I put up at the Posado de los Generales (recommended by the commandant), and the day after my arrival I delivered the letters confided to me by Señor Moreño. This done, I felt safe; for (as I thought) there was nothing else in my possession by which I could possibly be compromised. I did not deliver the letters separately. I gave the packet, just as I had received it, to a certain Señor Carera, the secret chief of the patriot party in Caracas. I also gave him a long verbal message from Moreño, and we discussed at length the condition of the country and the prospects of the insurrection. In the interior, he said, there raged a frightful guerilla warfare, and Caracas was under a veritable reign of terror. Of the half-dozen friends for whom I had brought letters, one had been garroted; another was in prison, and would almost certainly meet the same fate. It was only by posing as a loyalist and exercising the utmost circumspection that he had so far succeeded in keeping a whole skin; and if he were not convinced that he could do more for the cause where he was than elsewhere, he would not remain in the city another hour. As for myself, he was quite of Moreño’s opinion, that the sooner I got away the better.
“I consider it my duty to watch over your safety,” he said. “I should be sorry indeed were any harm to befall an English caballero who has risked his life to serve us and brought us such good news.”
“What harm can befall me, now that I have got rid of that packet?” I asked.
“In a city under martial law and full of spies, there is no telling what may happen. Being, moreover, a stranger, you are a marked man. It is not everybody who, like the commandant of La Guayra, will believe that you are travelling for your own pleasure. What man in his senses would choose a time like this for a scientific ramble in Venezuela?”
And then Señor Carera explained that he could arrange for me to leave Caracas almost immediately, under excellent guidance. The teniente of Colonel Mejia, one of the guerilla leaders, was in the town on a secret errand, and would set out on his return journey in three days. If I liked I might go with him, and I could not have a better guide or a more trustworthy companion.
It was a chance not to be lost. I told Señor Carera that I should only be too glad to profit by the opportunity, and that on any day and at any hour which he might name I would be ready.
“I will see the teniente, and let you know further in the course of to-morrow,” said Carera, after a moment’s thought. “The affair will require nice management. There are patrols on every road. You must be well mounted, and I suppose you will want a mule for your baggage.”
“No! I shall take no more than I can carry in my saddle-bags. We must not be incumbered with pack-mules on an expedition of this sort. We may have to ride for our lives.”
“You are quite right, Señor Fortescue; so you may. I will see that you are well mounted, and I shall be delighted to take charge of your belongings until the patriots again, and for the last time, capture Caracas and drive those thrice-accursed Spaniards into the sea.”