“Now, there,” said Schnitzel, pointing, “that shows you what the Nitrate Trust can do.  Judge Rojas is in there.  He gave the first decision in favor of the Walker-Keefe people, and for making that decision William T. Scott, the Nitrate manager, made Alvarez put Rojas in there.  He’s seventy years old, and he’s been there five years.  The cell they keep him in is below the sea-level, and the salt-water leaks through the wall.  I’ve seen it.  That’s what William T. Scott did, an’ up in New York people think ‘Billy’ Scott is a fine man.  I seen him at the Horse Show sitting in a box, bowing to everybody, with his wife sitting beside him, all hung out with pearls.  An’ that was only a month after I’d seen Rojas in that sewer where Scott put him.”

“Schnitzel,” I laughed, “you certainly are a magnificent liar.”

Schnitzel showed no resentment.

“Go ashore and look for yourself,” he muttered.  “Don’t believe me.  Ask Rojas.  Ask the first man you meet.”  He shivered, and shrugged his shoulders.  “I tell you, the walls are damp, like sweat.”

The Government had telegraphed the commandant to come on board and, as he expressed it, “offer me the hospitality of the port,” which meant that I had to take him to the smoking-room and give him champagne.  What the Government really wanted was to find out whether I was still on board, and if it were finally rid of me.

I asked the official concerning Judge Rojas.

“Oh, yes,” he said readily.  “He is still incommunicado.”

Without believing it would lead to anything, I suggested: 

“It was foolish of him to give offence to Mr. Scott?”

The commandant nodded vivaciously.

“Mr. Scott is very powerful man,” he assented.  “We all very much love Mr. Scott.  The president, he love Mr. Scott, too, but the judges were not sympathetic to Mr. Scott, so Mr. Scott asked our president to give them a warning, and Senor Rojas—­he is the warning.”

“When will he get out?” I asked.

The commandant held up the glass in the sunlight from the open air-port, and gazed admiringly at the bubbles.

“Who can tell,” he said.  “Any day when Mr. Scott wishes.  Maybe, never.  Senor Rojas is an old man.  Old, and he has much rheumatics.  Maybe, he will never come out to see our beloved country any more.”

As we left the harbor we passed so close that one could throw a stone against the wall of the fortress.  The sun was just sinking and the air became suddenly chilled.  Around the little island of limestone the waves swept through the sea-weed and black manigua up to the rusty bars of the cells.  I saw the barefooted soldiers smoking upon the sloping ramparts, the common criminals in a long stumbling line bearing kegs of water, three storm-beaten palms rising like gallows, and the green and yellow flag of Valencia crawling down the staff.  Somewhere entombed in that blotched and mildewed masonry an old man of seventy