My companions were in high feather at having achieved my capture, and extolled the shrewdness of a certain Mateo--who, I gathered from their remarks, was their new chief, in place of the deceased Petion--in having devised so ingenious a trap as the one into which I had unsuspectingly fallen.  Moreover, they endeavoured to beguile the way by drawing vivid word-pictures--presumably in the hope of frightening me and enjoying my terror--of the unspeakable torments that would be inflicted upon me by way of appeasing the manes of those of their comrades who had fallen in the attack upon the house.  Truly I might very well have been excused had I blenched at the prospect which, according to them, lay before me; for if they were to be believed, it was not an hour or two, but several days of excruciating suffering which I might expect.  However, I did not by any means believe all that they said.  They might be clever enough actors, so far as shamming being wounded was concerned, but in the finer art of inflicting suffering in anticipation they were mere clumsy bunglers, for they lacked that finer sense of dissimulation which endows a man with the power of lying with conviction; they allowed their motive to become apparent; and, seeing this, I disappointed them by laughing in their faces.  Besides, whether what they said was truth or falsehood, I was not going to afford a trio of sable outlaws the satisfaction of boasting that they had succeeded in frightening an Englishman.