“You certainly look better,” the young officer said. “Now permit me to introduce myself. My name is Filippo Conchas; my uncle is the governor here, and it is to that I owe the pleasure of this excursion with you.”
“I should not have thought that a ride of five or six hundred miles was a pleasure, Don Filippo.”
“Oh, yes, it is, when one can go one’s own pace, and travel only in the morning and evening. Moreover, one gets terribly tired of a small provincial town, especially in times like these, when things are not going quite so pleasantly as one might wish, and one knows that half the inhabitants are bitterly hostile to one. Besides, señor, I have an attraction at Callao, and in fact am betrothed to a fair cousin, the daughter of another uncle who is the chief naval authority at the port. My uncle, that is the one here, is a strict disciplinarian, and as all leave is stopped owing to the doings of your admiral’s ships, I am kept here; so, of course, directly I heard that you were to be sent to Callao I applied to him to appoint me to command the escort, and as I was the first applicant he had no excuse for refusing, although he was not in the most pleasant of humours. However, that I did not care about as long as I got my leave. He has gone down to the river with several of his officers to inspect the goods, of which a large quantity [pg 269]has been cast ashore. If he had been here I should not have ventured to effect this transformation in your appearance until to-morrow. Are you a good rider, señor?”
“No, indeed,” Stephen replied, “I have had no opportunities for practice.”
“It does not matter much,” Don Filippo said; “I daresay you will be a good rider at the end of our journey, and your not being so at present will afford me an excuse for not making fatiguing journeys; so all is for the best, you see.”
CHAPTER XV.
FRIENDS IN NEED.
Don Filippo did all in his power to make the journey a pleasant one for Stephen. They travelled on an average about twenty-four miles a day, twelve in the morning soon after sunrise and as much in the cool of the evening. During the heat of the day they halted, sometimes in the shade of a grove, sometimes at the hacienda where they breakfasted. The young officer chatted freely to Stephen about himself and his life, and as they lay in the shade during the long hours of the heat, Stephen related his own adventures on his first cruise, and in reply to questions of the Spaniard, repeated to him what he had heard from his father of Cochrane’s exploits. Don Filippo treated him in every way as a friend and an equal, and no one who saw them together would have dreamt that he was a prisoner. Even at night no guard was placed at the door of his chamber, the Spaniard having absolute faith in the honour of an English officer. The journey occupied nearly three weeks, by the end of which time Stephen was perfectly [pg 270]at home on horseback. As they approached Callao Don Filippo’s gaiety deserted him.
“I do not conceal from you, Don Estevan, that I am anxious about you, very anxious. You can hardly understand the deep and bitter hostility that has been excited in the minds of my countrymen by the doings of your admiral. Our hold on Peru when you arrived here was absolute, and it was morally certain that, with the aid of the ships and men on their way out, we should have very soon recaptured Chili again. All that has changed. Our armies have been defeated, our ships captured by inferior forces, our prestige destroyed; we find ourselves insulted in our ports, our ships cut out from under our guns, the Peruvians ready at any moment to revolt, our flag almost swept from the Pacific, and with every prospect that the broad dominions won for Spain by Pizarro and Cortez will be wrested from us. You can hardly imagine the wrath and humiliation of every Spaniard at the misfortunes that have fallen upon us, the more so that these misfortunes have been inflicted by a naval force that we deemed absolutely contemptible.