The men must not have been particularly superstitious, bringing Chel on the ship with them. Miguel distinctly recalled someone somewhere telling him that "women on ships are bad luck". They seemed totally alright with her being there, and since they decided that she was technically innocent of everything and anything, just having her below deck to help the cook was enough punishment for her for associating with the conmen.
They, on the other hand, were tossed back into the brig with no food, no water, and some stale smelling and slightly damp straw. It was exactly as they both remembered it, and neither of them was looking forward to another stay.
They'd managed to avoid being flogged the first time, as they'd escaped shortly after they'd been captured, (about ten days in) and the crew members had been too busy rowing. They'd actually escaped the flogging by mere hours, as the crew had been ready to do it first thing the morning after their escape.
This time they weren't so lucky. Cortes' first order was to have them flogged immediately, twenty lashes each. Mercifully, Miguel and Tulio were knocked unconscious before getting onto the ship. Something about the crew not wanting them to see where they anchored the ship, for when they returned to the New World, they couldn't sabotage the ship.
Miguel woke up after Tulio did, and pretended to still be out as he listened to Tulio and a guard nearby.
"Give me his share," Tulio begged the guard, who chuckled.
"Greedy little man, aren't you?" he asked. He sounded like a big guy, Miguel thought. What was Tulio asking for?
"I'll make you a deal. You roll for it." Miguel couldn't quite hear which one was win and which one was lose, but he could catch, "Just his," and "triple his, triple yours, and all the..." He didn't catch the last part, either.
Tulio rolled, and the guard made a happy noise. "You lose," he told the brunette gleefully. He stood up and opened the door to the brig, leaving Tulio sitting in the pool of light that came in through the hole in the ceiling with bars across it to keep them from escaping. Miguel waited a few minutes before he yawned and stretched.
"You ready for a good flogging?" he asked. Tulio smiled tiredly.
"You bet I am," his friend replied, standing up and walking over to the blond. Miguel sat up.
"You think Chel will spring us?" he asked.
"No, she's chained to the table in the kitchen, just in case," Tulio told him, shaking his head.
Miguel pondered this for a few minutes, and then asked, "You've got a plan, right?"
Tulio looked around the brig and found a familiar wooden support. He started banging his head on it. "Not yet," he replied. Miguel laughed.
Food was dropped down, some dry bread crusts and a single cup of dirty water. The two men looked at it hungrily, before Tulio looked at Miguel with a slightly guilty expression and muttered, "Uh, you take it."
Miguel looked up at Tulio, and then back at the food that was barely enough for one. "You sure?"
"Yeah, I'm... not hungry," Tulio said, shuffling away.
"Alright." As Miguel chomped down on the bread crusts and drank the disgusting water, he debated about Tulio's bet. Looking down at the rations, he realized a sad truth: It had been about food. Of course it was; what else could it have been? There wasn't a lot for prisoners, and this time the food seemed to be cut in half. "Just his..." the guard's voice haunted him; he shook his head. Tulio's guilty face just proved it. He'd lost. This was all the food they were getting, and Tulio had tried to take his share. Miguel glared at him.
He'd forgiven Tulio for going with Chel, for breaking his promise that she was off limits. They'd both regretted the fight, and had made up one night when Chel was asleep. But even when he'd done that, Miguel had understood. He hadn't meant "forget Miguel" quite that way, just that he hadn't wanted to share Chel. He still treated him like an equal party of the group. Also, Chel was hard to ignore, and he had left them alone in the temple. He would have done the same.
Miguel had never expected a betrayal like this. Tulio was a good man, he assured himself. There was something he was missing, surely. Yes, something...
But there was nothing else.
Tulio was a back stabber, and he'd have to do something big to get back into Miguel's good graces. He'd never known his best friend to think only of himself. They usually thought of each other as one unit. There was no just Miguel. No just Tulio. It was Miguel and Tulio, Tulio and Miguel, to the very end.
Apparently he was the only one who thought so.