The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mr. Fortescue, by William Westall

Mr. Fortescue

An Andean Romance

by

William Westall

[Contents]

[Chapter I.]

Matching Green.

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A quaint old Essex village of single-storied cottages, some ivy mantled, with dormer windows, thatched roofs, and miniature gardens, strewed with picturesque irregularity round as fine a green as you will find in the county. Its normal condition is rustic peace and sleepy beatitude; and it pursues the even tenor of its way undisturbed by anything more exciting than a meeting of the vestry, the parish dinner, the advent of a new curate, or the exit of one of the fathers of the hamlet.

But this morning the place is all agog, and so transformed that it hardly knows itself. The entire population, from the oldest gaffer to the last-born baby, is out-of-doors; the two inns are thronged with guests, and the road is lined with all sorts and conditions of carriages, from the four-in-hand of the wealthy swell to the donkey-cart of the local coster-monger. From every point of the compass are trooping horsemen, some resplendent in scarlet coats, their nether limbs clothed in immaculate white breeches and shining top-boots, others in pan hats and brown leggings; and all in high spirits and eager for the fray; for to-day, according to old custom, the Essex Hunt hold the first regular meet of the season on Matching’s matchless Green.

The master is already to the fore, and now comes Tom Cuffe, the huntsman, followed by his hounds, whose sleek skins and bright coats show that they are “fit to go,” and whose eager looks bode ill to the long-tailed denizens of copse and covert.

It still wants a few minutes to eleven, and the interval is occupied in the interchange of greetings between old companions of the chase, in desultory talk about horses and hounds; and while some of the older votaries of Diana fight their battles o’er again, and describe thrice-told historic runs, which grow longer with every repetition, others discuss the prospects of the coming season, and indulge in hopes of which, let us hope, neither Jack Frost, bad scent, nor accident by flood or field will mar the fruition.

Nearly all are talking, for there is a feeling of camaraderie in the hunting-field which dispenses with the formality of introductions, its frequenters sometimes becoming familiar friends before they have learned each other’s names.

Yet there are exceptions; and one cavalier in particular appears to hold himself aloof, neither speaking to his neighbors nor mixing in the throng. As he does not look like a “sulky swell,” rendered taciturn by an overweening sense of his own importance, he is probably either a new resident in the county or a “stranger from a distance”—which, none whom I ask seems to know. There is something about this man that especially attracts my attention; and not mine alone, for I perceive that he is being curiously regarded by several of my neighbors. His get-up is faultless, and he sits with the easy grace of a practiced horseman an animal of exceptional symmetry and strength. His well-knit figure is slim and almost youthful, and he holds himself as erect on his saddle as a dragoon on parade. But his closely cropped hair is turning gray, and his face that of a man far advanced in the fifties, if not past sixty. And a striking face it is—long and oval, with a straight nose and fine nostrils, a broad forehead, and a firm, resolute mouth. His complexion, though it bears traces of age, is clear, healthy, and deeply bronzed. Save for a heavy gray mustache, he is clean shaved; his dark, keenly observant eyes are overshadowed by black and all but straight brows, terminating in two little tufts, which give his countenance a strange and, as some might think, an almost sardonic expression. Altogether, it strikes me as being the face of a cynical yet not ill-natured or malicious Mephistopheles.

Behind him are two grooms in livery, nearly as well mounted as himself, and, greatly to my surprise, he is presently joined by Jim Rawlings, who last season held the post of first whipper-in.

What manner of man is this who brings out four horses on the same day, and what does he want with them all? Such horses, too! There is not one of them that has not the look of a two hundred-guinea hunter.

I was about to put the question to Keyworth, the hunt secretary, who had just come within speaking distance, and was likely to know if anybody did, when the master gave the signal for a move, and huntsman and hounds, followed by the entire field, went off at a sharp trot.

We had a rather long ride to covert, but a quick find, a fox being viewed away almost as soon as the hounds began to draw. It was a fast thing while it lasted, but, unfortunately, it did not last long; for, after a twenty minutes’ gallop, the hounds threw up their heads, and cast as Cuffe might, he was unable to recover the line.

The country we had gone over was difficult and dangerous, full of blind fences and yawning ditches, deep enough and wide enough to swallow up any horse and his rider who might fail to clear them. Fortunately, however, I escaped disaster, and for the greater part of the run I was close to the gentleman with the Mephistophelian face and Tom Rawlings, who acted as his pilot. Tom rode well, of course—it was his business—but no better than his master, whose horse, besides being a big jumper, was as clever as a cat, flying the ditches like a bird, and clearing the blindest fences without making a single mistake.

After the first run we drew two coverts blank, but eventually found a second fox, which gave us a slow hunting run of about an hour, interrupted by several checks, and saved his brush by taking refuge in an unstopped earth.

By this time it was nearly three o’clock, and being a long way from home, and thinking no more good would be done, I deemed it expedient to leave off. I went away as Mephistopheles and his man were mounting their second horses, which had just been brought up by the two grooms in livery.

My way lay by Matching Green, and as I stopped at the village inn to refresh my horse with a pail of gruel and myself with a glass of ale, who should come up but old Tawney, Tom Cuffe’s second horseman! Besides being an adept at his calling, familiar with every cross-road and almost every field in the county, he knew nearly as well as a hunted fox himself which way the creature meant to run. Tawney was a great gossip, and quite a mine of curious information about things equine and human—especially about things equine. Here was a chance not to be neglected of learning something about Mephistopheles; so after warming Tawney’s heart and opening his lips with a glass of hot whiskey punch, I began:

“You’ve got a new first whip, I see.”

“Yes, sir, name of Cobbe—Paul Cobbe. He comes from the Berkshire country, he do, sir.”

“But how is it that Rawlings has left? and who is that gentleman he was with to-day?”

“What! haven’t you heard!” exclaimed Tawney, as surprised at my ignorance as if I had asked him the name of the reigning sovereign.

“I have not heard, which, seeing that I spent the greater part of the summer at sea and returned only the other day, is perhaps not greatly to be wondered at.”

“Well, the gentleman as Rawlings has gone to and as he was with to-day is Mr. Fortescue; him as has taken Kingscote.”

Kingscote was a country-house of no extraordinary size, but with so large a park and gardens, conservatories and stables so extensive as to render its keeping up very costly; and the owner or mortgagee, I know not which, had for several years been vainly trying to let it at a nominal rent.

“He must be rich, then. Kingscote will want a lot of keeping up.”

“Rich is not the word, sir. He has more money than he knows what to do with. Why, he has twenty horses now, and is building loose-boxes for ten more, and he won’t look at one under a hundred pounds. Rawlings has got a fine place, he has that.”

“I am surprised he should have left the kennels, though. He loses his chance of ever becoming huntsman.”

“He is as good as that now, sir. He had a present of fifty pounds to start with, gets as many shillings a week and all found, and has the entire management of the stables, and with a gentleman like Mr. Fortescue there’ll be some nice pickings.”

“Very likely. But why does Mr. Fortescue want a pilot? He rides well, and his horses seem to know their business.”

“He won’t have any as doesn’t. Yes, he rides uncommon well for an aged man, does Mr. Fortescue. I suppose he wants somebody to show him the way and keep him from getting ridden over. It isn’t nice to get ridden over when you’re getting into years.”

“It isn’t nice whether you are getting into years or not. But you cannot call Mr. Fortescue an old man.”

“You cannot call him a young ’un. He has a good many gray hairs, and them puckers under his eyes hasn’t come in a day. But he has a young heart, I will say that for him. Did you see how he did that ‘double’ as pounded half the field?”

“Yes, it was a very sporting jump. But who is Mr. Fortescue, and where does he come from?”

“That is what nobody seems to know. Mr. Keyworth—he was at the kennels only yesterday—asked me the very same question. He thought Jim Rawlings might ha’ told me something. But bless you, Jim knows no more than anybody else. All as he can tell is as Mr. Fortescue sometimes goes to London, that he is uncommon fond of hosses, and either rides or drives tandem nearly every day, and has ordered a slap-up four-in-hand drag. And he has got a ’boratory and no end o’ chemicals and stuff, and electric machines, and all sorts o’ gimcracks.”

“Is there a Mrs. Fortescue?”

“Not as I knows on. There is not a woman in the house, except servants.”

“Who looks after things, then?”

“Well, there’s a housekeeper. But the head bottle-washer is a chap they call major-domo—a German he is. He looks after everything, and an uncommon sharp domo he is, too, Jim says. Nobody can do him a penny piece. And then there is Mr. Fortescue’s body-servant; he’s a dark man, with a big scar on one cheek, and rings in his ears. They call him Rumun.”

“Nonsense! There’s no such name as Rumun.”

“That’s what I told Jim. He said it was a rum ’un, but his name was Rumun, and no mistake.”

“Dark, and rings in his ears! The man is probably a Spaniard. You mean Ramon.”

“No, I don’t; I mean Rumun,” returned Tawney, doggedly. “I thought it was an uncommon rum name, and I asked Jim twice—he calls at the kennels sometimes—I asked him twice, and he said he was cock sure it was Rumun.”

“Rumun let it be then. Altogether, this Mr. Fortescue seems to be rather a mysterious personage.”

“You are right there, Mr. Bacon, he is. I only wish I was half as mysterious. Why, he must be worth thousands upon thousands. And he spends his money like a gentleman, he does—thinks less of a sovereign than you think of a bob. He sent Mr. Keyworth a hundred pounds for his hunt subscription, and said if they were any ways short at the end of the season they had only to tell him and he would send as much more.”

Having now got all the information out of Tawney he was able to give me, I stood him another whiskey, and after lighting a cigar I mounted my horse and jogged slowly homeward, thinking much about Mr. Fortescue, and wondering who he could be. The study of physiognomy is one of my fads, and his face had deeply impressed me; in great wealth, moreover, there is always something that strikes the imagination, and this man was evidently very rich, and the mystery that surrounded him piqued my curiosity.

[Chapter II.]

Tickle-Me-Quick.

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Being naturally of a retiring disposition, and in no sense the hero of the tale which I am about to tell, I shall say no more concerning myself than is absolutely necessary. At the same time, it is essential to a right comprehension of what follows that I say something about myself, and better that I should say it now than interrupt the even flow of my narrative later on.

My name is Geoffrey Bacon, and I have reason to believe that I was born at a place in Essex called (appropriately enough) Dedham. My family is one of the oldest in the county, and (of course) highly respectable; but as the question is often put to me by friends, and will naturally suggest itself to my readers, I may as well observe, once for all, that I am not a descendent of the Lord Keeper Bacon, albeit, if he had had any children, I have no doubt I should have been.

My poor mother died in giving me birth; my father followed her when I was ten years old, leaving me with his blessing (nothing else), to the care of his aunt, Miss Ophelia Bacon, by whom I was brought up and educated. She was very good to me, but though I was far from being intentionally ungrateful, I fear that I did not repay her goodness as it deserved. The dear old lady had made up her mind that I should be a doctor, and though I would rather have been a farmer or a country gentleman (the latter for choice), I made no objection; and so long as I remained at school she had no reason to complain of my conduct. I satisfied my masters and passed my preliminary examination creditably and without difficulty, to my aunt’s great delight. She protested that she was proud of me, and rewarded my diligence and cleverness with a five-pound note. But after I became a student at Guy’s I gave her much trouble, and got myself into some sad scrapes. I spent her present, and something more, in hiring mounts, for I was passionately fond of riding, especially to hounds, and ran into debt with a neighboring livery-stable keeper to the tune of twenty pounds. I would sometimes borrow the greengrocer’s pony, for I was not particular what I rode, so long as it had four legs. When I could obtain a mount neither for love nor on credit, I went after the harriers on foot. The result, as touching my health and growth, was all that could be desired. As touching my studies, however, it was less satisfactory. I was spun twice, both in my anatomy and physiology. Miss Ophelia, though sorely grieved, was very indulgent, and had she lived, I am afraid that I should never have got my diploma. But when I was twenty-one and she seventy-five, my dear aunt died, leaving me all her property (which made an income of about four hundred a year), with the proviso that unless, within three years of her death, I obtained the double qualification, the whole of her estate was to pass to Guy’s Hospital. In the mean time the trustees were empowered to make me an allowance of two guineas a week and defray all my hospital expenses.

On this, partly because I was loath to lose so goodly a heritage, partly, I hope, from worthier motives, I buckled-to in real earnest, and before I was four-and-twenty I could write after my name the much coveted capitals M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. All this while I had not once crossed a horse or looked at a hound, yet the ruling passion was still strong, and being very much of Mr. Jorrock’s opinion that all time not spent in hunting is lost, I resolved, before “settling down” or taking up any position which might be incompatible with indulgence in my favorite amusement, to devote a few years of my life to fox-hunting. At twenty-four a man does not give much thought to the future—at any rate I did not.

The next question was how to hunt three or four days a week on four hundred a year, for though I was quite willing to spend my income, I was resolved not to touch my capital. To begin with, I sold my aunt’s cottage and furniture and took a couple of rooms for the winter at Red Chimneys, a roomy farm-house in the neighborhood of Treydon. Then, acting on the great principle of co-operation, I joined at horse-keeping with my good friend and old school-fellow, Bertie Alston, a London solicitor. Being both of us light-weights, we could mount ourselves cheaply; the average cost of our stud of four horses did not exceed forty pounds apiece. Moreover, when opportunities offered, we did not disdain to turn an honest penny by buying an animal cheap and selling him dear, and as I looked after things myself, bought my own forage, and saw that I had full measure, our stable expenses were kept within moderate limits. Except when the weather was bad, or a horse hors de combat, I generally contrived to get four days’ hunting a week—three with the fox-hounds and one with Mr. Vigne’s harriers—for, owing to his professional engagements, Alston could not go out as often as I did. But as I took all the trouble and responsibility, it was only fair that I should have the lion’s share of the riding.

At the end of the season we either sold the horses off or turned them into a straw-yard, and I went to sea as ship’s surgeon. In this capacity I made voyages to Australia, to the Cape, and to the West Indies; and the summer before I first saw Mr. Fortescue I had been to the Arctic Ocean in a whaler. True, the pay did not amount to much, but it found me in pocket-money and clothes, and I saved my keep.

Having now, as I hope, done with digressions and placed myself en rapport with my readers, I will return to the principal personage of my story.

The next time I met Mr. Fortescue was at Harlow Bush. He was quite as well mounted as before, and accompanied, as usual, by Rawlings and two grooms with their second horses. On this occasion Mr. Fortescue did not hold himself nearly so much aloof as he had done at Matching Green, perhaps because he was more noticed; and he was doubtless more noticed because the fame of his wealth and the lavish use he made of it were becoming more widely known. The master gave him a friendly nod and a gracious smile, and expressed a hope that we should have good sport; the secretary engaged him in a lively conversation; the hunt servants touched their caps to him with profound respect, and he received greetings from most of the swells.

We drew Latton, found in a few minutes, and had a “real good thing,” a grand run of nearly two hours, with only one or two trifling checks, which, as I am not writing a hunting story, I need not describe any further than to remark that we had plenty of fencing, a good deal of hard galloping, a kill in the open, and that of the sixty or seventy who were present at the start only about a score were up at the finish. Among the fortunate few were Mr. Fortescue and his pilot. During the latter part of the run we rode side by side, and pulled up at the same instant, just as the fox was rolled over.

