To bring up his men, and place them in a position among the bamboos which would enable them to frustrate this bold attempt to span the river was the work of but a minute or two for Jack; then he immediately opened a hot fire upon the working party who were engaged in moving forward the gangway. But no sooner had he done this than he found how seriously the conditions had changed for the worse during those two hours of total darkness; for now the Spaniards who had established themselves in the trenches were so close at hand that the cover of the bamboos was no longer an efficient defence, and casualties among the defenders became disconcertingly frequent. Furthermore, it soon appeared that the Spaniards had got two strong hauling parties sheltered behind a couple of low earthworks, and that these people, by means of two stout ropes attached to the gangway, were steadily and with much skill hauling the thing toward the required position. Jack soon saw, however, that it would be quite impossible for the hauling parties to haul it far enough forward to enable it to be dropped into position across the gap in the ruined bridge: a moment must come, sooner or later, when the concealed men who were dragging upon the ropes would be obliged to leave their cover and push the platform the remaining portion of the distance; and he quickly determined to reserve his energies and his ammunition until that moment.
The time quickly arrived. A single bugle blast appeared to be the signal for the entrenched Spanish riflemen to concentrate their fire upon the clump of bamboo brake wherein Jack had hidden his men, and at the same instant about a hundred infantry-men sprang from behind their sheltering earthwork and made a dash at the platform, their every movement being clearly visible by the light of the vivid electric discharges which had by this time become practically continuous. With the utmost resolution they seized the light structure and started to run it forward toward the gap in the bridge; but—Jack having by this time instilled into his dusky troops the virtue of coolness and deliberation in fighting—the next moment they were swept back to cover by a perfectly withering fire that placed nearly half of them hors de combat.
Meanwhile sounds of hot and sustained firing had gradually breezed up in the direction of the position which Carlos was defending, and ere long it became evident that there also the attack was being pressed; and although the sounds of strife thitherward were soon almost swallowed up in the long, continuous crash and crackle of the rifle fire that was being maintained by the entrenched troops upon Jack’s party, the young Englishman could not avoid the suspicion that his friend was being somewhat hardly pressed; for whenever a momentary lull occurred in the firing in front of him, Jack could not only hear that the volume of firing in Carlos’ direction was fully maintained, but it seemed to him that it was steadily increasing! And presently a breathless messenger arrived from Carlos, begging Jack to spare the former as many men as he possibly could, to help in driving back a body of Spanish troops who had actually succeeded in forcing a passage across the river! In response to this request Jack of course instantly detached every man he could possibly spare, retaining less than fifty to aid him in defending his own position: but the news which he had just received made it perfectly clear to him that the defence was practically at an end; for if Carlos had been unable to prevent the Spaniards from forcing the passage of the river, it was in the highest degree unlikely that he would be able to stem the rush, much less drive it back. Jack at once began to consider what was the best course to pursue under the new conditions; and, as he thought, a plan began to gradually unfold itself in his mind. The estate, he felt, was lost, for if only a sufficient number of the Spaniards could once get across the river to hold Carlos’ force at bay for five minutes, by the end of that time a reinforcement would have crossed strong enough to sweep the defenders out of existence: nothing, therefore, in that case could save the estate from destruction, but it might be possible to visit upon the destroyers a heavy retribution.
Jack’s mind was thus occupied when another messenger arrived from Carlos to tell him that all was lost, and that Carlos, with the remnant of his party—with whom were Don Hermoso and his wife—was retreating up the valley, hotly pursued by a strong party of Spanish soldiers; while other Spaniards were in possession of the house and the several outbuildings, which they were obviously preparing to set on fire: and the message concluded by requesting Jack to follow with his party, and join the fugitives, if possible.
Now it happened that Carlos’ retreat up the valley chimed in excellently well with the scheme which was beginning to take shape within Jack’s brain; the latter therefore lost no time in collecting together his little band of riflemen and leading them through the wood, round by the rear of the house and outbuildings, and along a bush path, to a spot at which he could intercept and join the retreating party, and at which, moreover, owing to the nature of the ground, he believed he could pretty effectually check the pursuit, and cover the retreat of the main body of the defenders. As he pressed forward at the head of his own scanty contingent the sounds of occasional shots told him that Carlos was still maintaining a good running fight: but, as the path which he was following constituted a short cut to the spot which he desired to reach, he soon left those sounds in his rear, and, pressing rapidly forward, at length arrived at the main path; and, aided by the lightning, which was now flashing incessantly, contrived to place his men in ambush behind a number of big boulders that studded the almost perpendicular sides of the bush-clad hill, just as the leading files of the retreating party came into view round a bend of the path.
Jack saw with satisfaction that the retreat was being conducted in good order. First came a body of some fifty well-armed negroes, who were keeping a wary eye about them, to guard against the possibility of being ambuscaded by some portion of the enemy who might have pushed on and got in front of them—although such a thing was scarcely likely to have happened; then came the Señora, in a hammock suspended from a pole borne on the shoulders of two stout negroes, with Don Hermoso and Señor Calderon walking, one on either side of her; and behind these again came the main body of the retreating defenders, with the two Maxim guns in their midst, and with Carlos bringing up the rear in charge of a party of about twenty riflemen, who were covering the retreat by frequently facing round and exchanging shots with the pursuers. As these last came into view, Jack rose from his place of ambush—at the imminent risk of being shot by his friends before they could recognise him—and made the fact of his presence and that of his party known, bidding the others pass on and leave the heaviest of the covering work to him. Their losses, Jack could see, had been terribly heavy, and they looked weary to death with their long hours of fighting: yet he was gratified to observe that, with very few exceptions, the men carried themselves as resolutely as ever, and displayed the effect of his training by taking the fullest advantage of every particle of cover, dodging behind rocks, boulders, trunks of trees, and clumps of bush; taking as careful aim as though they were shooting in a match; re-loading, and then flitting from cover to cover to take up a fresh position.
The rear-guard under Carlos had not passed much more than a hundred yards ahead when the leading files of the pursuers appeared round the bend of the path, breathless, from the fact that the retreating party had no sooner disappeared round the elbow than the Spaniards had broken into a run, taking advantage of the circumstance that they were for a moment out of sight of the enemy to shorten the distance between themselves and the pursued. As the vanguard of some twenty pursuing Spaniards dashed round the bend they dropped on one knee and raised their rifles to their shoulders, availing themselves of the lightning flashes to take aim at the little crowd of retreating figures imperfectly seen here and there through the overhanging and swaying branches.
