These miscreants had also formed a plan for an attack upon a private house at Utrera; but their intentions having become known (through treachery) to the Civil Guards, the latter surrounded the house, and drove the robbers into the patio, where a simultaneous volley terminated the careers of the whole crew. For advancing the ransom, £6,000 (which, after various adventures, involving more bloodshed, fell finally into the hands of a fresh robber-gang), the then Governor of Gibraltar was freely "hauled over the coals" in the House of Commons at the time.
Wild tales of similar bearing beguiled the dark hours in the gloom of the forest where our big fire burned cheerily. Despite a fine, warm, winter climate, the Andalucian atmosphere is chilly enough after sundown, and we were glad to draw up close around the blazing logs, where a savoury olla was cooking: and afterwards, while enjoying our cigarettes and that delicious "natural" wine of Spain which the British public, like a spoilt child, first cries for and then abuses.
Towards nine o'clock the moon rose, and we continued our journey along the dark defiles of the sierra, pushing a way through evergreen thicket, or silent forest, where the startling cries of the eagle-owl outraged the stillness of night. As far as one could see by the dim moonlight, our course alternated for a long distance between a boulder-strewn ravine and a glacis of smooth sloping rock, steep as a roof, and more suited to the nocturnal gambols of cats than for horsemen. But the Andalucian jaca is hardly less sure of foot, and in due course we emerged into a more level valley, where, after riding some miles beneath huge cork-oaks and ilex, we heard at length the distant challenge of our friend Gaspár's big mastiff, and soon the long ride was over, and we entered the portals of the rancho which for the succeeding week was to be our home.
Here we were confronted by a nuisance in the non-arrival of the commissariat. The pack-mules, despatched two days in advance, had not turned up. It transpired that the men, loitering away the daylight, as is the custom in Andalucia (and elsewhere), had lost the way in the darkness, almost immediately after leaving the last vestiges of a track, and had bivouaced among the scrub awaiting the break of day. Our resources for the night were thus limited to the scanty contents of the alforjas (saddle-bags). We had, however, each provided ourselves with a big sackful of chaff at the last outpost of the corn-lands—chaff, or rather broken straw, being the staple food of the Spanish horse; and these now formed our beds, though their softness decreased nightly by reason of the constant inroads on their substance made by our Rosinantes. Otherwise the naked stone-paved room was absolutely innocent of either furniture or food; yet we were happy enough, as, rolled in our mantas, we lay down to sleep on those long pokes.
Early in the morning the mountaineers began to assemble in the courtyard of the rancho. Light of build as a rule, sinewy, and bronzed to a copper hue, looking as if their very blood was parched and dried up by tobacco and the fierce southern sun, and with narajas stuck in their scarlet waistbands, these wild men might each have served as a melodramatic desperado. Three brothers of our host had ridden up from a distant farm; there was old Christoval, the ready-witted squatter on the adjoining rancho, a cheery old fellow, carrying fun and laughter wherever he went; last came the Padre from the nearest hill-village (Paterna), whose sporting instinct had made light work of the long and early ride across the sierra to join our batida. Alonzo, the herdsman, who added to his pastoral knowledge an intimate acquaintance with the wild beasts of his native mountains, was placed in command of the beaters, a motley, picturesque group with their leathern accoutrements and scarlet fajas. Of dogs, we had four podencos, tall, stiff-built, wiry-haired "terrier-greyhounds," fleet of foot, trained to find and harass the boar, to force him to break covert, but yet so wary at feint and retreat as to avoid the sweep of his tusks. Then there was huge "Moro," Don Gaspár's half-mastiff, half-bloodhound, whose staunchness was tested of old, and others of lesser note.
Around our quarters were cultivated clearings of a few acres, fenced with the usual aloe and cactus: otherwise the landscape was one panorama of forest and evergreen brushwood, extending far up the mountain-sides, and towards the barren stony summits. These sierras of Jerez are of no great height relatively—perhaps 3,000 to 4,000 feet—and many of them bear unmistakable evidence of their long struggles with glacial ice in bygone ages—each tall slope consisting of a regular series of vertical bastions, or buttresses, alternating with deep glens in singular uniformity. Their conformation recalled the distant valleys of Spitsbergen, where we have seen the power of ice in actual operation, and carving out those grim Arctic hills after a precisely similar pattern. Here, however, dense jungle had for ages replaced the snow, and the wild boar now occupied strongholds where, possibly, the reindeer had once ranged in search of scanty lichen. For the season (March) the greenness of all foliage was remarkable; the oaks alone remained naked, and even from their leafless boughs hung luxuriant festoons of ivy and parasitic plants.
The upper end of our valley was shut in by the towering, transverse mass of the Sierra de las Cabras, which terminates hard by, in a fine abrupt gorge or chasm called the Boca de la Foz. It was to the deep-jungled corries which furrow the sides of this chasm that Alonzo had that morning traced to their camas some six or eight pig, including a couple of boar of the largest size, and this was to be the scene of our first day's operations.
A pitiable episode occurred while we were surveying our surroundings, and preparing for a start. From close behind, suddenly resounded a peal of strange inhuman laughter, followed by incoherent words; and through the iron bars of a narrow window we discerned the emaciated figure of a man, wild and unkempt of aspect, and whose eagle-like claws grasped the barriers of his cell—a poor lunatic. No connected replies could we get—nothing but vacuous laughter and gibbering chatter: now he was at the theatre and quoted magic jargon; now supplicating the mercy of a judge; then singing a stanza of some old song, to break off as suddenly into a fierce denunciation of one of us as the cause of all his troubles. Poor wretch! He had once been a successful lawyer and advocate, but having developed signs of madness, which increased with years, the once popular Carlos B—— was now reduced to the wretched durance of this iron-girt cell; his only share and view of God's earth just so much of sombre everlasting sierra as the narrow opening permitted. We were told it was hopeless to make any effort to ameliorate his lot—his case was too desperate. What hidden wrongs and outrage exist in a land where no judicial intervention is permitted between the "rights" of families and their insane relations (or those whom they may consider such), is only too much open to suspicion.