“A very fine run,” I took the liberty to observe, as I stepped from my saddle and slackened my horse’s girths. “It will be a long time before we have a better.”

“Two hours and two minutes,” shouted the secretary, looking at his watch, “and straight. We are in the heart of the Puckeridge country.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Fortescue, quietly, “it was a very enjoyable run. You like hunting, I think?”

“Like it! I should rather think I do. I regard fox-hunting as the very prince of sports. It is manly, health-giving, and exhilarating. There is no sport in which so many participate and so heartily enjoy. We enjoy it, the horses enjoy it, and the hounds enjoy it.”

“How about the fox?”

“Oh, the fox! Well, the fox is allowed to exist on condition of being occasionally hunted. If there were no hunting there would be no foxes. On the whole, I regard him as a fortunate and rather pampered individual; and I have even heard it said that he rather likes being hunted than otherwise.”

“As for the general question, I dare say you are right. But I don’t think the fox likes it much. It once happened to me to be hunted, and I know I did not like it.”

This was rather startling, and had Mr. Fortescue spoken less gravely and not been so obviously in earnest, I should have thought he was joking.

“You don’t mean—Was it a paper-chase?” I said, rather foolishly.

“No; it was not a paper-chase,” he answered, grimly. “There were no paper-chases in my time. I mean that I was once hunted, just as we have been hunting that fox.”

“With a pack of hounds?”

“Yes, with a pack of hounds.”

I was about to ask what sort of a chase it was, and how and where he was hunted, when Cuffe came up, and, on behalf of the master, offered Mr. Fortescue the brush.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Fortescue, taking the brush and handing it to Rawlings. “Here is something for you”—tipping the huntsman a sovereign, which he put in his pocket with a “Thank you kindly, sir,” and a gratified smile.

And then flasks were uncorked, sandwich-cases opened, cigars lighted, and the conversation becoming general, I had no other opportunity—at that time—of making further inquiry of Mr. Fortescue touching the singular episode in his career which he had just mentioned. A few minutes later a move was made for our own country, and as we were jogging along I found myself near Jim Rawlings.

“That’s a fresh hoss you’ve got, I think, sir,” he said.

“Yes, I have ridden him two or three times with the harriers; but this is the first time I have had him out with fox-hounds.”

“He carried you very well in the run, sir.”

“You are quite right; he did. Very well.”

“Does he lay hold on you at all, Mr. Bacon?”

“Not a bit.”

“Light in the mouth, a clever jumper, and a free goer.”

“All three.”

“Yes, he’s the right sort, he is, sir; and if ever you feel disposed to sell him, I could, may be, find you a customer.”

Accepting this as a delicate intimation that Mr. Fortescue had taken a fancy to the horse and would like to buy him, I told Jim that I was quite willing to sell at a fair price.

“And what might you consider a fair price, if it is a fair question?” asked the man.

“A hundred guineas,” I answered; for, as I knew that Mr. Fortescue would not “look at a horse,” as Tawney put it, under that figure, it would have been useless to ask less.

“Very well, sir. I will speak to my master, and let you know.”

Ranger, as I called the horse, was a purchase of Alston’s. Liking his looks (though Bertie was really a very indifferent judge), he had bought him out of a hansom-cab for forty pounds, and after a little “schooling,” the creature took to jumping as naturally as a duck takes to water. Sixty pounds may seem rather an unconscionable profit, but considering that Ranger was quite sound and up to weight, I don’t think a hundred guineas was too much. A dealer would have asked a hundred and fifty.

At any rate, Mr. Fortescue did not think it too much, for Rawlings presently brought me word that his master would take the horse at the price I had named, if I could warrant him sound.

“In that case it is a bargain,” I said, “for I can warrant him sound.”

“All right, sir. I’ll send one of the grooms over to your place for him to-morrow.”

Shortly afterward I fell in with Keyworth, and as a matter of course we talked about Mr. Fortescue.

“Do you know anything about him?” I asked.

“Not much. I believe he is rich—and respectable.”

“That is pretty evident, I think.”

“I am not sure. A man who spends a good deal of money is presumably rich; but it by no means follows that he is respectable. There are such people in the world as successful rogues and wealthy swindlers. Not that I think Mr. Fortescue is either one or the other. I learned, from the check he sent me for his subscription, who his bankers are, and through a friend of mine, who is intimate with one of the directors, I got a confidential report about him. It does not amount to much; but it is satisfactory so far as it goes. They say he is a man of large fortune, and, as they believe, highly respectable.”

“Is that all?”

“All there was in the report. But Tomlinson—that’s my friend—has heard that he has spent the greater part of his life abroad, and that he made his money in South America.”

The mention of South America interested me, for I had made voyages both to Rio de Janeiro and several places on the Spanish Main.

“South America is rather vague,” I observed. “You might almost as well say ‘Southern Asia.’ Have you any idea in what part of it?”

“Not the least. I have told you all I know. I should be glad to know more; but for the present it is quite enough for my purpose. I intend to call upon Mr. Fortescue.”

It is hardly necessary to say that I had no such intention, for having neither a “position in the county,” as the phrase goes, a house of my own, nor any official connection with the hunt, a call from me would probably have been regarded, and rightly so, as a piece of presumption. As it happened, however, I not only called on Mr. Fortescue before the secretary, but became his guest, greatly to my surprise, and, I have no doubt, to his, although he was the indirect cause; for had he not bought Ranger, it is very unlikely that I should have become an inmate of his house.

It came about in this way. Bertie was so pleased with the result of his first speculation in horseflesh (though so far as he was concerned it was a pure fluke) that he must needs make another. If he had picked up a second cab-horse at thirty or forty pounds he could not have gone far wrong; but instead of that he must needs go to Tattersall’s and give nearly fifty for a blood mare rejoicing in the name of “Tickle-me-Quick,” described as being “the property of a gentleman,” and said to have won several country steeple-chases.

The moment I set eyes on the beast I saw she was a screw, “and vicious at that,” as an American would have said. But as she had been bought (without warranty) and paid for, I had to make the best of her. Within an hour of the mare’s arrival at Red Chimneys, I was on her back, trying her paces. She galloped well and jumped splendidly, but I feared from her ways that she would be hot with hounds, and perhaps, kick in a crowd, one of the worst faults that a hunter can possess.

On the next non-hunting day I took Tickle-me-Quick out for a long ride in the country, to see how she shaped as a hack. I little thought, as we set off, that it would prove to be her last journey, and one of the most memorable events of my life.

For a while all went well. The mare wanted riding, yet she behaved no worse than I expected, although from the way she laid her ears back and the angry tossing of her head when I made her feel the bit, she was clearly not in the best of tempers. But I kept her going; and an hour after leaving Red Chimneys we turned into a narrow deep lane between high banks, which led to Kingscote entering the road on the west side of the park at right angles, and very near Mr. Fortescue’s lodge-gates.

In the field to my right several colts were grazing, and when they caught sight of Tickle-me-Quick trotting up the lane they took it into their heads to have an impromptu race among themselves. Neighing loudly, they set off at full gallop. Without asking my leave, Tickle-me-Quick followed suit. I tried to stop her. I might as well have tried to stop an avalanche. So, making a virtue of necessity, I let her go, thinking that before she reached the top of the lane she would have had quite enough, and I should be able to pull her up without difficulty.

The colts are soon left behind; but we can hear them galloping behind us, and on goes the mare like the wind. I can now see the end of the lane, and as the great park wall, twelve feet high, looms in sight, the horrible thought flashes on my mind that unless I pull her up we shall both be dashed to pieces; for to turn a sharp corner at the speed we are going is quite out of the question.

I make another effort, sawing the mare’s mouth till it bleeds, and tightening the reins till they are fit to break.

All in vain; she puts her head down and gallops on, if possible more madly than before. Still larger looms that terrible wall; death stares me in the face, and for the first time in my life I undergo the intense agony of mortal terror.

We are now at the end of the lane. There is one chance only, and that the most desperate, of saving my life. I slip my feet from the stirrups, and when Tickle-me-Quick is within two or three strides of the wall, I drop the reins and throw myself from her back. Then all is darkness.

[Chapter III.]

Mr. Fortescue’s Proposal.

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“Where am I?”

I feel as if I were in a strait-jacket. One of my arms is immovable, my head is bandaged, and when I try to turn I suffer excruciating pain.

“Where am I?”

“Oh, you have wakened up!” says somebody with a foreign accent, and a dark face bends over me. The light is dim and my sight weak, and but for his grizzled mustache I might have taken the speaker for a woman, his ears being adorned with large gold rings.

“Where are you? You are in the house of Señor Fortescue.”

“And the mare?”

“The mare broke her wicked head against the park wall, and she has gone to the kennels to be eaten by the dogs.”

“Already? How long is it since?”

“It was the day before yesterday zat it happened.”

“God bless me! I must have been insensible ever since. That means concussion of the brain. Am I much damaged otherwise, do you know?”

“Pretty well. Your left shoulder is dislocated, one of your fingers and two of your ribs broken, and one of your ankles severely contused. But it might have been worse. If you had not thrown yourself from your horse, as you did, you would just now be in a coffin instead of in this comfortable bed.”

“Somebody saw me, then?”

“Yes, the lodge-keeper. He thought you were dead, and came up and told us; and we brought you here on a stretcher, and the Señor Coronel sent for a doctor—”

“The Señor Coronel! Do you mean Mr. Fortescue?”

“Yes, sir, I mean Mr. Fortescue.”

“Then you are Ramon?”

“Hijo de Dios! You know my name.”

“Yes, you are Mr. Fortescue’s body-servant.”

“Caramba! Somebody must have told you.”

“You might have made a worse guess, Señor Ramon. Will you please tell Mr. Fortescue that I thank him with all my heart for his great kindness, and that I will not trespass on it more than I can possibly help. As soon as I can be moved I shall go to my own place.”

“That will not be for a long time, and I do not think the Señor Coronel would like—But when he returns he will see you, and then you can tell him yourself.”

“He is away from home, then?”

“The Señor Coronel has gone to London. He will be back to-morrow.”

“Well, if I cannot thank him to-day, I can thank you. You are my nurse, are you not?”

“A little—Geist and I, and Mees Tomleenson, we relieve each other. But those two don’t know much about wounds.”

“And you do, I suppose?”

“Hijo de Dios! Do I know much about wounds? I have nursed men who have been cut to pieces. I have been cut to pieces myself. Look!”

And with that Ramon pointed to his neck, which was seamed all the way down with a tremendous scar; then to his left hand, which was minus two fingers; next to one of his arms, which appeared to have been plowed from wrist to elbow with a bullet; and lastly to his head, which was almost covered with cicatrices, great and small.

“And I have many more marks in other parts of my body, which it would not be convenient to show you just now,” he said, quietly.

“You are an old soldier, then, Ramon?”

“Very. And now I will light myself a cigarette, and you will no more talk. As an old soldier, I know that it is bad for a caballero with a broken head to talk so much as you are doing.”

“As a surgeon, I know you are right, and I will talk no more for the present.”

And then, feeling rather drowsy, I composed myself to sleep. The last thing I remembered before closing my eyes was the long, swarthy, quixotic-looking face of my singular nurse, veiled in a blue cloud of cigarette-smoke, which, as it rolled from the nostrils of his big, aquiline nose, made those orifices look like the twin craters of an active volcano, upside down.

When, after a short snooze, I woke a second time, my first sensation was one of intense surprise, and being unable, without considerable inconvenience, to rub my eyes, I winked several times in succession to make sure that I was not dreaming; for while I slept the swart visage, black eyes, and grizzled mustache of my nurse had, to all appearance, been turned into a fair countenance, with blue eyes and a tawny head, while the tiny cigarette had become a big meerschaum pipe.

“God bless me! You are surely not Ramon?” I exclaimed.

“No; I am Geist. It is my turn of duty as your nurse. Can I get you anything?”

“Thank you very much; you are all very kind. I feel rather faint, and perhaps if I had something to eat it might do me good.”

“Certainly. There is some beef-tea ready. Here it is. Shall I feed you?”

“Thank you. My left arm is tied up, and this broken finger is very painful. Bat I am giving you no end of trouble. I don’t know how I shall be able to repay you and Mr. Fortescue for all your kindness.”

“Ach Gott! Don’t mention it, my dear sir. Mr. Fortescue said you were to have every attention; and when a fellow-man has been broken all to pieces it is our duty to do for him what we can. Who knows? Perhaps some time I may be broken all to pieces myself. But I will not ride your fiery horses. My weight is seventeen stone, and if I was to throw myself off a galloping horse as you did, ach Gott! I should be broken past mending.”

Mr. Geist made an attentive and genial nurse, discoursing so pleasantly and fluently that, greatly to my satisfaction (for I was very weak), my part in the conversation was limited to an occasional monosyllable; but he said nothing on the subject as to which I was most anxious for information—Mr. Fortescue—and, as he clearly desired to avoid it, I refrained from asking questions that might have put him in a difficulty and exposed me to a rebuff.

I found out afterward that neither he nor Ramon ever discussed their master, and though Mrs. Tomlinson, my third nurse (a buxom, healthy, middle-aged widow, whose position seemed to be something between that of housekeeper and upper servant), was less reticent, it was probably because she had so little to tell.

I learned, among other things, that the habits of the household were almost as regular as those of a regiment, and that the servants, albeit kindly treated and well paid, were strictly ruled, even comparatively slight breaches of discipline being punished with instant dismissal. At half-past ten everybody was supposed to be in bed, and up at six; for at seven Mr. Fortescue took his first breakfast of fruit and dry toast. According to Mrs. Tomlinson (and this I confess rather surprised me) he was an essentially busy man. His only idle time was that which he gave to sleep. During his waking hours he was always either working in his study, his laboratory, or his conservatories, riding and driving being his sole recreations.

“He is the most active man I ever knew, young or old,” said Mrs. Tomlinson, “and a good master—I will say that for him. But I cannot make him out at all. He seems to have neither kith nor kin, and yet—This is quite between ourselves, Mr. Bacon—”

“Of course, Mrs. Tomlinson, quite.”

“Well, there is a picture in his room as he keeps veiled and locked up in a sort of shrine; but one day he forgot to turn the key, and I—I looked.”

“Naturally. And what did you see?”

“The picture of a woman, dark, but, oh, so beautiful—as beautiful as an angel…. I thought it was, may be, a sweetheart or something, but she is too young for the likes of him.”

“Portraits are always the same; that picture may have been painted ages ago. Always veiled is it? That seems very mysterious, does it not?”

“It does; and I am just dying to know what the mystery is. If you should happen to find out, and it’s no secret, would you mind telling me?”

At this point Herr Geist appeared, whereupon Mrs. Tomlinson, with true feminine tact, changed the subject without waiting for a reply.

During the time I was laid up Mr. Fortescue came into my room almost every day, but never stayed more than a few minutes. When I expressed my sense of his kindness and talked about going home, he would smile gravely, and say:

“Patience! You must be my guest until you have the full use of your limbs and are able to go about without help.”

After this I protested no more, for there was an indescribable something about Mr. Fortescue which would have made it difficult to contradict him, even had I been disposed to take so ungrateful and ungracious a part.

