"The Treasure Hill!" Don Benito had erected his chief farmhouse as a memorial of the haul in the Gulf of California.
They tailed away at once in a new order; the mule leading at a good pace, spite of the obscurity which little impeded one very familiar with the ground, bringing up the rear, ever and anon looking steadily behind him.
It was the middle of the night, amid falling raindrops of great size, that the little troop beheld the loopholed walls of an enclosure round the grounds of an imposing mansion rise up into view. All the gates and doors were wide open, and every window blazed with light. A number of peons, brandishing torches, rushed out to welcome those they took to be belated guests. But as soon as the illumination fell upon the beauteous face of the daughter of the proprietor, they sent up a ringing shout which revealed how deeply endeared was that master and all his kith and kin.
The farmhouse itself was engirt, and all its approaches encumbered by at least a hundred shanties (chozas) and mud brick cabins, of miserable aspect, scattered at haphazard, and used for the abodes of the house servants and farm labourers. At the present juncture, though, the misery was gilded, since every hut glowed with light, and out of the doorways poured the jingling of tambourines, the banging of tambores or drums, and laughter; songs and shouts mingled with the tinkling and strumming of stringed instruments, in wild, thrilling native waltzes.
Though there were women and children squatting and sprawling in the clear space between the cabins, mounted peons, swinging flambeaux, were racing to and fro, at the risk of trampling on them.
On triumphantly and joyously entering the courtyard (patio), the strangers beheld a no less singular and picturesque spectacle.
Around great piles of burning wood, which would have roasted mastodons, whole trees being required to feed them, a multitude were revelling, swilling, and cramming, whilst a few in tatters, Indians as their complexion showed, were pacing the ancient steps, which so scandalised Father Serafino, and which were the ceremonial performances of the Yaquis, perhaps as old as the creed he so sturdily supported.
Through this carousing throng, spite of the spell which the announcement of the recovery of the maiden by the reverend father exercised tolerably potently, the horsemen made but new progress.
By the time they arrived at the wide portals, these were choked up by a party of gentlemen, in the front of whom, even had he not called out his daughter's name with indescribable joy, the Englishman recognised his former shipmate.
Yes, truly, the well-preserved gentleman who embraced La Perla was none other than our don Benito Vázquez de Bustamente, son of the General-President of Mexico, now proprietor of Monte Tesoro and many another estate as rich, the pearl diver of old.