"That makes five, and we but three! The thing smells of an ambush. Well, all we have to do is to be ready, and, if need be, fight like the Demon of the South himself. It is our prisoner or the stake for you and me, my lad!"
The little, ape-faced, bat-eared Andrés, who had never told any what he had been sent there for, was arguing the matter out by himself.
"There is something behind this," he said; "they have a card somewhere we have not seen the front of."
They marched a while, the silence only broken by the fall of the mule's feet on the stones.
"I have it," cried Andrés, suddenly elevating his thin voice above a whisper. It was only a squeak at best, but it aroused the First Familiar from his dreams of honour at the mule's bridle.
"Silence there, you Andrés," he commanded, "or by Saint Vincent I will wring your neck!"
"Wring my neck! He dares not," snarled the little wrinkled man, with an evil grin, in the darkness—"he dares not, big as he is, and he knows it. He would find a dozen inches of steel ensconced between his ribs. If I am no bigger than an ox-goad, I am burnt at the end, and can drive home a sharp point with any man."
"Do not mind the hog," said Felieu the Esplugan. "What was it you thought of?"
"That Don Raphael Llorient was out with a band of his lads from the Castle of Collioure. Doubtless he headed them off from the boat, and they had to save themselves as best they might. So they scattered among the sand-hills!"
"Hum, perhaps—we shall see," said Felieu the Esplugan. "At any rate, keep your eyes open and your knife ready to the five-finger grip. We must kill, rather than let her go. You know the rule."