"Do you think that driver is taking us the right way?" Langham asked, after a pause.
"He'd better. He knows it well enough. He was through the last revolution, and carried messages from Los Bocos to the city on foot for two months. He has covered every trail on the way, and if he goes wrong he knows what will happen to him."
"And Los Bocos—it is a village, isn't it, and the landing must be in sight of the Custom-house?"
"The village lies some distance back from the shore, and the only house on the beach is the Custom-house itself; but every one will be asleep by the time we get there, and it will take us only a minute to hand her into the launch. If there should be a guard there, King will have fixed them one way or another by the time we arrive. Anyhow, there is no need of looking for trouble that far ahead. There is enough to worry about in between. We haven't got there yet."
The moon rose grandly a few minutes later, and flooded the forest with light so that the open places were as clear as day. It threw strange shadows across the trail, and turned the rocks and fallen trees into figures of men crouching or standing upright with uplifted arms. They were so like to them that Clay and Langham flung their carbines to their shoulders again and again, and pointed them at some black object that turned as they advanced into wood or stone. From the forest they came to little streams and broad shallow rivers where the rocks in the fording places churned the water into white masses of foam, and the horses kicked up showers of spray as they made their way, slipping and stumbling, against the current. It was a silent pilgrimage, and never for a moment did the strain slacken or the men draw rein. Sometimes, as they hurried across a broad tableland, or skirted the edge of a precipice and looked down hundreds of feet below at the shining waters they had just forded, or up at the rocky points of the mountains before them, the beauty of the night overcame them and made them forget the significance of their journey.
They were not always alone, for they passed at intervals through sleeping villages of mud huts with thatched roofs, where the dogs ran yelping out to bark at them, and where the pine-knots, blazing on the clay ovens, burned cheerily in the moonlight. In the low lands where the fever lay, the mist rose above the level of their heads and enshrouded them in a curtain of fog, and the dew fell heavily, penetrating their clothing and chilling their heated bodies so that the sweating horses moved in a lather of steam.
They had settled down into a steady gallop now, and ten or fifteen miles had been left behind them.
"We are making excellent time," said Clay. "The village of San Lorenzo should lie beyond that ridge." He drove up beside the driver and pointed with his whip. "Is not that San Lorenzo?" he asked.
"Yes, senor," the man answered, "but I mean to drive around it by the old wagon trail. It is a large town, and people may be awake. You will be able to see it from the top of the next hill."
The cavalcade stopped at the summit of the ridge and the men looked down into the silent village. It was like the others they had passed, with a few houses built round a square of grass that could hardly be recognized as a plaza, except for the church on its one side, and the huge wooden cross planted in its centre. From the top of the hill they could see that the greater number of the houses were in darkness, but in a large building of two stories lights were shining from every window.