Pedro opened his eyes, and they smiled, golden, at the Sergeant.
"No, not that, not that," cried the Sergeant, in frenzied fear of hearing again that answer which maddened him, blurred his brain with red haze. "Tell me, come, tell me; whisper it, low, right there, in my ear; come, caybigan."
"If I tell you, then will we be friends?" asked Pedro wistfully.
"Caybigan," said the Sergeant, "we have worked together, eaten together, hunted together. We are friends. I don't want to hurt you, sure I don't. Tell me, tell me--and I'll love you like a son--like a little, foolish son," he added with sudden access of tenderness.
"Well," began Pedro; "the gun, it is----"
But his eyes, fixed upon the Sergeant, froze suddenly as if before an apparition. The Sergeant was smiling, smiling the smile of yore, the unconscious smile of contempt, fatal, invincible.
"Go on; go on!" whispered the Sergeant breathlessly.
"I have no gun, caybigan," said Pedro monotonously.
The Sergeant sprang to his feet, livid. "Come on, fellows!" he shouted; "we'll hang him!"
They got a rope, noosed it about Pedro's neck, threw the loose end over a projecting branch of the mango and, standing him upon a box, secured it.
In that position they left him for five minutes, to let Fear seep into his stubborn heart. Every minute, in cold, tense accents, the Sergeant asked, "Where is the gun?"
Pedro did not answer. He stood there, very still, calling to himself all the strength left in his miserable racked body, composing himself as for some great and splendid sacrament. Then, as for the fifth time the question was asked, his right arm shot up towards the mountains, dark in the distance.
"Malvar is over there with ten thousand men," he shouted with high, clear voice. "Viva Malvar; the Americans are sons of curs!"
But as, the whole earth lurching beneath him, he plunged into the Infinite abyss, he took with him a wild, tumultuous, and exquisite joy. For at his last words of defiance, upon the face of his golden-haired caybigan he had seen--fluttering uncertain at first like the heralding colours of the dawn, then glowing clear, certain, resplendent--the expression he had caught at the lone cuartel in the bosque, the look of esteem, of admiration, full, unreserved, complete, for which he had thirsted so agonizingly, and which now at last had come to him, his beyond the power of Man to take away, at the paltry price of treachery and torture and death.