Lack of a razor contributed to the general effect of a Robinson Crusoe as the fugitive emerged from his earthy abode. It was, indeed, a venture in the darkness. Quien sabe? The riddle of Señor Bazán’s intentions was still unsolved.
“Here goes,” said Richard Cary, looking about him in the starlight. “I’ll soon find out whether I am putting my head in a trap or not. Where do we go from here? Donde?”
Palacio whistled. A gray mule came sidling into the lantern’s glow. Leading it by the bridle was the Indian lad whom Cary recalled seeing in the patio of Uncle Ramon. There was no saddle. A sack was tied across the mule’s back.
“What kind of foolishness is this?” objected the passenger. “I see myself parading through Cartagena on the quarterdeck of a flop-eared mule. Oiga! The Colombian infantry could never miss a target like that.”
The Indian lad caught the drift of this tirade and grinned a reassurance. Palacio volubly insisted that it was muy bueno, so far as the mule was concerned. Again he chattered about the mysterious pile of wood. He had labored with it himself. He lifted imaginary sticks and groaned with both hands clapped to his back. Richard Cary subsided. He was in no position to quibble over details.
His companions hoisted him astride the mule. It was a very strong mule or its legs would have bent. Palacio limped as far as the garden patch. Another journey down the hill and back again was too much for him. He embraced his guest, his splendid son, and fervently commended him to God and Nuestra Señora de La Popa. If he weathered the stormy gale of circumstances, Richard Cary pledged himself somehow to repay this humble recluse with the heart of gold.
The sure-footed mule picked its way down the broken path, the lithe Indian lad chirruping in its ear. Beyond the foot of the hill, where a road swung inland from the harbor, the lad turned aside. At the edge of the jungle was hidden a ponderous, two-wheeled cart. It was heaped high with cordwood. Stakes at the sides prevented it from spilling. The muchacho nudged Cary to dismount. The mule was backed into the shafts and a brass-bound harness slung on its back.
“I suspected a nigger in the woodpile,” reflected the dubious Cary, “and now I know it. Just where do I fit into this load of wood? Hi, boy! What about it? Qué es esto?”
The lad motioned him to examine for himself. A false bottom had been laid in the body of the cart. Between the floor that rested upon the axle and the upper platform of boards was a space perhaps a foot and a half deep. Into this the bulk of Richard Cary was expected to insert itself. He thanked his stars that illness had reduced his flesh. It was the utter helplessness of being flattened in there, underneath the pile of wood, that made him flinch. It was too much like being nailed in a coffin. To be discovered and hauled out by the heels would be a fate too absurd to contemplate.
However, if there was a beggar alive who could not be a chooser, it was this same Richard Cary. He had to admire the ingenuity of the contrivance. A belated countryman hauling a load of firewood to the city in the cool of the night would pass unnoticed, whereas a curtained carriage might invite scrutiny. The stratagem was worthy of the wizened little man of the patio, with the grimace of a clown and the eye of an inquisitor.