Moreover, although the worthy colonel had, in the course of his life, frequented very mixed company, as he himself allowed, he was not at all anxious to venture alone at night into the lower parts of the city, and enter the velorios, thorough cut-throat dens, filled with robbers and assassins, in which respectable persons do not even venture in bright day without a shudder.
At the moment when the colonel mechanically raised his head and looked despairingly up to heaven, he fancied he saw several suspicious shadows prowling about him in a suggestive manner. But the colonel was brave, and the more so, because he had literally nothing to lose, hence he quietly loosened his sword, opened his cloak, and at the instant when four or five fellows attacked him at once with machetes and long navajas, he was on guard according to all the rules of the art, with his left foot supported a pillar, and his cloak wrapped like a buckler round his arm.
The attack was a rude one, but the colonel withstood it manfully; besides, all went on in the Mexican way, without a shout or call for help. When you are thus attacked in a Mexican street, you feel so assured of death, that you generally confine yourself to the best possible defence, without losing time in calling for help, which will certainly not arrive.
Still, the assailants being armed with short and heavy weapons, had a marked disadvantage against the colonel's long and thin rapier, which twisted like a snake, writhed round their weapons, and had already pricked two of the men sharply enough to make the others reflect, and display greater prudence in their attack. The colonel felt that they were giving ground.
"Come on, villains," he exclaimed, as he gave a terrific lunge, and ran one of the bandits right through the body, who rolled on the pavement with a yell of pain. "Let us come to an end of this, in the demon's name!"
"Stop, stop!" the man who seemed the leader of the bandits exclaimed; "we are mistaken."
As the bandits asked for nothing better than to stop, they retreated a few steps without hesitation.
"Yes, Rayo de Dios, you are mistaken, birbones," the exasperated colonel shouted.
"Can it possibly be you," the first speaker continued, "Señor Colonel Don Jaime Lupo?"
"Halloh!" the colonel said, falling back a step in surprise, "who mentioned my name?"