After a five-minute tramp they came suddenly out on a broad plain. Dotted about its outskirts were hundreds of small thatched huts. Men roamed about, shaggy and unkempt in their wrinkled and tattered khaki. Others lounged about on the ground before their huts and stared curiously at the newcomers.
They passed at least a half-dozen sentries before their guard commanded them to stop before a hut, much larger and more sumptuous looking than the rest. Hal decided that this must be the headquarters of the famous Ceara.
At a gesture from the guard, they were surrounded by reinforcements while he stepped inside the hut, manifestly to announce their arrival. Hours seemed to pass while they waited and Hal exchanged several calamitous glances with Joaquim.
“Miss Felice is expecting us back before midnight,” he said to the Indian once. “From the looks of things, we can’t be certain which midnight.”
Hal had reached the stage when he was resting first on one foot and then on the other, and neither one resting at all. The sentry at that juncture came out and once more addressed the Indian who in turn addressed his tall young charge.
“We go in,” he said. “We see Coronel Goncalves, not General Ceara. Ceara he not here.”
“What?” Hal asked.
But it was too late. The sentry and a rear flank fairly carried them in with occasional light proddings of their bayonets. A large, low-ceilinged room loomed up before Hal’s bright blue eyes, as did the many broken-down chairs circled around a rickety table.
Behind the table Goncalves was purring and twisting his little moustache.
He smiled sardonically up to Hal’s vast height and straightening his dapper little self in the chair placed his elbows upon the table.