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The key was in the lock and the door opened promptly as he turned it. "Enter," said he. Clif went in, and he heard the door shut behind him. It flashed over him then that he had only been taken to another cell. But when he whirled about he saw that the stranger had entered, too. The dark figure brushed past him and went across the room.
"What we want to do," Clif said, "is to get back in the country a while where we can hide until morning. Then if we can find some Cubans we'll be all right." Clif was about tired to death. He had done far more work that day than any of those sailors. But there was no time for resting then.
"And there are eleven of us here! We can set them on the run! Let's do it." "We have done almost as much on other occasions," said Clif, "but now we are armed with only our revolvers. They are five to one." "We have plenty of ammunition," spoke up the men, eagerly. "You know we took an extra supply."
And Clif gave a gasp of delight as he felt the wild leap forward. It seemed but a second more before the rush ended. The bow of the rowboat struck and the frail object was whirled round and flung over, its occupants being fairly hurled into the air. When they struck the water it was to find themselves within a few feet of dry land.
But his surprise affected him but for an instant. He did not propose to be shot down if he could help it. The report of the pistol that met Clif's gaze rang out upon the air, but the bullet did not reach its intended mark. Like a flash Clif had released his hold upon the boat, and dropped beneath the water, just in the nick of time.
More than one Spaniard had gone to his death to atone for that cowardly assassination. The rear admiral was plainly interested, and at his request Clif gave the particulars of his subsequent adventures and of the narrow escape in the boat from the Spanish soldiers firing upon them from the hill and shore. "Admirable! admirable!" exclaimed the rear admiral, when the brief narrative was finished.
Bessie Stuart continued pointing to the vessel as if she were paralyzed by fright. "Row! Row!" she shrieked. And Clif seized the oars frantically. But he knew that it was utterly useless. The gunboat was coming on like a race horse. And scarcely had he taken two strokes before the matter was settled finally. For there came a puff of white smoke from the Spaniard's bow.
And Clif was left alone in all the blackness and horror of that slimy place. Never as long as he lives will he forget the agony of that long wait. He sat straining his ears and listening for the first sign of the fiend's return. He knew that he might come back any instant and begin his horrible, merciless tormenting. Clif knew that man for a devil incarnate.
But there was her duty; and though she was nearly ready to faint, she sat perfectly motionless by his side. And so for two or three minutes they rode on in silence; then suddenly they heard the driver of the carriage stopping his horses. "We are there," said Clif, in a husky voice. He turned to look at the girl once more; he found that she was gazing at him, and their eyes met.
They went out of the door, and Ignacio, trembling all over with his fiendish eagerness, shut the great iron barrier and locked it. And then with a hoarse cry of rage he faced about. Clif Faraday was alone with his deadly and merciless foe! Ignacio was a horrible object to contemplate at that moment, and it was but little wonder that Clif turned sick and faint as he watched him.
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