"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 Señor 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.
Señor 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 years was shivering
and hugging himself from the damp and cold. A man who spoke five
languages, a just, brave gentleman. To me it was no new story. I knew
of the horrors of Cristobal prison; of political rivals chained to
criminals loathsome with disease, of men who had raised the flag of
revolution driven to suicide. But never had I supposed that my own
people could reach from the city of New York and cast a fellow-man into
that cellar of fever and madness.