At length, after a weary interval of inaction and pain, came a time when I could get up and move about without discomfort, and one fine frosty day, which seemed the brightest of my life, Geist and Ramon helped me down-stairs and led me into a pretty little morning-room, opening into one of the conservatories, where the plants and flowers had been so arranged as to look like a sort of tropical forest, in the midst of which was an aviary filled with parrots, cockatoos, and other birds of brilliant plumage.

Geist brought me an easy-chair, Ramon a box of cigarettes and the “Times,” and I was just settling down to a comfortable read and smoke, when Mr. Fortescue entered from the conservatory. He wore a Norfolk jacket and a broad-brimmed hat, and his step was so elastic, and his bearing so upright, and he seemed so strong and vigorous withal, that I began to think that in estimating his age at sixty I had made a mistake. He looked more like fifty or fifty-five.

“I am glad to see you down-stairs,” he said, helping himself to a cigarette. “How do you feel?”

“Very much better, thank you, and to-morrow or the next day I must really—”

“No, no, I cannot let you go yet. I shall keep you, at any rate, a few days longer. And while this frost lasts you can do no hunting. How is the shoulder?”

“Better. In a fortnight or so I shall be able to dispense with the sling, but my ankle is the worst. The contusion was very severe. I fear that I shall feel the effects of it for a long time.”

“That is very likely, I think. I would any time rather have a clean flesh wound than a severe contusion. I have had experience of both. At Salamanca my shoulder was laid open with a sabre-stroke at the very moment my horse was shot under me; and my leg, which was terribly bruised in the fall, was much longer in getting better than my shoulder.”

“At Salamanca! You surely don’t mean the battle of Salamanca?”

“Yes, the battle of Salamanca.”

“But, God bless me, that is ages ago! At the beginning of the century—1810 or 1812, or something like that.”

“The battle of Salamanca was fought on the 21st of July, 1812,” said my host, with a matter-of-fact air.

“But—why—how?” I stammered, staring at him in supreme surprise. “That is sixty years since, and you don’t look much more than fifty now.”

“All the same I am nearly fourscore,” said Mr. Fortescue, smiling as if the compliment pleased him.

“Fourscore, and so hale and strong! I have known men half your age not half so vigorous and alert. Why, you may live to be a hundred.”

“I think I shall, probably longer. Of course barring accidents, and if I continue to avoid a peril which has been hanging over me for half a century or so, and from which I have several times escaped only by the skin of my teeth.”

“And what is the peril, Mr. Fortescue?”

“Assassination.”

“Assassination!”

“Yes, assassination. I told you a short time ago that I was once hunted by a pack of hounds. I am hunted now—have been hunted for two generations—by a family of murderers.”

The thought occurred to me—and not for the first time—that Mr. Fortescue was either mad or a Munchausen, and I looked at him curiously; but neither in that calm, powerful, self-possessed face, nor in the steady gaze of those keen dark eyes, could I detect the least sign of incipient insanity or a boastful spirit.

“You are quite mistaken,” he said, with one of his enigmatic smiles. “I am not mad; and I have lived too long either to cherish illusions or conjure up imaginary dangers.”

“I—I beg your pardon, Mr. Fortescue—I had no intention,” I stammered, quite taken aback by the accuracy with which he had read, or guessed, my thoughts—“I had no intention to cast a doubt on what you said. But who are these people that seek your life? and why don’t you inform the police?”

“The police! How could the police help me?” exclaimed Mr. Fortescue, with a gesture of disdain, “Besides, life would not be worth having at the price of being always under police protection, like an evicting Irish landlord. But let us change the subject; we have talked quite enough about myself. I want to talk about you.”

A very few minutes sufficed to put Mr. Fortescue in possession of all the information he desired. He already knew something about me, and as I had nothing to conceal, I answered all his questions without reserve.

“Don’t you think you are rather wasting your life?” he asked, after I had answered the last of them.

“I am enjoying it.”

“Very likely. People generally do enjoy life when they are young. Hunting is all very well as an amusement, but to have no other object in life seems—what shall we say?—just a little frivolous, don’t you think?”

“Well, perhaps it does; but I mean, after a while, to buy a practice and settle down.”

“But in the mean time your medical knowledge must be growing rather rusty. I have heard physicians say that it is only after they have obtained their degree that they begin to learn their profession. And the practice you get on board these ships cannot amount to much.”

“You are quite right,” I said, frankly, for my conscience was touched. “I am, as you say, living too much for the present. I know less than I knew when I left Guy’s. I could not pass my ‘final’ over again to save my life. You are quite right: I must turn over a new leaf.”

“I am glad to hear you say so, the more especially as I have a proposal to make; and as I make it quite as much in my own interest as in yours, you will incur no obligation in accepting it. I want you to become an inmate of my house, help me in my laboratory, and act as my secretary and domestic physician, and when I am away from home, as my representative. You will have free quarters, of course; my stable will be at your disposal for hunting purposes, and you may go sometimes to London to attend lectures and do practical work at your hospital. As for salary—you can fix it yourself, when you have ascertained by actual experience the character of your work. What do you say?”

Mr. Fortescue put this question as if he had no doubt about my answer, and I fulfilled his expectation by answering promptly in the affirmative. The proposal seemed in every way to my advantage, and was altogether to my liking; and even had it been less so I should have accepted it, for what I had just heard greatly whetted my curiosity, and made me more desirous than ever to know the history of the extraordinary man with whom I had so strangely come in contact, and ascertain the secret of his wealth.

The same day I wrote to Alston announcing the dissolution of our partnership, and leaving him to deal with the horses at Red Chimneys as he might think fit.

[Chapter IV.]

A Rescue.

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My curiosity was rather long in being gratified, and but for a very strange occurrence, which I shall presently describe, probably never would have been gratified. Even after I had been a member of Mr. Fortescue’s household for several months, I knew little more of his antecedents and circumstances than on the day when he made me the proposal which I have just mentioned. If I attempted to lead up to the subject, he would either cleverly evade it or say bluntly that he preferred to talk about something else. Save as to matters that did not particularly interest me, Ramon was as reticent as his master; and as Geist had only been with Mr. Fortescue during the latter’s residence at Kingscote, his knowledge, or, rather, his ignorance was on a par with my own.

Mr. Fortescue’s character was as enigmatic as his history was obscure. He seemed to be destitute both of kinsfolk and friends, never made any allusion to his family, neither noticed women nor discussed them. Politics and religion he equally ignored, and, so far as might appear, had neither foibles nor fads. On the other hand, he had three passions—science, horses, and horticulture, and his knowledge was almost encyclopædic. He was a great reader, master of many languages, and seemed to have been everywhere and seen all in the world that was worth seeing. His wealth appeared to be unlimited, but how he made it or where he kept it I had no idea. All I knew was that whenever money was wanted it was forthcoming, and that he signed a check for ten pounds and ten thousand with equal indifference. As he conducted his private correspondence himself, my position as secretary gave me no insight into his affairs. My duties consisted chiefly in corresponding with tradesmen, horse-dealers, and nursery gardeners, and noting the results of chemical experiments.

Mr. Fortescue was very abstemious, and took great care of his health, and if he was really verging on eighty (which I very much doubted), I thought he might not improbably live to be a hundred and ten and even a hundred and twenty. He drank nothing, whatever, neither tea, coffee, cocoa, nor any other beverage, neither water nor wine, always quenching his thirst with fruit, of which he ate largely. So far as I knew, the only liquid that ever passed his lips was an occasional liquor-glass of a mysterious decoction which he prepared himself and kept always under lock and key. His breakfast, which he took every morning at seven, consisted of bread and fruit.

He ate very little animal food, limiting himself for the most part to fish and fowl, and invariably spent eight or nine hours of the twenty-four in bed. We often discussed physiology, therapeutics, and kindred subjects, of which his knowledge was so extensive as to make me suspect that some time in his life he had belonged to the medical profession.

“The best physicians I ever met,” he once observed, “are the Callavayas of the Andes—if the preservation and prolongation of human life is the test of medical skill. Among the Callavayas the period of youth is thirty years; a man is not held to be a man until he reaches fifty, and he only begins to be old at a hundred.”

“Was it among the Callavayas that you learned the secret of long life, Mr. Fortescue?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” he answered, with one of his peculiar smiles; and then he started me by saying that he would never be a “lean and slippered pantaloon.” When health and strength failed him he should cease to live.

“You surely don’t mean that you will commit suicide?” I exclaimed, in dismay.

“You may call it what you like. I shall do as the Fiji Islanders and some tribes of Indians do, in similar circumstances—retire to a corner and still the beatings of my heart by an effort of will.”

“But is that possible?”

“I have seen it done, and I have done it myself—not, of course, to the point of death, but so far as to simulate death. I once saved my life in that way.”

“Was that when you were hunted, Mr. Fortescue?”

“No, it was not. Let us go to the stables. I want to see you ride Regina over the jumps.”

Mr. Fortescue had caused to be arranged in the park a miniature steeple-chase course about a mile round, on which newly-acquired hunters were always tried, and the old ones regularly exercised. He generally made a point of being present on these occasions, sometimes riding over the course himself. If a horse, bought as a hunter, failed to justify its character by its performance it was invariably returned.

Sometimes Ramon gave us an exhibition of his skill as a gaucho. One of the wildest of the horses would be let loose in the park, and the old soldier, armed with a lasso and mounted on an animal trained by himself, and equipped with a South American saddle, would follow and try to “rope” the runaway, Mr. Fortescue, Rawlings, and myself riding after him. It was “good fun,” but I fancy Mr. Fortescue regarded this sport, as he regarded hunting, less as an amusement than as a means of keeping him in good health and condition.

Regina (a recent purchase) was tried and, I think, found wanting. I recall the instance merely because it is associated in my mind with an event which, besides affecting a momentous change in my relations with Mr. Fortescue and greatly influencing my own fortune, rendered possible the writing of this book.

The trial over, Mr. Fortescue told me, somewhat abruptly, that he intended to leave home in an hour, and should be away for several days. As he walked toward the house, I inquired if there was anything he would like me to look after during his absence, whereupon he mentioned several chemical and electrical experiments, which he wished me to continue and note the results. He requested me, further, to open all letters—save such as were marked private or bore foreign postmarks—and answer so many of them as, without his instructions, I might be able to do. For the rest, I was to exercise a general supervision, especially over the stables and gardens. As for purely domestic concerns, Geist was so excellent a manager that his master trusted him without reserve.

When Mr. Fortescue came down-stairs, equipped for his journey, I inquired when he expected to return, and on what day he would like the carriage to meet him at the station. I thought he might tell me where he was going; but he did not take the hint.

“If it rains I will telegraph,” he said; “if fine, I shall probably walk; it is only a couple of miles.”

Mr. Fortescue, as he always did when he went outside his park (unless he was mounted), took with him a sword-stick, a habit which I thought rather ridiculous, for, though he was an essentially sane man, I had quite made up my mind that his fear of assassination was either a fancy or a fad.

After my patron’s departure I worked for a while in the laboratory; and an hour before dinner I went for a stroll in the park, making, for no reason in particular, toward the principal entrance. As I neared it I heard voices in dispute, and on reaching the gates I found the lodge-keeper engaged in a somewhat warm altercation with an Italian organ-grinder and another fellow of the same kidney, who seemed to be his companion.

The lodge-keepers had strict orders to exclude from the park all beggars without exception, and all and sundry who produced music by turning a handle. Real musicians, however, were freely admitted, and often generously rewarded.

The lodge-keeper in question (an old fellow with a wooden leg) had not been able to make the two vagabonds in question understand this. They insisted on coming in, and the lodge-keeper said that if I had not appeared he verily believed they would have entered in spite of him. They seemed to know very little English; but as I knew a little Italian, which I eked out with a few significant gestures, I speedily enlightened them, and they sheered off, looking daggers, and muttering what sounded like curses.

The man who carried the organ was of the usual type—short, thick-set, hairy, and unwashed. His companion, rather to my surprise, was just the reverse—tall, shapely, well set up, and comparatively well clad; and with his dark eyes, black mustache, broad-brimmed hat, and red tie loosely knotted round his brawny throat, he looked decidedly picturesque.

On the following day, as I was going to the stables (which were a few hundred yards below the house) I found my picturesque Italian in the back garden, singing a barcarole to the accompaniment of a guitar. But as he had complied with the condition of which I had informed him, I made no objection. So far from that I gave him a shilling, and as the maids (who were greatly taken with his appearance) got up a collection for him and gave him a feed, he did not do badly.

A few days later, while out riding, I called at the station for an evening paper, and there he was again, “touching his guitar,” and singing something that sounded very sentimental.

“That fellow is like a bad shilling,” I said to one of the porters—“always turning up.”

“He is never away. I think he must have taken it into his head to live here.”

“What does he do?”

“Oh, he just hangs about, and watches the trains, as if he had never seen any before. I suppose there are none in the country he comes from. Between whiles he sometimes plays on his banjo and sings a bit for us. I cannot quite make him out; but as he is very quiet and well-behaved, and never interferes with nobody, it is no business of mine.”

Neither was it any business of mine; so after buying my paper I dismissed the subject from my mind and rode on to Kingscote.

As a rule, I found the morning papers quite as much as I could struggle with; but at this time a poisoning case was being tried which interested me so much that while it lasted I sent for or fetched an evening paper every afternoon. The day after my conversation with the porter I adopted the former course, the day after that I adopted the latter, and, contrary to my usual practice, I walked.

There were two ways from Kingscote to the station; one by the road, the other by a little-used footpath. I went by the road, and as I was buying my paper at Smith’s bookstall the station-master told me that Mr. Fortescue had returned by a train which came in about ten minutes previously.

“He must be walking home by the fields, then, or we should have met,” I said; and pocketing my paper, I set off with the intention of overtaking him.

As I have already observed, the field way was little frequented, most people preferring the high-road as being equally direct and, except in the height of summer, both dryer and less lonesome.

After traversing two or three fields the foot-path ran through a thick wood, once part of the great forest of Essex, then descending into a deep hollow, it made a sudden bend and crossed a rambling old brook by a dilapidated bridge.

As I reached the bend I heard a shout, and looking down I saw what at first sight (the day being on the wane and the wood gloomy) I took to be three men amusing themselves with a little cudgel-play. But a second glance showed me that something much more like murder than cudgel-play was going on; and shortening my Irish blackthorn, I rushed at breakneck speed down the hollow.

I was just in time. Mr. Fortescue, with his back against the tree, was defending himself with his sword-stick against the two Italians, each of whom, armed with a long dagger, was doing his best to get at him without falling foul of the sword.

The rascals were so intent on their murderous business that they neither heard nor saw me, and, taking them in the rear, I fetched the guitar-player a crack on his skull that stretched him senseless on the ground, whereupon the other villain, without more ado, took to his heels.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Fortescue, quietly, as he put up his weapon. “I don’t think I could have kept the brigands at bay much longer. A sword-stick is no match for a pair of Corsican daggers. The next time I take a walk I must have a revolver. Is that fellow dead, do you think? If he is, I shall be still more in your debt.”

I looked at the prostrate man’s face, then at his head. “No,” I said, “there is no fracture. He is only stunned.” My diagnosis was verified almost as soon as it was spoken. The next moment the Italian opened his eyes and sat up, and had I not threatened him with my blackthorn would have sprung to his feet.

