Not a man spoke, half of them being still breathless, I think, at the thought of this desperate expedient. Had any other man proposed it we should have set him down for a mad fellow, but we had all come to think that nothing was too hard for us under our heroic general, and not a man demurred.
'Then we are all for the short way,' cried Frank. 'Mount then, and away! There is no time to lose, if we do not want the whole Panama garrison at our heels.'
In a few minutes we were all ambling on our borrowed steeds on the road towards Venta Cruz, silent and oppressed with thinking of our forlorn attempt, yet each desperate and resolved to do his best. So we continued till within a mile of the town, where the road entered the forest again. A very perilous pass it looked, and Frank called on us to draw rein. The road was but from ten to twelve feet wide, and on either side a dense wall of tangled boughs and vines, reaching high above our heads, as thick as any well-kept Kentish hedge. For in that land the growth of the woods is so fast and rank that were it not that men were always at work shredding and ridding the way, it would be altogether lost and overgrown in one year. This constant cutting had made the leafy walls on either hand as dense as I have said, so that a man could hardly push through them without hurt.
Just as we drew rein I saw dimly, from where I rode in front with Frank, that our two Cimaroons had stopped about half a flight ahead of us. We drew near, and saw they were snuffing the air through their widely-distended nostrils like hounds.
'Small shot in the wood!' they said, as we came to them.
'Where?' says Frank. 'Can you see them?'
'No,' said the elder Cimaroon; 'but we can smell their matches. It is sure the wood is full of them on either hand.'
We could neither see nor smell anything, but doubted not it was as these strangely gifted men had said. The Spaniards had been too quick for us; they were ready. Clearly it was to be no Nombre de Dios affair again.
'What is to be done?' said I.
'Why, go through with it,' said Frank. 'Now, lads, the wood is full of harquebusiers in ambush; we must force a passage. Hold your fire till their first volley is spent. Then one old English salute, and at them at push of pike in the old fashion!'