisitor know. It hath been well thought out, Señor. I shall give you your directions, and understanding Spanish you will follow them out as if you were indeed my blood-brother. As for the man Juan, it will be your part to whisper to him what he has to do, for I cannot otherwise make him understand."

Suddenly a dreadful thought flashed into Johnnie's mind. This man understood no word of English. How, then, had he plotted this scheme of rescue and escape with John Hull? Was this not one of those dreadful traps—themselves part of a devilish scheme of torture—of which he had heard in England, and of which Don Perez had more than hinted?

"And how dost thou understand my man John," he said, "seeing that thou knowest no word of his language?"

The other made an impatient movement of his hands. "Señor," he said, "I marked that you did not seem to trust me. I am here to adventure my life, in recompense for that you did so for me. I am here also to get away from Spain with the aid of thy money—to get away to Rome, where the Holy Office will reach none of us. In doing this, I am risking my life, as I have said. And for me I am risking far more than life. I, that have done so many grievous things to others, am a great coward, and go in horrid fear of pain. I could not stand the least of the tortures, and if I am caught in this enterprise, I shall endure the worst of all. In any case, thou hast nothing to lose, for if I am indeed endeavouring to entrap you, you will gain nothing. The worst is reserved for you—as we have previous orders—for it is whispered that yours is not so much a matter of heresy, but that you did things against King Philip's Majesty in England."

Johnnie nodded. "'Tis true," he said; "but still, tell me for a further sign and token of thy fidelity how thou camest to be in communication with John Hull."

"Did I not tell thee?" the man answered, in amazement. "Why, 'twas through the second captain of the St. Iago, I cannot say his name, who hath been with Juan these many days, and speakest Spanish near as well as you."

Johnnie realised the truth at once, surprised that it had not come to him before. It was Mr. Mew, whom he had tackled for his friendship with Alonso! "Then what am I to do?" he said.

Alonso began to speak slowly and with some hesitation.

"The work to do to-night," he said, "is to put a Carthusian monk, Luis Mercader, to the torture of the trampezo. After that, the Señorita will be brought in, interrogated, and is to be scourged as the first of her tortures."

The man started away—Johnnie had growled in his throat like a dog....

"It will not be, it will not be, Señor," Alonso said. "When Luis is finished with, he will be taken away by the surgeon and afterwards by the jailors. Then they will bring the Señorita and retire. There will be none in the room of the Question but thou, Juan, and myself, wearing our linen hoods, and Father Deza, that is the Grand Inquisitor newly come from England, his notary, and the physician. The doors leading to the prisons will be locked, for none must see the torture save only the officials concerned therein—as hath long been the law. It will be easy for us three to overpower the Inquisitor, the surgeon, and the notary. Then we can escape through the private rooms of us torturers, which lead to the back entrance of the fortress. The caballeros will not be discovered, if bound—or killed, indeed—for some hours, for none are allowed to approach the room of Question from the prisons until they are summoned by a bell. I shall have everything ready, and mules waiting, so that we may go straight to the muelle—the wharf to which the carrack is tied. The captain thereof is the Italian mariner Pozzi, who hath no love towards Spain, and we shall be upon the high seas before even our absence is discovered."

"Good," Johnnie answered, his voice unconsciously assuming the note of command it was wont to use, the wine having reanimated him, his whole body and brain tense with excitement, ready for the daring deed that awaited him.

"My friend," he said, "I will not only take you away from all this wickedness and horror, but you shall have money enough to live like a gentleman in Italy. I have—now I understand it—plenty of money in the hands of my servant to bring us well to Rome. Once in Rome, I can send letters to my friends in England, and be rich in a few short months. I shall not forget you; I shall see to your guerdon."

The man spat upon his hands and rubbed them together—those large prehensile hands. "I knew it," he said, half to himself, "I pay a debt for my life, as is but right and just, and I win a fortune too! I knew it!"

"Tell me exactly what is to happen," Johnnie said.

In the flickering light of the torch, once more Alonso looked curiously at Commendone. He hesitated for a moment, and then he spoke.

"There is just the business of the heretic Luis," he said. "He must be tortured before ever the Señorita is brought in. And you and Juan must help in the torture to sustain your parts."

Johnnie started. Until this very moment he had not realised that hideous necessity. He understood Alonso's hesitation now.

There was a dead silence for a moment or two. Alonso broke it.

"I shall do the principal part, Señor," he said hurriedly. "It is nothing to me. I have done so much of it! But there are certain things that thou must do and thy servant also, or at least must seem to do. There is no other way."

Johnnie put his poor soiled hands to his face. "I cannot do it," he said, in a low voice, from which hope, which had rung in it before, had now departed. "I cannot do it. I will not stain my honour thus."

"So said Juan to me at first," the other answered. "They have been hunting high and low for Juan, but he hath escaped the Familiars, in that I have hid him. For himself, Juan said he would do nothing of the sort, but for you he finally said he would do it. 'For, look you,' Juan said to me, 'I love the gentleman that is my master, and I love my little mistress better, so that I will even help to torture this Spaniard, and let no word escape me in the doing of it that may betray our design.' That was what thy servant said, Señor. And now, what sayest thou?"

"She would not wish it," Commendone half said, half sobbed. "If she knew, she would die a thousand deaths rather than that I should do it."

