Page:Under three flags; a story of mystery (IA underthreeflagss00tayliala).pdf/280

 "Quick! To Santos!" he cries, springing into a volante and tossing a handful of coin to the driver. "To Santos as fast as your horse will travel!"

The man leaps to his seat, cracks his whip and they are off.

As they clatter through the streets of Santiago and swing into the road which Ashley traversed only a few hours before, Jack shouts impatiently, "Faster! Faster! Great Scott! This is no funeral! Though it may be, before I'm through with it," he adds, savagely.

"But senoror P3—no accent anywhere in this book], we will dash the volante to pieces," protests his charioteer.

Inwardly chafing, but realizing the futility of impatience, Ashley forces himself to be calm. It seems an age before the distance to Santos is traversed, but finally the outlines of the few buildings which the hamlet boasts are seen against the starlit sky.

The driver reins up his steed for further directions.

"To La Quinta de Quesada," orders Ashley, and they rattle on.

Suddenly rings out the command, "Alto!" and the volante stops with a suddenness that nearly unseats its passenger, directly in front of El Calabozo de Infierno, the local carcel.

"What in the devil's name" begins Ashley, but he is seized and dragged roughly from the volante, a pistol clapped to his head and the command hissed in his ear: "Callese!"

Lights appear about the entrance of the carcel, and as Ashley is hustled toward the gloom beyond he sees, standing near the passageway and watching the strange proceedings with a troubled face, the aged priest whom he noted at La Quinta de Quesada a few days before.

Ashley is hurried through the patio and along the ill-smelling corridor beyond to an open cell. Into this he is pushed and his ungentle captor tells him:

"En la mananaana] muere V. sobre el garote!"

"Thank you," says Ashley. His stock of Spanish is just sufficient to enable him to comprehend the nature