“You have to thank this gentleman for saving your life,” said Mr. Fortescue, in French.

“How?” asked the fellow in the same language.

“If you had killed me you would have been hanged. If I hand you over to the police you will get twenty years at the hulks for attempted murder, and unless you answer my questions truly I shall hand you over to the police. You are a Griscelli.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which of them?”

“I am Giuseppe, the son of Giuseppe.”

“In that case you are his grandson. How did you find me out?”

“You were at Paris last summer.”

“But you did not see me there.”

“No, but Giacomo did; and from your name and appearance we felt sure you were the same.”

“Who is Giacomo—your brother?”

“No, my cousin, the son of Luigi.”

“What is he?”

“He belongs to the secret police.”

“So Giacomo put you on the scent?”

“Yes, sir. He ascertained that you were living in England. The rest was easy.”

“Oh, it was, was it? You don’t find yourself very much at ease just now, I fancy. And now, my young friend, I am going to treat you better than you deserve. I can afford to do so, for, as you see, and, as your grandfather and your father discovered to their cost, I bear a charmed life. You cannot kill me. You may go. And I advise you to return to France or Corsica, or wherever may be your home, with all speed, for to-morrow I shall denounce you to the police, and if you are caught you know what to expect. Who is your accomplice—a kinsman?”

“No, only compatriot, whose acquaintance I made in London. He is a coward.”

“Evidently. One more question and I have done. Have you any brothers?”

“Yes, sir; two.”

“And about a dozen cousins, I suppose, all of whom would be delighted to murder me—if they could. Now, give that gentleman your dagger, and march, au pas gymnastique.”

With a very ill grace, Giuseppe Griscelli did as he was bid, and then, rising to his feet, he marched, not, however, at the pas gymnastique, but slowly and deliberately; and as he reached a bend in the path a few yards farther on, he turned round and cast at Mr. Fortescue the most diabolically ferocious glance I ever saw on a human countenance.

[Chapter V.]

Thereby Hangs a Tale.

[Return to Table of Contents]

“You believe now, I hope,” said Mr. Fortescue, as we walked homeward.

“Believe what, sir?”

“That I have relentless enemies who seek my life. When I first told you of this you did not believe me. You thought I was the victim of an hallucination, else had I been more frank with you.”

“I am really very sorry.”

“Don’t protest! I cannot blame you. It is hard for people who have led uneventful lives and seen little of the seamy side of human nature to believe that under the veneer of civilization and the mask of convention, hatreds are still as fierce, men still as revengeful as ever they were in olden times…. I hope I did not make a mistake in sparing young Griscelli’s life.”

“Sparing his life! How?”

“He sought my life, and I had a perfect right to take his.”

“That is not a very Christian sentiment, Mr. Fortescue.”

“I did not say it was. Do you always repay good for evil and turn your check to the smiter, Mr. Bacon?”

“If you put it in that way, I fear I don’t.”

“Do you know anybody who does?”

After a moment’s reflection I was again compelled to answer in the negative. I could not call to mind a single individual of my acquaintance who acted on the principle of returning good for evil.

“Well, then, if I am no better than other people, I am no worse. Yet, after all, I think I did well to let him go. Had I killed the brigand, there would have been a coroner’s inquest, and questions asked which might have been troublesome to answer, and he has brothers and cousins. If I could destroy the entire brood! Did you see the look he gave me as he went away? It meant murder. We have not seen the last of Giuseppe Griscelli, Mr. Bacon.”

“I am afraid we have not. I never saw such an expression of intense hatred in my life! Has he cause for it?”

“I dare say he thinks so. I killed his father and his grand-father.”

This, uttered as indifferently as if it were a question of killing hares and foxes, was more than I could stand. I am not strait-laced, but I draw the line at murder.

“You did what?” I exclaimed, as, horror-struck and indignant, I stopped in the path and looked him full in the face.

I thought I had never seen him so Mephistopheles-like. A sinister smile parted his lips, showing his small white teeth gleaming under his gray mustache, and he regarded me with a look of cynical amusement, in which there was perhaps a slight touch of contempt.

“You are a young man, Mr. Bacon,” he observed, gently, “and, like most young men, and a great many old men, you make false deductions. Killing is not always murder. If it were, we should consign our conquerors to everlasting infamy, instead of crowning them with laurels and erecting statues to their memory. I am no murderer, Mr. Bacon. At the same time I do not cherish illusions. Unpremeditated murder is by no means the worst of crimes. Taking a life is only anticipating the inevitable; and of all murderers, Nature is the greatest and the cruellest. I have—if I could only tell you—make you see what I have seen—Even now, O God! though half a century has run its course—”

Here Mr. Fortescue’s voice failed him; he turned deadly pale, and his countenance took an expression of the keenest anguish. But the signs of emotion passed away as quickly as they had appeared. Another moment and he had fully regained his composure, and he added, in his usual self-possessed manner:

“All this must seem very strange to you, Mr. Bacon. I suppose you consider me somewhat of a mystery.”

“Not somewhat, but very much.”

Mr. Fortescue smiled (he never laughed) and reflected a moment.

“I am thinking,” he said, “how strangely things come about, and, so to speak, hang together. The greatest of all mysteries is fate. If that horse had not run away with you, these rascals would almost certainly have made away with me; and the incident of to-day is one of the consequences of that which I mentioned at our first interview.”

“When we had that good run from Latton. I remember it very well. You said you had been hunted yourself.”

“Yes.”

“How was it, Mr. Fortescue?”

“Ah! Thereby hangs a tale.”

“Tell it me, Mr. Fortescue,” I said, eagerly.

“And a very long tale.”

“So much the better; it is sure to be interesting.”

“Ah, yes, I dare say you would find it interesting. My life has been stirring and stormy enough, in all conscience—except for the ten years I spent in heaven,” said Mr. Fortescue, in a voice and with a look of intense sadness.

“Ten years in heaven!” I exclaimed, as much astonished as I had just been horrified. Was the man mad, after all, or did he speak in paradoxes? “Ten years in heaven!”

Mr. Fortescue smiled again, and then it occurred to me that his ten years of heaven might have some connection with the veiled portrait and the shrine in his room up-stairs.

“You take me too literally,” he said. “I spoke metaphorically. I did not mean that, like Swedenborg and Mohammed, I have made excursions to Paradise. I merely meant that I once spent ten years of such serene happiness as it seldom falls to the lot of man to enjoy. But to return to our subject. You would like to know more of my past; but as it would not be satisfactory to tell you an incomplete history, and to tell you all—Yet why not? I have done nothing that I am ashamed of; and it is well you should know something of the man whose life you have saved once, and may possibly save again. You are trustworthy, straightforward, and vigilant, and albeit you are not overburdened with intelligence—”

Here Mr. Fortescue paused, as if to reflect; and, though the observation was not very flattering—hardly civil, indeed—I was so anxious to hear this story that I took it in good part, and waited patiently for his decision.

“To relate it viva voce” he went on, thoughtfully, “would be troublesome to both of us.”

“I am sure I should find it anything but troublesome.”

“Well, I should. It would take too much time, and I hate travelling over old ground. But that is a difficulty which I think we can get over. For many years I have made a record of the principal events of my life, in the form of a personal narrative; and though I have sometimes let it run behind for a while, I have always written it up.”

“That is exactly the thing. As you say, telling a long story is troublesome. I can read it.”

“I am afraid not. It is written in a sort of stenographic cipher of my own invention.”

“That is very awkward,” I said, despondently. “I know no more of shorthand than of Sanskrit, and though I once tried to make out a cipher, the only tangible result was a splitting headache.”

“With the key, which I will give you, a little instruction and practice, you should have no difficulty in making out my cipher. It will be an exercise for your intelligence”—smiling. “Will you try?”

“My very best.”

“And now for the conditions. In the first place, you must, in stenographic phrase, ‘extend’ my notes, write out the narrative in a legible hand and good English. If there be any blanks, I will fill them up; if you require explanations, I will give them. Do you agree?”

“I agree.”

“The second condition is that you neither make use of the narrative for any purpose of your own, nor disclose the whole or any part of it to anybody until and unless I give you leave. What say you?”

“I say yes.”

“The third and last condition is, that you engage to stay with me in your present capacity until it pleases me to give you your congé. Again what say you?”

This was rather a “big order,” and very one-sided. It bound me to remain with Mr. Fortescue for an indefinite period, yet left him at liberty to dismiss me at a moment’s notice; and if he went on living, I might have to stay at Kingscote till I was old and gray. All the same, the position was a good one. I had four hundred a year (the price at which I had modestly appraised my services), free quarters, a pleasant life, and lots of hunting—all I could wish for, in fact; and what can a man have more? So again I said, “Yes.”

“We are agreed in all points, then. If you will come into my room “—we were by this time arrived at the house—“you shall have your first lesson in cryptography.”

I assented with eagerness, for I was burning to begin, and, from what Mr. Fortescue had said, I did not anticipate any great difficulty in making out the cipher.

But when he produced a specimen page of his manuscript, my confidence, like Bob Acre’s courage, oozed out at my finger-ends, or rather, all over me, for I broke out into a cold sweat.

The first few lines resembled a confused array of algebraic formula. (I detest algebra.) Then came several lines that seemed to have been made by the crawlings of tipsy flies with inky legs, followed by half a dozen or so that looked like the ravings of a lunatic done into Welsh, while the remainder consisted of Roman numerals and ordinary figures mixed up, higgledy-piggledy.

“This is nothing less than appalling,” I almost groaned. “It will take me longer to learn than two or three languages.”

“Oh, no! When you have got the clew, and learned the signs, you will read the cipher with ease.”

“Very likely; but when will that be?”

“Soon. The system is not nearly so complicated as it looks, and the language being English—”

“English! It looks like a mixture of ancient Mexican and modern Chinese.”

“The language being English, nothing could be easier for a man of ordinary intelligence. If I had expected that my manuscript would fall into the hands of a cryptographist, I should have contrived something much more complicated and written it in several languages; and you have the key ready to your hand. Come, let us begin.”

After half an hour’s instruction I began to see daylight, and to feel that with patience and practice I should be able to write out the story in legible English. The little I had read with Mr. Fortescue made me keen to know more; but as the cryptographic narrative did not begin at the beginning, he proposed that I should write this, as also any other missing parts, to his dictation.

“Who knows that you may not make a book of it?” he said.

“Do you think I am intelligent enough?” I asked, resentfully; for his uncomplimentary references to my mental capacity were still rankling in my mind.

“I should hope so. Everybody writes in these days. Don’t worry yourself on that score, my dear Mr. Bacon. Even though you may write a book, nobody will accuse you of being exceptionally intelligent.”

“But I cannot make a book of your narrative without your leave,” I observed, with a painful sense of having gained nothing by my motion.

“And that leave may be sooner or later forthcoming, on conditions.”

As the reader will find in the sequel, the leave has been given and the conditions have been fulfilled, and Mr. Fortescue’s personal narrative—partly taken down from his own dictation, but for the most part extended from his manuscript—begins with the following chapter.

[Chapter VI.]

The Tale Begins.

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The morning after the battle of Salamanca (through which I passed unscathed) the regiment of dragoons to which I belonged (forming part of Anson’s brigade), together with Bock’s Germans, was ordered to follow on the traces of the flying French, who had retired across the River Tormes. Though we started at daylight, we did not come up with their rear-guard until noon. It consisted of a strong force of horse and foot, and made a stand near La Serna; but the cavalry, who had received a severe lesson on the previous day, bolted before we could cross swords with them. The infantry, however, remained firm, and forming square, faced us like men. The order was then given to charge; and when the two brigades broke into a gallop and thundered down the slope, they raised so thick a cloud of dust that all we could see of the enemy was the glitter of their bayonets and the flash of their musket-fire. Saddles were emptied both to the right and left of me, and one of the riderless horses, maddened by a wound in the head, dashed wildly forward, and leaping among the bayonets and lashing out furiously with his hind-legs, opened a way into the square. I was the first man through the gap, and engaged the French colonel in a hand-to-hand combat. At the very moment just as I gave him the point in his throat he cut open my shoulder, my horse, mortally hurt by a bayonet thrust, fell, half rolling over me and crushing my leg.

As I lay on the ground, faint with the loss of blood and unable to rise, some of our fellows rode over me, and being hit on the head by one of their horses, I lost consciousness. When I came to myself the skirmish was over, nearly the whole of the French rear-guard had been taken prisoners or cut to pieces, and a surgeon was dressing my wounds. This done, I was removed in an ambulance to Salamanca.

The historic old city, with its steep, narrow streets, numerous convents, and famous university, had been well-nigh ruined by the French, who had pulled down half the convents and nearly all the colleges, and used the stones for the building of forts, which, a few weeks previously, Wellington had bombarded with red-hot shot.

The hospitals being crowded with sick and wounded, I was billeted in the house of a certain Señor Don Alberto Zamorra, which (probably owing to the fact of its having been the quarters of a French colonel) had not taken much harm, either during the French occupation of the town or the subsequent siege of the forts.

Don Alberto gave me a hearty, albeit a dignified welcome, and being a Spanish gentleman of the old school, he naturally placed his house, and all that it contained, at my disposal. I did not, of course, take this assurance literally, and had I not been on the right side, I should doubtless have met with a very different reception. All the same, he made a very agreeable host, and before I had been his guest many days we became fast friends.

Don Zamorra was old, nearly as old as I am now; and as I speedily discovered, he had passed the greater part of his life in Spanish America, where he had held high office under the crown. He could hardly talk about anything else, in fact, and once he began to discourse about his former greatness and the marvels of the Indies (as South and Central America were then sometimes called) he never knew when to stop. He had crossed the Andes and seen the Amazon, sailed down the Orinoco and visited the mines of Potosi and Guanajuata, beheld the fiery summit of Cotopaxi, and peeped down the smoky crater of Acatenango. He told of fights with Indians and wild animals, of being lost in the forest, and of perilous expeditions in search of gold and precious stones. When Zamorra spoke of gold his whole attitude changed, the fires of his youth blazed up afresh, his face glowed with excitement, and his eyes sparkled with greed. At these times I saw in him a true type of the old Spanish Conquestadores, who would baptize a cacique to save him from hell one day, and kill him and loot his treasure the next.

Don Alberto had, moreover, a firm belief in the existence of the fabled El Dorado, and of the city of Manoa, with its resplendent house of the sun, its hoards of silver and gold, and its gilded king. Thousands of adventurers had gone forth in search of these wonders, and thousands had perished in the attempt to find them. Señor Zamorra had sought El Dorado on the banks of the Orinoco and the Rio Negro; others, near the source of the Rio Grande and the Marañon; others, again, among the volcanoes of Salvador and the canons of the Cordilleras. Zamorra believed that it lay either in the wilds of Guiana, or the unexplored confines of Peru and the Brazils.

He had heard of and believed even greater wonders—of a stream on the Pacific coast of Mexico, whose pebbles were silver, and whose sand was gold; of a volcano in the Peruvian Cordillera, whose crater was lined with the noblest of metals, and which once in every hundred years ejected, for days together, diamonds, and rubies, and dust of gold.

