My Cuban chum did not answer. Instead, he gazed to the right and the left.
But this was useless. On our right was a stony undergrowth impossible to traverse, on the left a thick jungle leading down into what looked like a bottomless morass.
The hoof-strokes of the pursuing horses sounded nearer, and I expected every moment to see the band of Spanish cavalrymen dash into sight with drawn arms, ready to shoot or cut us down. Alano must have been thinking the same, for I saw him grate his teeth hard.
“Mark!” he cried suddenly. “Come, it’s our only hope.”
“What?”
“To cross the stream.”
“But how? We can’t jump it.”
“We’ll make the horses do it. Be quick, or it will be too late. Watch me. I am certain these horses know how to do the trick.”
He rode back a distance of two hundred feet. Then on he came, like the wind, his animal well in hand. A cry of command, and the horse rose in the air and went over the chasm like a bird.