"That may be very sure, Señor, but she will never know it if we win to safety. And as for this Luis Mercader, he must die, anyhow. There is no hope for him. He must be tortured, if not by you, Juan, and I, then by myself, my father, and my brother. It is remediless."

"I cannot do evil that good may come," Johnnie replied, in a whisper.

Alonso stamped upon the ground in his impatience. He could not understand the prisoner's attitude, though he had realised some possibility of it from his conferences with John Hull. He had half known, when he came to Commendone, that there would be something of this sort. If the rough man of his own rank turned in horror and dislike from the only opportunity presented for saving the Señorita, how much more would the master do so?

For himself, he could not understand it. He did his hideous work with the regularity of a machine, and with as little pity. Outside in his private life, he was much as other men. He could be tender to a woman he loved, kindly and generous to his friends. But business was business, and he was hardly human at his work.

Habit makes slaves of us all, and this mental attitude of the sworn torturer—horrible as it may seem at first glance—is very easily understood by the psychologist, though hardly by the sentimentalist, who is always a thoroughly illogical person. Alonso tortured human beings. In doing this he had the sanction and the order of his social superiors and his ecclesiastical directors. In 1910 one has not heard, for example, that a pretty and gentle girl refuses to marry a butcher because he plunges his knife into the neck of the sheep tied down upon the stool, twists his little cord around the snout of some shrieking pig and cuts its throat with his keen blade....

Alonso could not understand the man whom he hoped to save, but he recognised and was prepared for his point of view.

"Señor," he said, in a thick, hurried voice, "I will do it all myself. You will have to help in the binding, and to stand by. That is all. Think of the little Señorita whom you love. That French lady drove a table-knife into her heart, rather than endure the torments. Think of the Señorita! You will not let her die thus? For you, it is different; I well know that you would endure all that is in store, if it were but a question of saving your own life. But you must think of her, and you must remember always that the man Luis is most certainly doomed, and that no action of yours can stay that doom. You will have to look on, that is all—to seem as if you approved and were helping."

He had said enough. His cause was won. Johnnie had seen Dr. Rowland Taylor die in pious agony, and had neither lifted voice nor drawn sword to prevent it.

"I thank you, I thank you, Alonso," he said. "I must endure it for the sake of the Señorita. And more than all I thank you that you will not require me to agonise this unhappy wretch myself."

"Good; that is understood," Alonso answered. "We have already been talking too long. Get you back, Señor, into your prison, for an hour or more. Then I will come to you. Indeed, more depends upon this than upon any other detail of what we purpose. We who are sworn to torture are distinct and separate from the prison jailors. We are paid a larger salary, but we have no jurisdiction or power within the prisons themselves, save only what we make by interest. But the man who bringeth you your food is a friend of my family, and hath cast an eye upon my sister, though she as yet has responded little to his overtures. I have made private cause with Isabella, and she hath given him a meeting this very night outside the church of Santa Ana. He could not meet with her this night, were it not for my intervention. He came to me in great perplexity, longing before anything to meet Isabella. I told him, though I was difficult to be approached on the point, that I would myself look after the prisoners in this ward, and that he must give me his keys. This he hath done, and I am free of this part of the prison. So that, Señor, in an hour or two I shall come to you again with your dress of a tormentor. I shall take you through devious ways out of the prison proper, and into our room on the other side of the Chamber, so all will be well."

Johnnie took the huge splay hand in his, and stumbled back into the stone box. There was a clang as the door closed upon him, and he sank down upon the floor.

He sank down upon the floor no longer in absolute despair. The darkness was as thick and horrible as ever, but Hope was there.

Then he knelt, placed his hands together, recited a Paternoster, and began to pray. He prayed first of all for the soul of the man—the unknown man—whose semi-final torture he was to witness, and perchance help in. Then he prayed to Our Lord that there might be a happy issue out of these present afflictions, that if it pleased Jesus he, Elizabeth, the stout John Hull might yet sail away over the tossing seas towards safety.

Then he made a prayer for the soul of Madame La Motte—she who had traded upon virtue, she who had taken her own life, but in whom was yet some germ of good, a well and fountain of kindliness and sympathy withal.

After that he pulled himself together, felt his muscle, stretched himself to see that his great and supple strength had not deserted him, and remained with a placid mind, waiting for the opening of his prison door again.

The anguish of his thoughts about Elizabeth was absolutely gone. A cool certainty came to him that he would save her.

He was waiting now, alert and aware. Every nerve was ready for the enterprise. With a scrutiny of his own consciousness—for he perfectly realised that death might still be very near—he asked himself if he had performed all his religious duties. If he were to die in the next hour or so, he would have no sacramental absolution. That he knew. Therefore, he was endeavouring to make his private peace with God, and as he looked upon his thoughts with the higher super-brain, it did not seem to him that there was anything lacking in his pious resignation to what should come.

He was going to make a bold and desperate bid for Lizzie's freedom, his own, and their mutual happiness.

As well as he was able, he had put his house in order, and was waiting.

But for Don Diego Deza he did not pray at all. He was but human. That he lacked power to do, and in so far fell away from the Example.

But as he thought of It, and the words so sacrosanct, he remembered that the torturers of Christ knew not what they did. They were even as this man Alonso.

But Don Diego, cultured, highly sensitive, a brilliant man, knew what he did very well.

Even the young man's wholly contrite and more than half-broken heart could send no message to the Throne for the Grand Inquisitor of Seville.