“If that volcano could only be found,” said the don, with a convulsive clutching of his bony fingers, and a greedy glare in his aged eyes. “If that volcano could only be found! Why, it must be made of gold, and covered with precious stones! The man who found it would be the richest in all the world—richer than all the people in the world put together!”

“Did you ever see it, Don Alberto?” I asked.

“Did I ever see it?” he cried, uplifting his withered hands. “If I had seen that volcano you would never have seen me, but you would have heard of me. I had it from an Indio whose father once saw it with his own eyes; but I was too old, too old”—sighing—“to go on the quest. To undertake such an enterprise a man should be in the prime of life and go alone. A single companion, even though he were your own brother, might be fatal; for what virtue could be proof against so great a temptation—millions of diamonds and a mountain of gold?”

All this roused my curiosity and fired my imagination—not that I believed it all, for Zamorra was evidently a visionary with a fixed idea, and as touching his craze, credulous as a child; but in those days South America had been very little written about and not half explored; for me it had all the charm and fascination of the unknown—a land of romance and adventure, abounding in grand scenery, peopled by strange races, and containing the mightiest rivers, the greatest forests, and highest mountains in the world.

When my host dismounted from his hobby he was an intelligent talker, and told me much that was interesting about Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, and the Spanish Main. He had several books on the subject which I greedily devoured. The expedition of Piedro de Ursua and Lope de Aguirre in search of El Dorado and Omagua; “History of the Conquest of Mexico,” by Don Antonio de Solis; Piedrolieta’s “General History of the Conquest of the New Kingdom of Grenada,” and others; and before we parted I had resolved that, so soon as the war was over, I would make a voyage to the land of the setting sun, and see for myself the wonders of which I had heard.

“You are right,” said Señor Zamorra, when I told him of my intention. “America is the country of the future. Ah, if I were only fifty years younger! You will, of course, visit Venezuela; and if you visit Venezuela you are sure to go to Caracas. I will give you a letter of introduction to a friend of mine there. He is a man in authority, and may be of use to you. I should much like you to see him and greet him on my behalf.”

I thanked my host, and promised to see his friend and present the letter. It was addressed to Don Simon de Ulloa. Little did I think how much trouble that letter would give me, and how near it would come to being my death-warrant.

Zamorra then besought me, with tears in his eyes, to go in search of the Golden Volcano.

“If you could give me a more definite idea of its whereabouts I might possibly make the attempt,” I answered, with intentional vagueness; for though I no more believed in the objective existence of the Golden Volcano than in Aladdin’s lamp, I did not wish to hurt the old man’s feelings by an avowal of my skepticism.

“Ah, my dear sir,” he said, with a gesture of despair, “if I knew the whereabouts of the Golden Volcano, I should go thither myself, old as I am. I should have gone long ago, and returned with a hoard of wealth that would make me the master of Europe—wealth that would buy kingdoms. I can tell you no more than that it is somewhere in the region of the Peruvian Andes. It may be that by cautious inquiry you may light on an Indio who will lead you to the very spot. It is worth the attempt, and if by the help of St. Peter and the Holy Virgin you succeed, and I am still alive, send me out of your abundance a few arrobas (twenty-five pounds) of gold and a handful of diamonds. It is all I ask.”

It was all he asked.

“When I find that volcano, Don Alberto,” I said, “not a mere handful of diamonds, but a bucketful.”

This was almost our last talk, for the very same day news was brought that Lord Wellington, having been forced to raise the siege of Burgos, was retreating toward the Portuguese frontier, and that Salamanca would almost inevitably be recaptured by the French. Orders were given for the removal of the wounded to the Coa, where the army was to take up its winter quarters, and Zamorra and I had to part. We parted with mutual expressions of good-will, and in the hope, destined never to be realized, that we might soon meet again. I had seen Don Alberto for the last time.

A few weeks later I was sufficiently recovered from my hurts to use my bridle-arm, and before the opening of the next campaign I was fit for the field and eager for the fray. It was the campaign of Vittoria, one of the most brilliant episodes in the military history of England. Even now my heart beats faster and the blood tingles in my veins when I think of that time, so full of excitement, adventure, and glory—the forcing of the Pyrenees, the invasion of France, the battles of Bayonne, Orthes, and Toulouse, and the march to Paris.

But as I am not relating a history of the war, I shall mention only one incident in which I was concerned at this period—an incident that brought me in contact with a man who was destined to exercise a fateful influence on my career.

It occurred after the battle of Vittoria. The French were making for the Pyrenees, laden with the loot of a kingdom and encumbered with a motley crowd of non-combatants—the wives and families of French officers, fair señoritas flying with their lovers, and traitorous Spaniards, who, by taking sides with the invaders, had exposed themselves to the vengeance of the patriots. So overwhelming was the defeat of the French, that they were forced to abandon nearly the whole of their plunder and the greater part of their baggage, and leave the fugitives and camp-followers to their fate.

Never was witnessed so strange a sight as the valley of Vittoria presented at the close of that eventful day. The broken remains of the French army hurrying toward the Pamplona road, eighty pieces of artillery, served with frantic haste, covering their retreat; thousands of wagons and carriages jammed together and unable to move; the red-coated infantry of England, marching steadily across the plain; the boom of the cannon, the rattle of musketry, the scream of women as the bullets whistled through the air and shells burst over their heads—all this made up a scene, dramatic and picturesque, it is true, yet full of dire confusion and Dantesque horror; for death had reaped a rich harvest, and thousands of wounded lay writhing on the blood-stained field.

Owing to the bursting of packages, the overturning of wagons, and the havoc wrought by shot and shell, valuable effects, coin, gems, gold and silver candlesticks and vessels, priceless paintings, the spoil of Spanish churches and convents, were strewed over the ground. There was no need to plunder; our men picked up money as they matched, and it was computed that a sum equal to a million sterling found its way into their knapsacks and pockets.

Our Spanish allies, officers as well as privates, were less scrupulous. They robbed like highwaymen, and protested that they were only taking their own.

While riding toward Vittoria to execute an order of the colonel’s, I passed a carriage which a moment or two previously had been overtaken by several of Longa’s dragoons, with the evident intention of overhauling it. In the carriage were two ladies, one young and pretty the other good-looking and mature; and, as I judged from their appearance, both being well dressed, the daughter and wife of a French officer of rank. They appealed to me for help.

“You are an English officer,” said the elder in French; “all the world knows that your nation is as chivalrous as it is brave. Protect us, I pray you, from these ruffians.”

I bowed, and turning to the Spaniards, one of whom was an officer, spoke them fair; for my business was pressing, and I had no wish to be mixed up in a quarrel.

“Caballeros,” I said, “we do not make war on women. You will let these ladies go.”

“Carambo! We shall do nothing of the sort,” returned the officer, insolently. “These ladies are our prisoners, and their carriage and all it contains our prize.”

“I beg your pardon, Señor Capitan, but you are, perhaps not aware that Lord Wellington has given strict orders that private property is to be respected; and no true caballero molests women.”

“Hijo de Dios! Dare you say that I am no true caballero? Begone this instant, or—”

The Spaniard drew his sword; I drew mine; his men began to look to the priming of their pistols, and had General Anson not chanced to come by just in the nick of time, it might have gone ill with me. On learning what had happened, he said I had acted very properly and told the Spaniards that if they did not promptly depart he would hand them over to the provost-marshal.

“We shall meet again, I hope, you and I,” said the officer, defiantly, as he gathered up his reins.

“So do I, if only that I may have an opportunity of chastising you for your insolence,” was my equally defiant answer.

“A thousand thanks, monsieur! You have done me and my daughter a great service,” said the elder of the ladies. “Do me the pleasure to accept this ring as a slight souvenir of our gratitude, and I trust that in happier times we may meet again.”

I accepted the souvenir without looking at it; reciprocated the wish in my best French, made my best bow, and rode off on my errand. By the same act I had made one enemy and two friends; therefore, as I thought, the balance was in my favor. But I was wrong, for a wider experience of the world than I then possessed has taught me that it is better to miss making a hundred ordinary friends than to make one inveterate enemy.

[Chapter VII.]

In Quest of Fortune.

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When the war came to an end my occupation was gone, for both circumstances and my own will compelled me to leave the army. My allowance could no longer be continued. At the best, the life of a lieutenant of dragoons in peace time would have been little to my liking; with no other resource than my pay, it would have been intolerable. So I sent in my papers, and resolved to seek my fortune in South America. After the payment of my debts (incurred partly in the purchase of my first commission) and the provision of my outfit, the sum left at my disposal was comparatively trifling. But I possessed a valuable asset in the ring given me by the French lady on the field of Vittoria. It was heavy, of antique make, curiously wrought, and set with a large sapphire of incomparable beauty. A jeweler, to whom I showed it, said he had never seen a finer. I could have sold it for a hundred guineas. But as the gem was property in a portable shape and more convertible than a bill of exchange, I preferred to keep it, taking, however, the precaution to have the sapphire covered with a composition, in order that its value might not be too readily apparent to covetous eyes.

At this time the Spanish colonies of Colombia (including the countries now known as Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador, as also the present republic of southern Central America) were in full revolt against the mother country. The war had been going on for several years with varying fortunes; but latterly the Spaniards had been getting decidedly the best of it. Caracas and all the seaport towns were in their possession, and the patriot cause was only maintained by a few bands of irregulars, who were waging a desperate and almost hopeless contest in the forests and on the llanos of the interior.

My sympathies were on the popular side, and I might have joined the volunteer force which was being raised in England for service with the insurgents. But this did not suit my purpose. If I accepted a commission in the Legion I should have to go where I was ordered. I preferred to go where I listed. I had no objection to fighting, but I wanted to do it in my own way and at my own time, and rather in the ranks of the rebels themselves than as officer in a foreign force.

This view of the case I represented to Señor Moreña, one of the “patriot” agents in London, and asked his advice.

“Why not go to Caracas?” he said.

“What would be the use of that? Caracas is in the hands of the Spaniards.”

“You could get from Caracas into the interior, and do the cause an important service.”

“How?”

Señor Moreña explained that the patriots of the capital, being sorely oppressed by the Spaniards, were losing courage, and he wished greatly to send them a message of hope and the assurance that help was at hand. It was also most desirable that the insurgent leaders on the field should be informed of the organization of a British liberating Legion, and of other measures which were being taken to afford them relief and turn the tide of victory in their favor.

But to communicate these tidings to the parties concerned was by no means easy. The post was obviously quite out of the question, and no Spanish creole could land at any port held by the Royalists without the almost certainty of being promptly strangled or shot. “An Englishman, however—especially an Englishman who had fought under Wellington in Spain—might undertake the mission with comparative impunity,” said Señor Moreña.

“I understand perfectly,” I answered. “I have to go in the character of an ordinary travelling Englishman, and act as an emissary of the insurgent junta. But if my true character is detected, what then?”

“That is not at all likely, Mr. Fortescue.”

“Yet the unlikely happens sometimes—happens generally, in fact. Suppose it does in the present instance?”

“In that case I am very much afraid that you would be shot.”

“I have not a doubt of it. Nevertheless, your proposal pleases me, and I shall do my best to carry out your wishes.”

Whereupon Señor Moreña expressed his thanks in sonorous Castilian, protested that my courage and devotion would earn me the eternal gratitude of every patriot, and promised to have everything ready for me in the course of the week, a promise which he faithfully kept.

Three days later Moreña brought me a packet of letters and a memorandum containing minute instructions for my guidance. Nothing could be more harmless looking than the letters. They contained merely a few items of general news and the recommendation of the bearer to the good offices of the recipient. But this was only a blind; the real letters were written in cipher, with sympathetic ink. They were, moreover, addressed to secret friends of the revolutionary cause, who, as Señor Moreña believed and hoped, were, as yet, unsuspected by the Spanish authorities, and at large.

“To give you letters to known patriots would be simply to insure your destruction,” said the señor, “even if you were to find them alive and at liberty.”

I had also Don Alberto’s letter, and as the old gentleman had once been president of the Audiencia Real (Royal Council), Moreña thought it would be of great use to me, and serve to ward off suspicion, even though some of the friends to whom he had himself written should have meanwhile got into trouble.

But as if he had not complete confidence in the efficacy of these elaborate precautions, Señor Moreña strongly advised me to stay no longer in Caracas than I could possibly help.

“Spies more vigilant than those of the Inquisition are continually on the lookout for victims,” he said. “An inadvertent word, a look even, might betray you; the only law is the will of the military and police, and they make very short work of those whom they suspect. Yes, leave Caracas the moment you have delivered your letters; our friends will smuggle you through the Spanish line and lead you to one of the patriot camps.”

This was not very encouraging; but I was at an adventurous age and in an enterprising mood, and the creole’s warnings had rather the effect of increasing my desire to go forward with the undertaking in which I had engaged than causing me to falter in my resolve. Like Napoleon, I believed in my star, and I had faced death too often on the field of battle to fear the rather remote dangers Moreña had foreshadowed, and in whose existence I only half believed.

The die being cast, the next question was how I should reach my destination. The Spaniards of that age kept the trade with their colonies in their own hands, and it was seldom, indeed, that a ship sailed from the Thames for La Guayra or any other port on the Main. I was, however, lucky enough to find a vessel in the river taking in cargo for the island of Curaçoa, which had just been ceded by England to the Dutch, from whom it was captured in 1807, and for a reasonable consideration the master agreed to fit me up a cabin and give me a passage.

The voyage was rather long—something like fifty days—yet not altogether uneventful; for in the course of it we were chased by an American privateer, overhauled by a Spanish cruiser, nearly caught by a pirate, and almost swamped in a hurricane; but we fortunately escaped these and all other dangers, and eventually reached our haven in safety.

I had brought with me letters of credit on a Dutch merchant at Curaçoa, of the name of Van Voorst, from whom I obtained as much coin as I thought would cover my expenses for a few months, and left the balance in his hands on deposit. With the help of this gentleman, moreover, I chartered a falucha for the voyage to La Guayra. Also at his suggestion, moreover, I stitched several gold pieces in the lining of my vest and the waistband of my trousers, as a reserve in case of accident.

We made the run in twenty-four hours, and as the falucha let go in the roadstead I tore up my memorandum of instructions (which I had carefully committed to memory) and threw the fragments into the sea.

A little later we were boarded by two revenue officers, who seemed more surprised than pleased to see me; as, however, my papers were in perfect order, and nothing either compromising or contraband was found in my possession, they allowed me to land, and I thought that my troubles (for the present) were over. But I had not been ashore many minutes when I was met by a sergeant and a file of soldiers, who asked me politely, yet firmly, to accompany them to the commandant of the garrison.

I complied, of course, and was conducted to the barracks, where I found the gentleman in question lolling in a chinchura (hammock) and smoking a cigar. He eyed me with great suspicion, and after examining my passport, demanded my business, and wanted to know why I had taken it into my head to visit Colombia at a time when the country was being convulsed with civil war.

Thinking it best to answer frankly (with one or two reservations), I said that, having heard much of South America while campaigning in Spain, I had made up my mind to voyage thither on the first opportunity.

“What! you have served in Spain, in the army of Lord Wellington!” interposed the commandant with great vivacity.

“Yes; I joined shortly before the battle of Salamanca, where I was wounded. I was also at Vittoria, and—”

“So was I. I commanded a regiment in Murillo’s corps d’armée, and have come out with him to Colombia. We are brothers in arms. We have both bled in the sacred cause of Spanish independence. Let me embrace you.”

