“I don’t want to do this,” he declared, “but I know your kind.  I give you one more chance.  Will you tell me?”

Jose drew his lips back in a snarl of rage and pain, and Dave realized that further words were useless.  He felt a certain pity for his victim and no little admiration for his courage, but such feelings were of small consequence as against his agonizing fears for Alaire’s safety.  Had he in the least doubted Jose’s guilty knowledge of Longorio’s intentions, Dave would have hesitated before employing the barbarous measures he had in mind, but—­there was nothing else for it.  He pulled the canteen cork and jammed the mouthpiece firmly to Jose’s lips.  Closing the fellow’s nostrils with his free hand, he forced him to drink.

Jose clenched his teeth, he tried to roll his head, he held his breath until his face grew purple and his eyes bulged.  He strained like a man upon the rack.  The bed creaked to his muscular contortions; the rope tightened.  It was terribly cruel, this crushing of a strong will bent on resistance to the uttermost; but never was an executioner more pitiless, never did a prisoner’s agony receive less consideration.  The warm water spilled over Jose’s face, it drenched his neck and chest; his joints cracked as he strove for freedom and tried to twist his head out of Law’s iron grasp.  The seconds dragged, until finally Nature asserted herself.  The imprisoned breath burst forth; there sounded a loud gurgling cry and a choking inhalation.  Jose’s body writhed with the convulsions of drowning as the water and air were sucked into his lungs.  Law was kneeling over his victim now, his weight and strength so applied that Jose had no liberty of action and could only drink, coughing and fighting for air.  Somehow he managed to revive himself briefly and again shut his teeth; but a moment more and he was again retched with the furious battle for air, more desperate now than before.  After a while Law freed his victim’s nostrils and allowed him a partial breath, then once more crushed the mouthpiece against his lips.  By and by, to relieve his torture, Jose began to drink in great noisy gulps, striving to empty the vessel.

But the stomach’s capacity is limited.  In time Jose felt himself bursting; the liquid began to regurgitate.  This was not mere pain that he suffered, but the ultimate nightmare horror of a death more awful than anything he had ever imagined.  Jose would have met a bullet, a knife, a lash, without flinching; flames would not have served to weaken his resolve; but this slow drowning was infinitely worse than the worst he had thought possible; he was suffocating by long, black, agonizing minutes.  Every nerve and muscle of his body, every cell in his bursting lungs, fought against the outrage in a purely physical frenzy over which his will power had no control.  Nor would insensibility come to his relief—­Law watched him too carefully for that.  He could not even voice his sufferings by shrieks; he could only writhe and retch and gurgle while the ropes bit into his flesh and his captor knelt upon him like a monstrous stone weight.