Chapter 27

GILBERT BURNHAM.

“Are you alone?” I asked, when I had recovered sufficiently to speak.

“An American!” came the low cry. “Yes, I am alone. Who are you, and what do you want?”

“I came to save you—that is, I thought my father was a prisoner here,” I stammered. “Are you tied up?”

“Worse, chained. But I think the chain can easily be broken. If you’ll help me get away from here, I’ll consider myself in your debt for life.”

“I’ll do what I can for you. But keep quiet, for there are a number of guards about,” I whispered.

With an effort I squeezed through the hole that had been made, and felt my way to the prisoner’s side, for the interior of the cell was dark. He had a chain around one wrist, and the chain was fastened by a large staple driven into a log of the wall of the fort.

Jorge had come up behind me, and, learning of the staple, began to cut at the woodwork surrounding it with his machete. The lower end of the blade was fairly keen, and he made such rapid progress that in less than five minutes a sharp jerk cleared the staple from the log, and the prisoner was free.

“Good for you,” he whispered to the colored guide. “Now which is the way out of this hole?”

“Follow me, and keep very quiet,” I whispered, and motioned to Jorge to lead the way.

Soon the guide had disappeared into the opening we had made. Going from the prison was worse than getting in, and the man we were trying to rescue declared the passage-way too small for him.

We commenced to enlarge it, I with my dagger and he with his hands. We had just made it of sufficient size when we heard a cry from outside. Jorge had emerged into the open, only to be discovered by a sentry who chanced to be looking his way. There was a shot, and half a dozen soldiers came running up, at which the guide took to the river with a loud splash.

“I’m afraid we are lost!” I cried, and stopped, half in and half out of the hole. Then the prison door was banged open, and the rays of a lantern flared into the cell.

The American I had discovered promptly showed fight by leaping on the intruder. But this was madness, as the soldier was backed up by four others, all armed with pistols and guns. In the meantime another light flashed from outside the hole, and I felt myself caught, very much like a rat in a trap.

“De donde viene V.? [Where do you come from?]” demanded a cold, stern voice, and I felt myself grabbed by the hair. Realizing that resistance was useless, I gave myself up, and immediately found myself surrounded by a dozen Spanish soldiers. In the meantime Jorge had made good his escape.

The soldiers marched me around to the entrance of the fort, where an officer began to question me in Spanish. He could speak no English, and as soon as he found my command of Spanish was very limited he sent off for an interpreter. Then I was taken inside the fort and consigned to one of the prison cells.

My feelings can be better imagined than described. Bitterly I regretted having started on my midnight quest without notifying Captain Guerez. My hasty action had brought me to grief and placed me in a position from which escape seemed impossible. What my captors would do with me remained to be seen. That they would treat me in anything like a friendly fashion was out of the question to expect. It was likely that they would hold me as a prisoner of war.

Presently the door of the cell was opened, and somebody else was thrown in bodily and with such force that he fell headlong. The door was banged shut and bolted, and the crowd which had been outside went away.

The new arrival lay like a log where he had been thrown, and for a few minutes I fancied he must be dead from the way he had been treated.

I bent over him, and in the dim light of the early dawn made out that it was the American I had sought to rescue. I placed my hand over his heart and discovered that he still breathed, although but faintly.

There was nothing at hand with which I could do anything for him. My own pockets had been turned inside out by my captors, and even my handkerchief, with which I might have bound up an ugly wound on his brow, was gone. I opened his coat and vest and his shirt around the neck, and gave him as much air as I could.

“Oh!” he groaned, as he finally came to his senses. “Oh! Don’t kick me any more! I give in!”

“You’re all right—they have put you in a cell with me,” I hastened to reassure him, and then he sat up.

“Who—what——” he paused. “In a cell, eh? And they caught you, too?”

“Yes.”

“That’s too bad.” He drew a deep breath. “Did you fight with them?”

“No. I saw it would be no use.”

“I was a fool to do it. I’m too hot-blooded for this sort of work. I ought to have stayed in Boston reporting local affairs.”

“Are you a reporter?”

“Hush! Yes; but I don’t want it to become known if I can help it. They think I am nothing more than an inquisitive American.”

“Then why did they lock you up?”

“That was more of my hot-headedness. I was sketching a picture of the town and this fort or prison, when a Spanish officer came up and tried to snatch the drawing from my hand. Instead of demanding an explanation I promptly knocked him down. Then a couple of guards ran for me, and I dusted. But it was no use. They sent a company of soldiers after me, and here I am.”

“And here we are both likely to remain for some time to come,” I added bitterly.

“Looks that way, that’s a fact. By the way, you said something about your father, didn’t you?”

"Yes. My father is a prisoner of the Spaniards, and I felt almost certain he was in this fort."

“What’s your father’s name?”

“Richard Carter. My name is Mark.”

“And my name is Gilbert Burnham. I’ve heard of your father, come to think of it. He joined the Cuban army along with a plantation owner named Guerez and another American named Hawley.”

“You are right. Did you hear anything at all of him here in Cubineta or the vicinity?”

“No. But then, you see, that is not strange, as I talk very little Spanish. I certainly haven’t seen any Americans here but you and myself.”

Gilbert Burnham asked me to tell him my story; and, feeling that I could lose nothing by so doing, I favored him with a recital of my efforts to get to my father. He was quite interested.

“By Jove, young man, if I get clear from here I’ll do what I can to help you,” he said.

Then he told me his own history—how he had grown tired of newspaper reporting in Boston and begged the head editor of the paper he represented to send him on an “assignment” to Cuba. He had been in the island four months, and had had a varied list of adventures, although none of a particularly thrilling or perilous nature.

“But now it looks as though I was in for it,” he concluded moodily. “That officer I knocked down will make matters as hard as he can for me.”

“And I’m afraid trying to break away from prison won’t help matters,” I said.

“You are right there. But, heigho! we must make the best of it.”

Yet making the best of it was small satisfaction to me. Tired out in body and mind, I sank down in a corner of the gloomy and damp cell and gave myself up to my bitter reflections.