Whereupon the commandant, springing from his hammock, put his arms round my neck and his head on my shoulders, patted me on the back, and kissed me on both cheeks, a salute which I thought it expedient to return, though his face was not overclean and he smelled abominably of garlic and stale tobacco.

“So you have come to see South America—only to see it!” he said. “But perhaps you are scientific; you have the intention to explore the country and write a book, like the illustrious Humboldt?”

The idea was useful. I modestly admitted that I did cultivate a little science, and allowed my “brother-in-arms” to remain in the belief that I proposed to follow in the footsteps of the author of “Cosmos”—at a distance.

“I have an immense respect for science,” continued the commandant, “and I doubt not that you will write a book which will make you famous. My only regret is, that in the present state of the country you may find going about rather difficult. But it won’t be for long. We have well-nigh got this accursed rebellion under. A few weeks more, and there will not be a rebel left alive between the Andes and the Atlantic. The Captain-General of New Granada reports that he has either shot or hanged every known patriot in the province. We are doing the same here in Venezuela. We give no quarter; it is the only way with rebels. Guerra a la muerte!”

After this the commandant asked me to dinner, and insisted on my becoming his guest until the morrow, when he would provide me with mules for myself and my baggage, and give me an escort to Caracas, and letter of introduction to one of his friends there. So great was his kindness, indeed, that only the ferocious sentiments which he had avowed in respect of the rebels reconciled me to the deception which I was compelled to practise. I accepted his hospitality and his offer of mules and an escort, and the next morning I set out on the first stage of my inland journey. Before parting he expressed a hope—which I deemed it prudent to reciprocate—that we should meet again.

Nothing can be finer than the ride to Caracas by the old Spanish road, or more superb than its position in a magnificent valley, watered by four rivers, surrounded by a rampart of lofty mountains, and enjoying, by reason of its altitude, a climate of perpetual spring. But the city itself wore an aspect of gloom and desolation. Four years previously the ground on which it stood had been torn and rent by a succession of terrible earthquakes in which hundreds of houses were levelled with the earth, and thousands of its people bereft of their lives. Since that time two sieges, and wholesale proscription and executions, first by one side and then by the other, had well-nigh completed its destruction. Its principal buildings were still in ruins, and half its population had either perished or fled. Nearly every civilian whom I met in the streets was in mourning. Even the Royalists (who were more numerous than I expected) looked unhappy, for all had suffered either in person or in property, and none knew what further woes the future might bring them.

[Chapter VIII.]

In the King’s Name.

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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.”

Before we separated I invited Señor Carera to almuerzo (the equivalent to the Continental second breakfast) on the following day.

After a moment’s reflection he accepted the invitation. “But we shall have to be very cautious,” he added. “The posada is a Royalist house, and the posadero (innkeeper) is hand and glove with the police. If we speak of the patriots at all, it must be only to abuse them…. But our turn will come, and—por Dios!—then—”

The fierce light in Carera’s eyes, the gesture by which his words were emphasized, boded no good for the Royalists if the patriots should get the upper hand. No wonder that a war in which men like him were engaged on the one side, and men like el Commandant Castro on the other, should be savage, merciless, and “to the death.”

As I had decided to quit Caracas so soon, it did not seem worth while presenting the letter to one of his brother officers which I had received from Commandant Castro. I thought, too, that in existing circumstances the less I had to do with officers the better. But I did not like the idea of going away without fulfilling my promise to call on Zamorra’s old friend, Don Señor Ulloa.

So when I returned to the posada I asked the posadero (innkeeper), a tall Biscayan, with an immensely long nose, a cringing manner, and an insincere smile, if he would kindly direct me to Señor Ulloa’s house.

“Si, señor,” said the posadero, giving me a queer look, and exchanging significant glances with two or three of his guests who were within earshot. “Si, señor, I can direct you to the house of Señor Ulloa. You mean Don Simon, of course?”

“Yes. I have a letter of introduction to him.”

“Oh, you have a letter of introduction to Don Simon! if you will come into the street I will show you the way.”

Whereupon we went outside, and the posadero, pointing out the church of San Ildefonso, told me that the large house over against the eastern door was the house I sought.

“Gracias, señor,” I said, as I started on my errand, taking the shady side of the street and walking slowly, for the day was warm.

I walked slowly and thought deeply, trying to make out what could be the meaning of the glances which the mention of Señor Ulloa’s name had evoked, and there was a nameless something in the posadero’s manner I did not like. Besides being cringing, as usual, it was half mocking, half menacing, as if I had said, or he had heard, something that placed me in his power.

Yet what could he have heard? What could there be in the name of Ulloa to either excite his enmity or rouse his suspicion? As a man in authority, and the particular friend of an ex-president of the Audiencia Real, Don Simon must needs be above reproach.

Should I turn back and ask the posadero what he meant? No, that were both weak and impolitic. He would either answer me with a lie, or refuse to answer at all, qui s’excuse s’accuse. I resolved to go on, and see what came of it. Don Simon would no doubt be able to enlighten me.

I found the place without difficulty. There could be no mistaking it—a large house over against the eastern door of the church of San Ildefonso, built round a patio, or courtyard, after the fashion of Spanish and South American mansions. Like the church, it seemed to have been much damaged by the earthquake; the outer walls were cracked, and the gateway was encumbered with fallen stones.

This surprised me less than may be supposed. Creoles are not remarkable for energy, and it was quite possible that Señor Ulloa’s fortunes might have suffered as severely from the war as his house had suffered from the earthquake. But when I entered the patio I was more than surprised. The only visible signs of life were lizards, darting in and out of their holes, and a huge rattlesnake sunning himself on the ledge of a broken fountain. Grass was growing between the stones; rotten doors hung on rusty hinges; there were great gaps in the roof and huge fissures in the walls, and when I called no one answered.

“Surely,” I thought, “I have made some mistake. This house is both deserted and ruined.”

I returned to the street and accosted a passer-by.

“Is this the house of Don Simon Ulloa?” I asked him.

“Si, Señor,” he said; and then hurried on as if my question had half-frightened him out of his wits.

I could not tell what to make of this; but my first idea was that Señor Ulloa was dead, and the house had the reputation of being haunted. In any case, the innkeeper had evidently played me a scurvy trick, and I went back to the posada with the full intention of having it out with him.

“Did you find the house of Don Simon, Señor Fortescue?” he asked when he saw me.

“Yes, but I did not find him. The house is empty and deserted. What do you mean by sending me on such a fool’s errand?”

“I beg your pardon, señor. You asked me to direct you to Señor Ulloa’s house, and I did so. What could I do more?” And the fellow cringed and smirked, as if it were all a capital joke, till I could hardly refrain from pulling his long nose first and kicking him afterwards, but I listened to the voice of prudence and resisted the impulse.

“You know quite well that I sought Señor Ulloa. Did I not tell you that I had a letter for him? If you were a caballero instead of a wretched posadero, I would chastise your trickery as it deserves. What has become of Señor Ulloa, and how comes it that his house is deserted?”

“Señor Ulloa is dead. He was garroted.”

“Garroted! What for?”

“Treason. There was discovered a compromising correspondence between him and Bolivar. But why ask me? As a friend of Señor Ulloa, you surely know all this?”

“I never was a friend of his—never even saw him! I had merely a letter to him from a common friend. But how happened it that Señor Ulloa, who, I believe, was a correjidor, entered into a correspondence with the arch-traitor?”

“That made it all the worse. He richly deserved his fate. His eldest son, who was privy to the affair, was strangled at the same time as his father; his other children fled, and Señora Ulloa died of grief.”

“Poor woman! No wonder the house is deserted. What a frightful state of things!”

And then, feeling that I had said enough, and fearing that I might say more, I turned on my heel, lighted a cigar, and, while I paced to and fro in the patio, seriously considered my position, which, as I clearly perceived, was beginning to be rather precarious.

As likely as not the innkeeper would denounce me, and then it would, of course, be very absurd, for I was utterly ignorant, and Zamorra, a Royalist to the bone, must have been equally ignorant that his friend Ulloa had any hand in the rebellion. The mere fact of carrying a harmless letter of introduction from a well-known loyalist to a friend whom he believed to be still a loyalist, could surely not be construed as an offense. At any rate it ought not to be. But when I recalled all I had heard from Moreña, and the stories told me but an hour before by Carera, I thought it extremely probable that it would be, and bitterly regretted that I had not mentioned to the latter Ulloa’s name. He would have put me on my guard, and I should not have so fatally committed myself with the posadero.

But regrets are useless and worse. They waste time and weaken resolve. The question of the moment was, What should I do? How avoid the danger which I felt sure was impending? There seemed only one way—immediate flight. I would go to Carera, tell him all that had happened, and ask him to arrange for my departure from Caracas that very night. I could steal away unseen when all was quiet.

“At once,” I said to myself—“at once. If I exaggerate, if the danger be not so pressing as I fear, he is just the man to tell me; but, first of all, I will go into my room and destroy this confounded letter. The posadero did not see it. All that he can say is—”

“In the king’s name!” exclaimed a rough voice behind me; and a heavy hand was laid on my arm.

Turning sharply round, I found myself confronted by an officer of police and four alguazils, all armed to the teeth.

“I arrest you in the king’s name,” repeated the officer.

“On what charge?” I asked.

“Treason. Giving aid and comfort to the king’s enemies, and acting as a medium of communication between rebels against his authority.”

“Very well; I am ready to accompany you,” I said, seeing that, for the moment at least, resistance and escape were equally out of the question; “but the charge is false.”

“That I have nothing to do with. The case is one for the military tribunal. Before we go I must search your room.”

He did so, and, except my passport, found nothing whatever of a documentary, much less of a compromising character. He then searched me, and took possession of Zamorra’s unlucky letter to Ulloa and my memorandum-book, in which, however, there were merely a few commonplace notes and scientific jottings.

This done he placed two of his alguazils on either side of me, telling them to run me through with their bayonets if I attempted to escape, and then, drawing his sword and bringing up the rear, gave the order to march.

As we passed through the gateway I caught sight of the posadero, laughing consumedly, and pointing at me the finger of scorn and triumph. How sorry I felt that I had not kicked him when I was in the humor and had the opportunity!

[Chapter IX.]

Doomed to Die.

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My captors conducted me to a dilapidated building near the Plaza Major, which did duty as a temporary jail, the principal prison of Caracas having been destroyed by the earthquake and left as it fell. Nevertheless, the room to which I was taken seemed quite strong enough to hold anybody unsupplied with housebreaking implements or less ingenious than Jack Sheppard. The door was thick and well bolted, the window or grating (for it was, of course, destitute of glass) high and heavily barred, yet not too high to be reached with a little contrivance. Mounting the single chair (beside a hammock the only furniture the room contained), I gripped the bars with my hands, raised myself up, and looked out. Below me was a narrow, and, as it might appear, a little-frequented street, at the end of which a sentry was doing his monotonous spell of duty.

The place was evidently well guarded, and from the number of soldiers whom I had seen about the gateway and in the patio, I concluded that, besides serving as a jail, it was used also as a military post. Even though I might get out, I should not find it very easy to get away. And what were my chances of getting out? As yet they seemed exceedingly remote. The only possible exits were the door and the window. The door was both locked and bolted, and either to open or make an opening in it I should want a brace and bit and a saw, and several hours freedom from intrusion. It would be easier to cut the bars—if I possessed a file or a suitable saw. I had my knife, and with time and patience I might possibly fashion a tool that would answer the purpose.

But time was just what I might not be able to command. I had heard that the sole merit of the military tribunal was its promptitude; it never kept its victims long in suspense; they were either quickly released or as quickly despatched—the latter being the alternative most generally adopted. It was for this reason that, the moment I was arrested, I began to think how I could escape. As neither opening the door nor breaking the bars seemed immediately feasible, the idea of bribing the turnkey naturally occurred to me. Thanks to the precaution suggested by Mr. Van Voorst, I had several gold pieces in my belt. But though the fellow would no doubt accept my money, what security had I that he would keep his word? And how, even if he were to leave the door open, should I evade the vigilance of the sentries and the soldiers who were always loitering in the patio?

On the whole, I thought the best thing I could do was to wait quietly until the morrow. The night is often fruitful in ideas. I might be acquitted, after all, and if I attempted to bribe the turnkey before my examination, and he should betray me to his superiors, my condemnation would be a foregone conclusion. The mere attempt would be regarded as an admission of guilt.

A while later, the zambo turnkey (half Indian, half negro) brought me my evening meal—a loaf of bread and a small bottle of wine—and I studied his countenance closely. It was both treacherous and truculent, and I felt that if I trusted him he would be sure to play me false.

As it was near sunset I asked for a light, and tried to engage him in conversation. But the attempt failed. He answered surlily, that a dark room was quite good enough for a damned rebel, and left me to myself.

When it became too dark to walk about, I lay down in the hammock and was soon in the land of dreams; for I was young and sanguine, and though I could not help feeling somewhat anxious, it was not the sort of anxiety which kills sleep. Only once in my life have I tasted the agony of despair. That time was not yet.

When I awoke the clock of a neighboring church was striking three, and the rays of a brilliant tropical moon were streaming through the barred window of my room, making it hardly less light than day.

As the echo of the last stroke dies away, I fancy that I hear something strike against the grating.

I rise up in my hammock, listening intently, and at the same instant a small shower of pebbles, flung by an unseen hand, falls into the room.

A signal!

Yes, and a signal that demands an answer. In less time than it takes to tell I slip from my hammock, gather up the pebbles, climb up to the window, and drop them into the street. Then, looking out, I can just discern, deep in the shadow of the building opposite, the figure of a man. He raises his arm; something white flies over my head and falls on the floor. Dropping hurriedly from the grating, I pick up the message-bearing missile—a pebble to which is tied a piece of paper. I can see that the paper contains writing, and climbing a second time up to the grating, I make out by the light of the moonbeams the words:

“If you are condemned, ask for a priest.”

My first feeling was one of bitter disappointment. Why should I ask for a priest? I was not a Roman Catholic; I did not want to confess. If the author of the missive was Carera—and who else could it be?—why had he given himself so much trouble to make so unpleasantly suggestive a recommendation? A priest, forsooth! A file and a cord would be much more to the purpose…. But might not the words mean more than appeared? Could it be that Carera desired to give me a friendly hint to prepare for the worst?… Or was it possible that the ghostly man would bring me a further message and help me in some way to escape? At any rate, it was a more encouraging theory than the other, and I resolved to act on it. If the priest did me no good, he could, at least, do me no harm.

After tearing up the bit of paper and chewing the fragments, I returned to my hammock and lay awake—sleep being now out of the question—until the turnkey brought me a cup of chocolate, of which, with the remains of the loaf, I made my first breakfast. About the middle of the day he brought me something more substantial. On both occasions I pressed him with questions as to when I was to be examined, and what they were going to do with me, to all of which he answered “No se” (“I don’t know”), and, probably enough, he told the truth. However, I was not kept long in suspense. Later on in the afternoon the door opened for the third time, and the officer who had arrested me, followed by his alguazils, appeared at the threshold and announced that he had been ordered to escort me to the tribunal.

