Nick watched her as a cat watches a mouse.

Her face was ghastly and distorted, her breast heaving, her every nerve quivering, and her eyes were like balls of fire under their knitted brows.

Still clutching the poniard, her jeweled fingers worked convulsively around its haft, like those of one who fain would strike a death blow, yet whose hand was briefly held by consuming horror.

Suddenly she darted nearer, with a vicious snarl.

“You think you’ll escape me,” she screamed, with bitter ferocity.  “It shows in your eyes.  I’ll make sure that you don’t.  Let come who may, you shall be found—­dead!  Dead!—­do you hear?”

“Oh! yes, I hear.”

“Yet you do not fear?  We’ll see—­we’ll see!”

She darted closer to him, with the weapon raised, above her head, and her knee touched Nick’s knee.  He swung quickly around toward her, and scraped his feet over the floor below her skirts.

Then came a quick, furious snapping, like the noise of a miniature fusillade.  A score of the matches had been ignited by Nick’s swift move.

Almost instantly a shriek of terror broke from Cervera’s lips, and she reeled back, clutching wildly at her skirts.

“My God!  I’m on fire!—­on fire!” she screamed, with a voice so intense in its agony as to have chilled a man of stone.

A roar came from Nick as he sighted the flames under her gown.

“Release me!  Release me!” he thundered, furiously, with a voice that drowned her frightful screams.  “Cut me loose—­loose!  It’s your only hope—­your only hope!”

She heard him like one in a nightmare of agony and terror, and her instinct rather than her reason responded to his thundering commands.

Still with the poniard in her jeweled hand, still shrieking wildly, she leaped to his side, and with a single sweep of the keen weapon severed the rope binding his arms.

Then Nick snatched the poniard from her hand.  With several swift cuts and slashes he released his limbs, and sprang quickly to his feet.

He had already shaped his course.  He had observed on the sulphur barrels, near the wall, a strip of matting, used as a cover for them.  Nick snatched it from the barrels, and rushed to wrap it around the skirts and limbs of the terror-stricken woman.

For several moments the result seemed doubtful, so doubtful that Nick finally threw Cervera heavily to the floor, the better to press the matting closely around her and so smother the flames.  In this he presently succeeded, but not before she was so severely burned as to be rendered utterly helpless.

When Nick arose to his feet Cervera remained lying prostrate on the floor, moaning with pain, yet in a state of semi-consciousness only.  A glance told Nick that she could make no move to escape, and he now had other work than that of looking to her comfort.

He ran to the stone door, threw the bolts, and quickly dragged it open.