As I did so his wig fell off and with it his beard, and I staggered backward in amazement. The so-called expert from the Meteorological Office was, as the Spaniard had contended, a spy—perhaps sent by the Foreign Office, for it was a man we instantly recognised—no other than Colonel Napier himself.
Personally, I would have stood my ground then and defied him; but Casteno was too quick for me. As I reeled back breathless from the impact he caught me by the shoulder and with a quick turn twisted me through the narrow door of the barn.
“This is no time for heroics, Glynn,” he whispered. “We have won. Now let us be off.” And he doubled behind some other buildings and then dived headlong into a clump of bushes, through which he wriggled his way on hands and knees like a snake.
Almost instinctively I followed him, for on the still summer breeze I could hear Colonel Napier’s voice raised in angry shouts, the thunder of hurrying feet, and all the mysterious sounds and movements which betokened that at last the crowd had taken alarm, and that an organised pursuit of us could, at the most now, be only a matter of a few seconds.
The branches tore our clothes and made sad havoc of our disguises, but this last accident proved a blessing in disguise, for it made us stop at a pond and restore to our faces their natural resemblance.
“But we must not be caught,” I returned, deftly rolling up the wigs and secreting them in the branch of a tree, where they looked like a new kind of bird’s nest. “Look through that opening there between those willows. Don’t you see the molten gleam of water under the summer sun?”
“Yes,” replied Casteno joyously, rising on his knees and stretching his neck. “It’s a stream sure enough—perhaps a river—with plenty of water space, for I am sure I distinguish a current in it running steady and strong.”
“Now let us make for that, then,” I urged, “and hail the first boat that passes. Let us pretend we are soldiers, and have overstayed our leave, and that we shall get fined if we don’t hasten pell-mell back to the town.”
“What town?” queried Casteno ruefully; whereat we both laughed. It certainly did seem preposterous for us not to know the name of the country we were in. Yet, truthfully enough, we didn’t—we hadn’t the ghost of an idea.
As luck would have it, however, we found several boats moored close to the trees by the side of the water, and in charge of them was a sharp-looking lad about fourteen years of age.