"We have had a long spell of this," said he, in a low voice. "I am going to escape, if I can."
"I don't know exactly _how_, yet; but we must first have our lashings cast off."
"Would to Heaven they were, Tom. My hands are so swollen, and my wrists so cut and benumbed, that my arms are wellnigh powerless," I whispered in a low voice, like a groan.
"Sit with me here, in the shadow of this angle of rock; and now, as the darkness is fairly set in, I shall soon make you free."
By a rapid and skilful application of his strong teeth to the cord which bound my wrists, he untwisted the knot and freed my hands; and then in the suddenly-given luxury of being able to stretch my arms, I almost forgot the necessity for concealing the fact that I was now unbound.
I soon found an opportunity for untying Tom's fetters. Then we kept our hands clasped before us, as if still manacled, and watched, waited, and hoped--we scarcely knew for what--while in the further end of this inner cave, our detainers sat sullenly smoking, and, by the dim lantern light, making up cigaritos from their tobacco-pouches, and those little rice-paper books which are now procurable nearly everywhere.
From the conversation of our captors, I could gather that our brig, the _Eugenie_, was visible at anchor in the roadstead of Santa Cruz, a mile or so distant.
Three of these Spaniards had placed their muskets against the wall of rock, and seemed disposed to doze off asleep.
Close by us lay the plank which crossed that dread ventana, like the infernal bridge of Poulsherro, which the Mahommedans believe crosses the sea of fire that on the day of doom shall separate Good from Evil. Tom and I looked at it, and exchanged glances of intelligence from time to time, but the attempt to rush across might prove doubly fatal to one or both. A slip of the foot would hurl us into eternity; and if the passage were achieved, we would be exposed to the fire of those we fled from, and met by that of the armed man at the mouth of the grotto.
Thus our position and its perils were somewhat complicated.
Suddenly the distant report of a piece of ordnance, coming from the seaward, made us all look up and listen.
"El ruido que hace el canon!" (the crack of a gun), exclaimed a Spaniard, scrambling up to the lower end of the fissure in the arch of the grotto, and looking out.