We got out of the town, passing along shady lanes, with little palm-hidden villas standing back in the shadows of olive groves and vineyards, and gradually clattered up to some high ground, a regular tree-covered ridge, at the back of San Fernando, from which we had a grand view of the town at our feet, the square cathedral tower, the grand sweeping bend of the head of La Laguna, and, far away to the left, the faint outline of the rocks which marked its inlet—El Castellar could not be seen because of the dazzling haze and mist which hung on the water. The wretched little cruiser had just weighed, and was steaming slowly past my ship, covering her with black oily smoke. I only hoped that the Comfort, or the officer of the watch, had had the 'savvy' to shut my stern windows.
Wilson turned me round to look inland.
Sloping gently downwards at our feet was some open ground, dancing in the heat, and pigs and goats and some wretched cattle were lazily browsing there. The road in which we were standing ran down it, a broad red streak, to a sluggish stream at the bottom, crossed it by a ford, and gently rose over some more bare, parched, open ground, and was swallowed in the dark shade of a forest. Everywhere beyond, look which way I would, there was nothing but forest, stretching away in the distance in every direction till the outlines of the trees were lost in a dim confusion of mist on the horizon. The town of San Fernando, but for that bare ground on each side of the stream which swept round it, was simply built in a great clearing, and it gave me the impression that that dark motionless forest was silently awaiting the opportunity to claim its own again and swallow it up.
'That is our first line of defence, and our last,' he said, sweeping his arm round the horizon.
'Sometimes, when it is not so hot, you can see the dim outlines of the mountains of Santa Cruz away over there,' Wilson said, pointing to the north. 'You see that road—Queen Isabella's road they call it—it runs straight as a die for fifty miles through the trees. Three hundred years ago the Spaniards cut it through the forest, and from here to Santa Cruz you could travel by coach in five days, but now the part through the mountains has been destroyed by earthquakes.'
'But where are your defences—your trenches?' I asked.
'We have none,' he said, 'we don't want any. General Zorilla is marching down that road to attack us. He is a grand old man' ('I know him: he is,' I said, beginning to understand), 'and a grand soldier, but his only way through fifty miles of virgin forest is along that road. It is a big job, and he knows it. Six days ago he and his army plunged into it, and they will never leave it, for my little brown forest-men, with rifles and machetes, hover all round him. We are drawing him on, the farther he gets away from Santa Cruz, the greater difficulty he has to feed his troops—he has four thousand of them and artillery—and is already short of food, sending out strong parties to forage, but they find nothing, and we capture fifty or sixty of his men every day.
'You see that dark mass over there?' he pointed.
I pretended I did see it.
'There's a big clearing close there—just twenty-four miles from here—and his army camped in it last night. My little chaps gave them a rotten time.'