Chapter Nineteen.
Trapped!
Never for a moment did they suspect the existence of the little body of men concealed among the ferns and undergrowth and boulders, some sixty feet up the precipitous side of the hill round the base of which they were winding, until, before the quickest of them could pull trigger, there rang out above them an irregular volley, aimed with such deadly precision that every man of them went down before it, and were there found, blocking the path, when their comrades arrived upon the scene a minute or two later. As these in turn swung round the bend and came upon the prostrate forms, they naturally halted and proceeded to examine the bodies, with the view of separating the living from the dead; with the result that there was almost instantly a crowd of about a hundred Spanish soldiers bunched together in the narrow path, some of them performing ambulance work, but the majority simply waiting for an opportunity to pass. This was altogether too good a chance to be neglected; and, waiting only until the jostling crowd in the pathway was at its thickest, Jack raised a whistle to his lips and blew a single, shrill note.
The call was instantly answered by a crashing volley from the concealed negroes, which took such murderous effect upon the crowd below that scarcely a dozen men were left upon their feet; and those who were untouched were so utterly demoralised that they incontinently turned tail and retreated upon the main body, shouting: “Back! back! There is an ambuscade round the bend of the road; and we shall be slaughtered to a man if we go forward!” Whereupon the Spanish officer in charge of the pursuit—who was prudently remaining with the main body, instead of pushing forward with the vanguard—at once halted his men, and proceeded to enquire what all the confusion was about. The truth was that, finding himself on strange ground, following a narrow, winding, bush path, with a deepening ravine on his right, and a precipitously steep hillside on his left, overgrown with ferns and scrub thick enough to give perfect cover to an unlimited number of men; and with a furious thunderstorm raging, which promised to speedily develop into something very considerably worse than what it already was, he had no stomach for continuing the pursuit, and was only too glad of an excuse to call a halt and allow the enemy to go upon his way without further molestation. On the other hand, Jack, having satisfied himself that he had at least checked the pursuit, gave the word to his men to move forward; and, taking a short cut over the spur of the hill, they soon found themselves once more in the path, and close upon the heels of their companions.
As Jack’s party presently overtook what had originally been the rear-guard, Carlos dropped into the rear and joined his friend, and the two youths seized the opportunity to effect an exhaustive interchange of news, and to relate to each other the most stirring episodes in the defence of their respective positions. The young Cuban explained the means adopted by the Spaniards to force a passage across the river, and how he had eventually been overpowered and forced to retire; and then Singleton unfolded to Carlos his views upon the subject of how to deal with the enemy, could the latter be induced to follow them to a certain spot up among the hills which Jack described and Carlos remembered.
This spot they were now rapidly approaching. It consisted of a nearly straight defile, about half a mile in length, with a bend in its middle just sufficient to shut out the view of one end of it from the other. This defile was simply a cleft in the stupendous mass of rock that formed a great spur of the mountain on the left-hand side of the path, and was undoubtedly the result of some terrific natural convulsion of prehistoric times, which had rent the living rock asunder, leaving a vertical wall on either side, the indentations in the one wall accurately corresponding to the projections on the other. At the lower extremity—that is to say, the extremity which the fugitives were now approaching—access to the defile was gained by means of a sort of portal, less than six feet wide, the space between the rock walls thence narrowing gradually to about four feet, and thus forming a kind of passage about fifty feet long; beyond which the rock walls gradually receded from each other until, at the other extremity of it, the defile was nearly a hundred feet wide. The walls were unscalable throughout the entire length of the defile, which abruptly ended in a rough and torn rock face some two hundred feet in height. This rock face could scarcely be described as unscalable, because it was so rough that, although practically vertical, the projections on it were so numerous and pronounced that an active man could climb it without much difficulty, if uninterfered with; but if the summit and flanks happened to be held by even a small force of men armed with rifles, to climb it would at once become an absolute impossibility. Outside the entrance there was a small, open, grassy space, backed by dense scrub; and Jack’s plan was that Carlos, with about fifty men, should enter the defile, pass through it to its upper extremity and scale the rock face there, holding it against the Spaniards, and thus checking their further advance, while Jack, and the remainder of the negroes, with the two Maxims, should secrete themselves in the scrub and remain in hiding until the entire Spanish force had passed into the defile, when they would emerge and block the entrance with the two Maxims, thus bottling up the Spaniards and compelling them to surrender—or be annihilated.
By the time that Singleton had completely unfolded his plans to Carlos, the vanguard of the fugitives had reached the entrance to the defile, where they halted, awaiting further instructions; whereupon Carlos ran forward and, picking his fifty men, led them through the portal, while Jack, taking command of the remainder, caused them to carefully drag and lift the two Maxims into concealment, obliterate all trace of the passage of the guns into the scrub, and afterwards conceal themselves therein—the Señora, Don Hermoso, and Señor Calderon remaining with the party. They had scarcely hidden themselves, and removed all signs of their presence to Jack’s satisfaction, when the storm which had been threatening for so long a time burst with terrific fury, the air being continuously a-glimmer with the flickering and quivering of lightning flashes, while the very ground beneath their feet seemed to quake with the deafening, soul-shaking crash of the thunder; and the rain, breaking loose at last, descended in such cataractal volumes that, even partially sheltered as most of them were by the dense foliage of the scrub amid which they cowered, every soul of them was wet to the skin in less than a minute. And in the midst of it all, Jack, peering out from his hiding-place a few feet from the path, saw the wretched Spanish soldiery go splashing and squelching past, too wet, and altogether too utterly tired and miserable apparently, to take any notice of where they were going, and seemingly anxious only to press forward in the hope of somewhere finding shelter.
There were about six hundred of them; and by the time that they had all passed into the defile the storm had nearly spent itself. The rain had ceased, the lightning flickered only occasionally, and then low down toward the horizon; the thunder had dwindled to a low, hollow, muffled rumbling, and the clouds overhead had broken up and were drifting fast away, revealing a nearly full moon sailing high overhead, in the strong, silvery light of which the saturated vegetation glittered.
As the last Spaniard disappeared within the portal, Singleton cautiously emerged from his hiding-place, and, forcing his way through the sodden herbage, peered round the angle of the rock, watching the movements of the retiring foe. He waited patiently until the rearmost files had penetrated a good hundred yards up the defile, and then he raised his hand, waving it as a signal for his men to come forth. The next instant the place was alive with men. Fifty willing hands dragged forth the Maxims and planted them fair and square in the portal, pointing up the ravine, the ammunition boxes were opened and bands of cartridges placed in position: rifles were loaded; and ere the last of the Spaniards had passed round the bend and out of sight every preparation to give them a warm reception upon their return was complete.
The watchers by the portal had not very long to wait. The enemy were not out of sight much more than ten minutes when a solitary rifle shot cracked out at the head of the defile and came echoing down its rocky sides; then another one; then three or four more; until at length a brisk fusillade was proceeding, accompanied by a good deal of confused shouting. This lasted for the best part of an hour, when there came first a lull in the firing, and then the sound of many approaching feet, following which a disorderly crowd of Spanish soldiers appeared doubling down the defile, in full flight toward the entrance.