We went in the same order as before; and a walk of less than fifteen minutes brought us to another tumble-down building, which appeared to have been once a court-house. Only the lower rooms were habitable, and at a door, on either side of which stood a sentry, my conductor respectfully knocked.

“Adelante!” said a rough voice; and we entered accordingly.

Before a long table at the upper end of a large, barely-furnished room, with rough walls and a cracked ceiling, sat three men in uniform. The one who occupied the chief seat, and seemed to be the president, was old and gray, with hard, suspicious eyes, and a long, typical Spanish face, in every line of which I read cruelty and ruthless determination. His colleagues, who called him “marquis,” treated him with great deference, and his breast was covered with orders.

It was evident that on this man would depend my fate. The others were there merely to register his decrees.

After leading me to the table and saluting the tribunal, the officer of police, whose sword was still drawn, placed himself in a convenient position for running me through, in the event of my behaving disrespectfully to the tribunal or attempting to escape.

The president, who had before him the letter to Señor Ulloa, my passport, and a document that looked like a brief, demanded my name and quality.

I told him.

“What was your purpose in coming to Caracas?” he asked.

“Simply to see the country.”

He laughed scornfully.

“To see the country! What nonsense is this? How can anybody see a country which is ravaged by brigands and convulsed with civil war? And where is your authority?”

“My passport.”

“A passport such as this is only available in a time of peace. No stranger unprovided with a safe conduct from the capitan-general is allowed to travel in the province of Caracas. It is useless trying to deceive us, señor. Your purpose is to carry information to the rebels, probably to join them, as is proved by your possession of a letter to so base a traitor as Señor Ulloa.”

On this I explained how I had obtained the letter, and pointed out that the very fact of my asking the posadero to direct me to Ulloa’s house, and going thither openly, was proof positive of my innocence. Had my purpose been that which he imputed to me, I should have shown more caution.

“That does not at all follow,” rejoined the president. “You may have intended to disarm suspicion by a pretence of ignorance. Moreover, you expressed to the señor posadero sentiments hostile to the Government of his Majesty the King.”

“It is untrue. I did nothing of the sort,” I exclaimed, impetuously.

“Mind what you say, prisoner. Unless you treat the tribunal with due respect you shall be sent back to the carcel and tried in your absence.”

“Do you call this a trial?” I exclaimed, indignantly. “I am a British subject. I have committed no offence; but if I must be tried I demand the right of being tried by a civil tribunal.”

“British subjects who venture into a city under martial law must take the consequences. We can show them no more consideration than we show Spanish subjects. They deserve much less, indeed. At this moment a force is being organized in England, with the sanction and encouragement of the British Government, to serve against our troops in these colonies. This is an act of war, and if the king, my master, were of my mind, he would declare war against England. Better an open foe than a treacherous friend. Do you hold a commission in the Legion, señor?”

“No.”

“Know you anybody who does?”

“Yes; I believe that several men with whom I served in Spain have accepted commissions. But you will surely not hold me responsible for the doings of others?”

“Not at all. You have quite enough sins of your own to answer for. You may not actually hold a commission in this force of filibusters, but you are acquainted with people who do; and from your own admission and facts that have come to our knowledge, we believe that you are acting as an intermediary between the rebels in this country and their agents in England. It is an insult to our understanding to tell us that you have come here out of idle curiosity. You have come to spy out the nakedness of the land, and being a soldier you know how spies are dealt with.”

Here the president held a whispered consultation with his colleagues. Then he turned to me, and continued:

“We are of opinion that the charges against you have been fully made out, and the sentence of the court is that you be strangled on the Plaza Major to-morrow morning at seven by the clock.”

“Strangled! Surely, señores, you will not commit so great an infamy? This is a mere mockery of a trial. I have neither seen an indictment nor been confronted by witnesses. Call this a sentence! I call it murder.”

“If you do not moderate your language, prisoner, you will be strangled to-night instead of to-morrow. Remove him, capitan“—to the officer of police. “Let this be your warrant”—writing.

“Grant me at least one favor,” I asked, smothering my indignation, and trying to speak calmly. “I have fought and bled for Spain. Let me at least die a soldier’s death, and allow me before I die to see a priest.”

“So you are a Christian!” returned the president, almost graciously. “I thought all Englishmen were heretics. I think señores, we may grant Señor Fortescue’s request. Instead of being strangled, you shall be shot by a firing party of the regiment of Cordova, and you may see a priest. We would not have you die unshriven, and I will myself see that your body is laid in consecrated ground. When would you like the priest to visit you?”

“This evening, señor president. There will not be much time to-morrow morning.”

“That is true. See to it, capitan. Tell them at the carcel that Señor Fortescue may see a priest in his own room this evening. Adios señor!”

And with that my three judges rose from their seats and bowed as politely as if they were parting with an honored guest. Though this proceeding struck me as being both ghastly and grotesque, I returned the greeting in due form, and made my best bow. I learned afterward that I had really been treated with exceptional consideration, and might esteem myself fortunate in not being condemned without trial and strangled without notice.

[Chapter X.]

Salvador.

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Now that I knew beyond a doubt what would be my fate unless I could escape before morning, I became decidedly anxious as to the outcome of my approaching interview with the ghostly comforter for whom I had asked. It was my last chance. If it failed me, or the man turned out to be a priest and nothing more, my hours were numbered. The time was too short to arrange any other plan. Would he bring with him a file and a cord? Even if he did, we could hardly hope to cut through the bars before daylight. And, most important consideration of all, how would Carera contrive to send me the right man?

The mystery was solved more quickly than I expected.

After leaving the tribunal, my escort took me back by the way we had come, the police captain, who was showing himself much more friendly (probably because he looked on me as a good “Christian” and a dying man), walking beside instead of behind me; and when we were within a hundred yards or so of the carcel I observed a Franciscan friar pacing slowly toward us.

I felt intuitively that this was my man; and when he drew nearer a slight movement of his eyebrows and a quick look of intelligence told me that I was right.

“I have no acquaintance among the clergy of Caracas,” I said to my conductor. “This friar will serve my purpose as well as a regular priest.”

“As you like, señor. Shall I ask him to see you?”

“Gracias señor capitan, if you please.”

Whereupon the officer respectfully accosted the friar, and after telling him that I had been condemned to die at sunrise on the morrow, asked if he would receive my confession and give me such religious consolation as my case required.

“Con mucho gusto, capitan,” answered the friar. “When would the señor like me to visit him?”

“At once, father. My hours are numbered, and I would fain spend the night in meditation and prayer.”

“Come with us, father,” said the captain. “The señor has the permission of the tribunal to see a priest in his own room.”

So we entered the prison together, and the captain, having given the necessary instructions to the turnkey, we were conducted to my room.

“When you have done,” he said, “knock at the door, and I will come and let you out.”

“Good! But you need not wait. I shall not be ready for half an hour or more.”

As the key turned in the lock, the soi-disant friar threw back his cowl. “Now, Señor Fortescue,” he said, with a laugh, “I am ready to hear your confession.”

“I confess that I feel as if I were in purgatory already, and I shall be uncommonly glad if you can get me out of it.”

“Well, purgatory is not the pleasantest of places by all accounts, and I am quite willing to do whatever I can for you. By way of beginning, take this ointment and smear your face and hands therewith.”

“Why?”

“To make you look swart and ugly, like the zambo.”

“And then?”

“And then? When the turnkey comes back we shall overpower, bind, and gag him—if he resists, strangle him. Then you will put on his clothes and don his sombrero, and as the moon rises late, and the prison is badly lighted, I have no doubt we shall run the gauntlet of the guard without difficulty…. That is a splendid ointment. You are almost as dark as a negro. Now for your feet.”

“My feet! I see! I must go out barefoot.”

“Of course. Who ever heard of a zambo turnkey wearing shoes? I will hide yours under my habit, and you can put them on afterward.”

“You are a friend of Carera’s, of course?”

“Yes; I am Salvador Carmen, the teniente of Colonel Mejia, at your service.”

“Salvador Carmen! A name of good omen. You are saving me.”

“I will either save you or perish with you. Take this dagger. Better to die fighting than be strangled on the plaza.”

“Is this your plan or Carera’s?” I asked, as I put the dagger in my belt.

“Partly his and partly mine, I think. When he heard of your arrest, he said that it concerned our honor to effect your rescue. The idea of throwing a stone through the window was Carera’s; that of personating a priest was mine.”

“But how did Carera find out where I was? and what assurance had you that when I asked for a priest they would bring you?”

“That was easy enough. This is a small military post as well as an occasional prison, some of the soldiers are always drinking at the pulperia round the corner, and they talk in their cups. I even know the countersign for to-night. It is ‘Baylen.’ I saw them take you to the tribunal, and as I knew that when you asked for a priest they would call in the first whom they saw, just to save themselves the trouble of going farther, I took care to be hereabout in this guise as you returned. I was fortunate enough to meet you face to face, and you were sharp enough to detect my true character at a glance.”

“I am greatly indebted to you and Señor Carera—more than I can say. You are risking your lives to save mine.”

“That is nothing, my dear sir. I often risk my life twenty times in a day. And what matters it? We are all under sentence of death. A few years and there will be an end of us.”

Salvador Carmen may have been twenty-six or twenty-eight years old. He was of middle height and athletic build, yet wiry withal, in splendid condition, and as hard as nails. Though darker than the average Spaniard, his short, wavy hair and powerful, clear-cut features showed that his blood was free from negro or Indian taint. His face bespoke a strange mixture of gentleness and resolution, melancholy and ferocity, as if an originally fine nature had been annealed by fiery trials, and perhaps perverted by some terrible wrong.

“Yes, señor, we carry our lives in our hands in this most unhappy country,” he continued, after a short pause. “Three years ago I was one of a family of eight, and no happier family could be found in the whole capitanio-general of Caracas…. Of those eight, seven are gone; I am the only one left. Four were killed in the great earthquake. Then my father took part in the revolutionary movement, and to save his life had to leave his home. One night he returned in disguise to see my mother. I happened to be away at the time; but my brother Tomas was there, and the police getting wind of my father’s arrival, arrested both them and him. My father was condemned as a rebel; my mother and brother were condemned for harboring him, and all were strangled together on the plaza there.”

“Good heaven! Can such things be?” I said, as much moved by his grief as by his tale of horror.

“I saw them die. Oh, my God! I saw them die, and yet I live to tell the tale!” exclaimed Carmen, in a tone of intense sadness. “But”—fiercely—“I have taken a terrible revenge. With my own hand have I slain more than a hundred European Spaniards, and I have sworn to slay as many as there were hairs on my mother’s head…. But enough of this! The night is upon us. It is time to make ready. When the zambo comes in, I shall seize him by the throat and threaten him with my dagger. While I hold him you must stuff this cloth into his mouth, take off his shirt and trousers—he has no other garments—and put them on over your own. That done, we will bind him with this cord, and lock him in with his own key. Are you ready?”

“I am ready.”

Carmen knocked loudly at the door.

Two minutes later the door opens, and as the zambo closes it behind him, Carmen seizes him by the throat and pushes him against the wall.

“A word, a whisper, and you are a dead man!” he hisses, sternly, at the same time drawing his dagger. “Open your mouth, or, per Dios—The cloth, señor. Now, off with your shirt and trousers.”

The turnkey obeys without the least attempt at resistance. The shaking of his limbs as I help him to undress shows that he is half frightened to death.

Then Carmen, still gripping the man’s throat and threatening him with his dagger, makes him lie down, and I bind his arms with the cord.

That done, I slip the man’s trousers and shirt over my own, don his sombrero, and take his key.

“So far, well,” says Carmen, “if we only get safely through the patio and pass the guard! Put the sombrero over your face, imitate the zambo’s shuffling gait, and walk carelessly by my side, as if you were conducting me to the gate and a short way down the street. Have you your dagger! Good! Open the door and let us go forth. One word more! If it comes to a fight, back to back. Try to grasp the muskets with your left and stab with your right—upward!”

[Chapter XI.]

Out of the Lion’s Mouth.

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As the short sunset of the tropics had now merged into complete darkness, we crossed the patio without being noticed; but near the gateway several soldiers of the guard were seated round a small table, playing at cards by the light of a flickering lamp.

“Hello! Who goes there?” said one of them, looking up. “Pablo, the turnkey, and a friar! Won’t you take a hand, Pablo? You won a real from me last night; I want my revenge.”

“He is going with me as far as the plaza. It is dark, and I am very near-sighted,” put in Carmen, with ready presence of mind. “He will be back in a few minutes, and then he will give you your revenge, won’t you, Pablo?”

“Si, padre, con mucho gusto,” I answered, mimicking the deep guttural of the zambo.

“Good! I shall expect you in a few minutes,” said the soldier. “Buene noche, padre!”

“Good-night, my son.”

“Now for the sentry,” murmured Carmen; “luckily we have the password, otherwise it might be awkward.”

“We must try to slip past him.”

But it was not to be. As we step through the gateway into the street, the man turns right about face and we are seen.

“Halte! Quien vive?” he cried.

“Friends.”

“Advance, friends, and give the countersign.”

“As you see, I am a friar. I have been shriving a condemned prisoner. You surely do not expect me to give the countersign!” said Carmen, going close up to him.

“Certainly not, padre. But who is that with you?”

“Pablo, the turnkey.”

“Advance and give the countersign, Pablo.”

“Baylen.”

“Wrong; it has been changed within the last ten minutes. You must go back and get it, friend Pablo.”

“It is not worth the trouble. He is only seeing me to the end of the street,” pleaded Carmen.

“I shall not let him go another step without the countersign,” returned the sentry, doggedly. “I am not sure that I ought to let you go either, father. He has only to ask—”

A sudden movement of Carmen’s arm, a gleam of steel in the darkness, the soldier’s musket falls from his grasp, and with a deep groan he sinks heavily on the ground.

“Quick, señor, or we shall be taken! Round the corner! We must not run; that would attract attention. A sharp walk. Good! Keep close to the wall. Two minutes more and we shall be safe. A narrow escape! If the sentry had made you go back or called the guard, all would have been lost.”

“How was it? Did you stab him?”

“To the heart. He has mounted guard for the last time. So much the better. It is an enemy and a Spaniard the less.”

“All the same, Señor Carmen, I would rather kill my enemies in fair fight than in cold blood.”

“I also; but there are occasions. As likely as not this soldier would have been in the firing party told off to shoot you to-morrow morning. There would not have been much fair fight in that. And had I not killed him, we should both have been tried by drum-head court-martial, and shot or strangled to-night. This way. Now, I defy them to catch us.”

As he spoke, Carmen plunged into a heap of ruins by the wayside, with the intricacies of which, despite the darkness, he appeared to be quite familiar.

“Nobody will disturb us here,” he said at length, pausing under the shadow of a broken wall. “These are the ruins of the Church of Alta Gracia, which, in its fall during the great earthquake, killed several hundred worshippers. People say they are haunted; after dark nobody will come near them. But we must not stay many minutes. Take off the zambo’s shirt and trousers, and put on your shoes and stockings—there they are—and I shall doff my cloak of religion.”

“What next?”

“We must make off with all speed and by devious ways—though I think we have quite thrown our pursuers off the scent—to a house in the outskirts belonging to a friend of the cause, where we shall find horses, and start for the llanos before the moon rises, and the hue and cry can be raised.”

