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.

The man seemed fairly turned into a devil then. He seemed insane. He was alone, absolutely alone, with his victim. And no one under heaven could stop him. He had the key himself! And he had his prisoner iron-bound and helpless!

For several moments the man fairly danced about the place, yelling as if to prove to his hated foe that there was no care for anything any more.

And then suddenly he made a leap at him.

He crouched in front of him until his gleaming eyes shone into his face, and his hot breath could be felt. His claw-like fingers he seemed scarcely able to keep away from Clif.

"Yankee!" he hissed, in a wild voice. "Yankee, do you know where you are?"

The fiendish man saw the white look on his victim's face; and he laughed.

"You do know!" he cried. "You do know! Ha! ha! You are in Morro, deep in the lowest vault! And no soul can come near you—near you—hear me?"

He struck him in the face as if to draw his attention.

"Listen; yes, stare at me! I don't wonder you quake. You have defied me—ha, ha! You have ruined all my plans, but I've got you now. And, oh, how I will pay you back, how I will twist you and tear you! You shall pay for everything. And you may shriek and scream and no one will know it more than if you did not. Listen!"

And again from sheer bravado Ignacio raised his voice and shouted. The sound died in the grave-like cell—the granite and the iron shut it in.

"You see!" panted Ignacio. "Not a soul heard! And you are mine. Ah, they hate you and they like me, for I told them about that girl. Ha, ha! You wince!"

Ignacio's face was almost touching Clif's as he hissed that.

"You can't get away!" he yelled. "And, oh, the things that I shall do to you! I've got instruments up stairs to tear you to pieces, burn your eyes out—but never kill you, oh, no! And all night you will scream, and all to-morrow, if I choose. And I will watch you—I and the rats. And the rats will eat you, too!"

As if to add horror to the devil's gleeful statement, a huge slimy rat ran across Clif's body just then; it made him shiver all over.

And Ignacio danced about as he saw him.

"Ha, ha!" he cried. "You begin! But wait till I start—wait till you begin to feel some agony—till I begin to tear your eyes out! Then will you yell? When I get through with you—ha, ha!—when you are dead, perhaps weeks from now, you won't mind the rats any more! You may stay in here in this grave for the Yankees to find if they capture Morro as they say they will. Oh, I will make it a sight for them!"

Clif could not have stood the strain of that horrible ordeal much longer; he would have fainted away.

But then the fiendish Spaniard's impatience got the better of him. And he turned and crept toward the door again.

"I will get the instruments," he whispered, hoarsely. "The torture instruments. Santa Maria, what things they are! And how you will shriek!"

A moment later he turned the key and stepped out. He shut the door and locked it. 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. He would sooner have looked for mercy in a hyena.

For Ignacio was of the race of the Inquisition; and of the horrors of the Inquisition this was a fair sample.

The wretched American knew that he was alone and that ............