CHAPTER IX.
DOOMED TO DIE.
My captors conducted me to a dilapidated building near the Plaza Major, which did duty as a temporary jail, the principal prison of Caracas having been destroyed by the earthquake and left as it fell.

Nevertheless, the room to which I was taken seemed quite strong enough to hold anybody unsupplied with housebreaking implements or less ingenious than Jack Sheppard.

The door was thick and well bolted, the window or grating (for it was, of course, destitute of glass) high and heavily barred, yet not too high to be reached with a little contrivance.

Mounting the single chair (beside a hammock the only furniture the room contained), I gripped the bars with my hands, raised myself up, and looked out.

Below me was a narrow, and, as it might appear, a little-frequented street, at the end of which a sentry was doing his monotonous spell of duty.
The place was evidently well guarded, and from the number of soldiers whom I had seen about the gateway and in the _patio_, I concluded that, besides serving as a jail, it was used also as a military post.