“What is the journey?”

“That depends on circumstances. Four or five days, perhaps. Vamanos! Time presses.”

We left the ruins at the side opposite to that at which we had entered them, and after traversing several by-streets and narrow lanes reached the open country, and walked on rapidly till we came to a lonesome house in a large garden.

Carmen went up to the door, whistled softly, and knocked thrice.

“Who is there?” asked a voice from within.

“Salvador.”

On this the gate of the patio, wide enough to admit a man on horseback, was thrown open, and the next moment I was in the arms of Señor Carera.

“Out of the lion’s mouth!” he exclaimed, as he kissed me on both cheeks. “I was dying of anxiety. But, thank Heaven and the Holy Virgin, you are safe.”

“I have also to thank you and Señor Carmen; and I do thank you with all my heart.”

“Say no more. We could not have done less. You were our guest. You rendered us a great service. Had we let you perish without an effort to save you, we should have been eternally disgraced. But come in and refresh yourselves. Your stay here must be brief, and we can talk while we eat.”

As we sat at table, Carmen told the story of my rescue.

“It was well done,” said our host, thoughtfully, “very well done. Yet I regret you had to kill the sentry. But for that you might have had a little sleep, and started after midnight. As it is, you must set off forthwith and get well on the road before the news of the escape gets noised abroad. And everything is ready. All your things are here, Señor Fortescue. You can select what you want for the journey and leave the rest in my charge.”

“All my things here! How did you manage that, Señor Carera?”

“By sending a man, whom I could trust, in the character of a messenger from the prison with a note to the posadero, as from you, asking him to deliver your baggage and receipt your bill.”

“That was very good of you, Señor Carera. A thousand thanks. How much—”

“How much! That is my affair. You are my guest, remember. Your baggage is in the next room, and while you make your preparations, I will see to the saddling of the horses.”

A very few minutes sufficed to put on my riding boots, get my pistols, and make up my scanty kit. When I went outside, the horses were waiting in the patio, each of them held by a black groom. Everything was in order. A cobija was strapped behind either saddle, both of which were furnished with holsters and bags.

“I have had some tasajo (dried beef) put in the saddle-bags, as much as will keep you going three or four days,” said Señor Carera. “You won’t find many hotels on the road. And you will want a sword, Mr. Fortescue. Do me the favor to accept this as a souvenir of our friendship. It is a fine Toledo blade, with a history. An ancestor of mine wore it at the battle of Lepanto. It may bend but will never break, and has an edge like a razor. I give it to you to be used against my country’s enemies, and I am sure you will never draw it without cause, nor sheathe it without honor.”

I thanked my host warmly for his timely gift, and, as I buckled the historic weapon to my side, glanced at the horse which he had placed at my disposal. It was a beautiful flea-bitten gray, with a small, fiery head, arched neck, sloping shoulders, deep chest, powerful quarters, well-bent hocks, and “clean” shapely legs—a very model of a horse, and as it seemed, in perfect condition.

“Ah, you may look at Pizarro as long as you like, Señor Fortescue, and he is well worth looking at; but you will never tire him,” said Carera. “What will you do if you meet the patrol, Salvador?”

“Evade them if we can, charge them if we cannot.”

“By all means the former, if possible, and then you may not be pursued. And now, Señor, I trust you will not hold me wanting in hospitality if I urge you to mount; but your lives are in jeopardy, and there may be death in delay. Put out the lights, men, and open the gates. Adios, Señor Fortescue! Adios, my dear Salvador. We shall meet again in happier times. God guard you, and bring you safe to your journey’s end.”

And then we rode forth into the night.

“We had better take to the open country at once, and strike the road about a few miles farther on. It is rather risky, for we shall have to get over several rifts made by the earthquake and cross a stream with high banks. But if we take to the road straightway, we are almost sure to meet a patrol. We may meet one in any case; but the farther from the city the encounter takes place, the greater will be our chance of getting through.”

“You know best. Lead on, and I will follow. Are these rifts you speak of wide?”

“They are easily jumpable by daylight; but how we shall do them in the dark, I don’t know. However, these horses are as nimble as cats, and almost as keen-sighted. I think, if we leave it to them, they will carry us safely over. The sky is a little clearer, too, and that will count in our favor. This way!”

We sped on as swiftly and silently as the spectre horseman of the story, for Venezuelan horses being unshod and their favorite pace a gliding run (much less fatiguing for horse and rider than the high trot of Europe) they move as noiselessly over grass as a man in slippers.

“Look out!” cried Carmen, reining in his horse. “We are not far from the first grip. Don’t you see something like a black streak running across the grass? That is it.”

“How wide, do you suppose?”

“Eight or ten feet. Don’t try to guide your horse. He won’t refuse. Let him have his head and take it in his own way. Go first; my horse likes a lead.”

Pizarro went to the edge of the rift, stretched out his head as if to measure the distance, and then, springing over as lightly as a deer, landed safely on the other side. The next moment Carmen was with me. After two or three more grips (all of unknown depth, and one smelling strongly of sulphur) had been surmounted in the same way, we came to the stream. The bank was so steep and slippery that the horses had to slide down it on their haunches (after the manner of South American horses). But having got in, we had to get out. This proved no easy task, and it was only after we had floundered in the brook for twenty minutes or more, that Carmen found a place where he thought it might be possible to make our exit. And such a place! We were forced to dismount, climb up almost on our hands and knees, and let the horses scramble after us as they best could.

“That is the last of our difficulties,” said Carmen, as we got into our saddles. “In ten minutes we strike the road, and then we shall have a free course for several hours.”

“How about the patrols? Do you think we have given them the slip?”

“I do. They don’t often come as far as this.”

We reached the road at a point where it was level with the fields; and a few miles farther on entered a defile, bounded on the left by a deep ravine, on the right by a rocky height.

And then there occurred a startling phenomenon. As the moon rose above the Silla of Caracas, the entire savanna below us seemed to take fire, streams as of lava began to run up (not down) the sides of the hills, throwing a lurid glare over the sleeping city, and bringing into strong relief the rugged mountains which walled in the plain.

“Good heavens, what is that!” I exclaimed.

“It is the time of drought, and the peons are firing the grass to improve the land,” said Carmen. “I wish they had not done it just now, though. However, it is, perhaps, quite as well. If the light makes us more visible to others, it also makes others more visible to us. Hark! What is that? Did you not hear something?”

“I did. The neighing of a horse. Halt! Let us listen.”

“The neighing of a horse and something more.”

“Men’s voices and the rattle of accoutrements. The patrol, after all. What shall we do? To turn back would be fatal. The ravine is too deep to descend. Climbing those rocks is out of the question. There is but one alternative—we must charge right through them.”

“How many men does a patrol generally consist of?”

“Sometimes two, sometimes four.”

“May it not be a squadron on the march?”

“It may. No matter. We must charge them, all the same. Better die sword in hand than be garroted on the plaza. We have one great advantage. We shall take these fellows by surprise. Let us wait here in the shade, and the moment they round that corner, go at them, full gallop.”

The words were scarcely spoken, when two dragoons came in sight, then two more.

“Four!” murmured Carmen. “The odds are not too great. We shall do it. Are you ready? Now!”

The dragoons, surprised by our sudden appearance, pulled up and stood stock-still, as if doubtful whether our intentions were hostile or friendly; and we were at them almost before they had drawn their swords.

As I charged the foremost Spaniard, his horse swerved from the road, and rolled with his rider into the ravine. The second, profiting by his comrade’s disaster, gave us the slip and galloped toward Caracas. This left us face to face with the other two, and in little more than as many minutes I had run my man through, and Carmen had hurled his to the ground with a cleft skull.

“I thought we should do it,” he said as he sheathed his sword. “But before we ride on let us see who the fellows are, for, ’pon my soul, they have not the looks of a patrol from Caracas.”

As he spoke, Carmen dismounted and closely examined the prostrate men’s facings.

“Caramba! They belong to the regiment of Irun.”

“I remember them. They were in Murillo’s corp d’armée at Vittoria.”

“I wish they were at Vittoria now. Their headquarters are at La Victoria! Worse luck!”

“Why?”

“Because there may be more of them. You suggested just now the possibility of a squadron. How if we meet a regiment?”

“We should be in rather a bad scrape.”

“We are in a bad scrape, amigo mio. Unless, I am greatly mistaken the regiment of Irun, or, at any rate, a squadron of it is on the march hitherward. If they started at sunrise and rested during the heat of the day, this is about the time the advance-guard would be here. Having no enemy to fear in these parts, they would naturally break up into small detachments; there has been no rain for weeks, and the dust raised by a large body of horsemen is simply stifling. However, we may as well go forward to certain death as go back to it. Besides, I hate going back in any circumstances. And we have just one chance. We must hurry on and ride for our lives.”

“I don’t quite see that. We shall meet them all the sooner.”

Carmen made some reply which I failed to catch, and as the way was rough and Pizarro required all my attention, I did not repeat the question.

We passed rapidly up the brow, and when we reached more even ground, put our horses to the gallop and went on, up hill and down dale, until Carmen, uttering an exclamation, pulled his horse into a walk.

“I think we can get down here,” he said.

We had reached a place where, although the mountain to our right was still precipitous, the ravine seemed narrower and the sides less steep.

“I think we can,” repeated Carmen. “At any rate, we must try.”

And with that he dismounted, and leading his horse to the brink of the ravine, incontinently disappeared.

“Come on! It will do!” he cried, dragging his horse after him.

I followed with Pizarro, who missing his footing landed on his head. As for myself, I rolled from top to bottom, the descent being much steeper than I had expected.

[Chapter XII.]

Between Two Fires.

[Return to Table of Contents]

The ravine was filled with shrubs and trees, through which we partly forced, partly threaded our way, until we reached a spot where we were invisible from the road.

“Now off with your cobija and throw it over your horse’s head,” said Carmen. “If they don’t hear they won’t neigh, and a single neigh might be our ruin.”

“You mean to stay here until the troops have gone past?”

“Exactly, I knew there was a good hiding-place hereabout, and that if we reached it before the troops came up we should be safe. If there be any more of them they will pass us in a few minutes. Now, if you will hitch Pizarro to that tree—oh, you have done so already. Good! Well, let us return to the road and watch. We can hide in the grass, or behind the bushes.”

We returned accordingly, and choosing a place where we could see without being seen, we lay down and listened, exchanging now and then a whispered remark.

“Hist!” said Carmen, presently, putting his ear to the ground. He had been so long on the war-path and lived so much in the open air, that his senses were almost as acute as those of a wild animal.

“They are coming!”

Soon the hum of voices, the neighing of steeds, and the clang of steel fell on my ear, and peering between the branches I could see a group of shadows moving toward us. Then the shadows, taking form and substance, became six horsemen. They passed within a few feet of our hiding-place. We heard their talk, saw their faces in the moonlight, and Carmen whispered that he could distinguish the facings of their uniforms.

“It is as I feared,” he muttered, “the entire regiment of Irun, shifting their quarters to Caracas. We are prisoners here for an hour or two. Well, it is perhaps better to have them behind than before us.”

“What will happen when they find the bodies of the two troopers?”

“That is precisely the question I am asking myself. But not having met us they will naturally conclude that we have gone on toward Caracas.”

“Unless they are differently informed by the man who escaped us.”

“I don’t think he would be in any hurry to turn back. He went off at a devil of a pace.”

“He might turn back for all that, when he recovered from his scare. He could not help seeing that we were only two, and if he informs the others they will know of a surety that we are hiding in the ravine.”

“And then there would be a hunt. However, at the speed they are riding it will take them an hour or more to reach the scene of our skirmish, and then there is coming back. Everything depends on how soon the last of them go by. If we have only a few minutes start they will never overtake us, and once on the other side of Los Teycos we shall be safe both from discovery and pursuit. European cavalry are of no use in a Venezuelan forest; and I don’t think these Irun fellows have any blood-hounds.”

“Blood-hounds! You surely don’t mean to say that the Spaniards use blood-hounds?”

“I mean nothing else. General Griscelli, who holds the chief command in the district of San Felipe, keeps a pack of blood-hounds, which he got from Cuba. But, though a Spanish general, Griscelli is not a Spaniard born. He is either a Corsican or an Italian. I believe he was originally in the French army, and when Dupont surrendered at Baylen he went over to the other side, and accepted a commission from the King of Spain.”

“Not a very good record, that.”

“And he is not a good man. He outvies even the Spaniards in cruelty. A very able general, though. He has given us a deal of trouble. Down with your head! Here comes some more.”

A whole troop this time. They pass in a cloud of dust. After a short interval another detachment sweeps by; then another and another.

“Gracias a Dios! they are putting on more speed. At this rate we shall soon be at liberty. But, caramba, how they might have been trapped, Señor Fortescue! A few men on that height hurling down rocks, the defile lined with sharp-shooters, half a hundred of Mejia’s llaneros to cut off their retreat, and the regiment of Irun could be destroyed to a man.”

“Or taken prisoners.”

“I don’t think there would be many prisoners,” said Carmen, grimly. “These must almost be the last, I think—they are. See! Here come the tag-rag and bobtail.”

The tag-rag and bob-tail consisted of a string of loaded mules with their arrieros, a dozen women riding mules, and as many men on foot.

“Let us get out of this hole while we may, and before any of them come back. Once on the road and mounted, we shall at least be able to fight; but down here—”

“All the same, this hole has served our turn well. However, I quite agree with you that the best thing we can do is to get out of it quickly.”

This was more easily said than done. It was like climbing up a precipice. Pizarro slipped back three times. Carmen’s mare did no better. In the end we had to dismount, fasten two lariats to each saddle, and haul while the horses scrambled. A little help goes a long way in such circumstances.

All this both made noise and caused delay, and it was with a decided sense of relief that we found ourselves once more in the saddle and en route.

“We have lost more time than I reckoned on,” said Carmen, as we galloped through the pass. “If any of the dragoons had turned back—However, they did not, and, as our horses are both fresher than theirs and carry less weight, they will have no chance of overtaking us if they do; and, as the whole of the regiment has gone on, there is no chance of meeting any more of them—Caramba! Halt!”

“What is it?” I asked, pulling up short.

“I spoke too soon. More are coming. Don’t you hear them?”

“Yes; and I see shadows in the distance.”

“The shadows are soldiers, and we shall have to charge them whether they be few or many, amigo mio; so say your prayers and draw your Toledo. But first let us shake hands, we may never—”

“I am quite ready to charge by your side, Carmen; but would it not be better, think you, to try what a little strategy will do?”

“With all my heart, if you can suggest anything feasible. I like a fight immensely—when the odds are not too great—and I hope to die fighting. All the same, I have no very strong desire to die at this particular moment.”

“Neither have I. So let us go on like peaceable travellers, and the chances are that these men, taking for granted that the others have let us pass, will not meddle with us. If they do, we must make the best fight we can.”

“A happy thought! Let us act on it. If they ask any questions I will answer. Your English accent might excite suspicion.”

The party before us consisted of nine horsemen, several of whom appeared to be officers.

“Buene noche, señores,” said Carmen, so soon as we were within speaking distance.

“Buene noche, señores. You have met the troops, of course. How far are they ahead?” asked one of the officers.

“The main body are quite a league ahead by this time. The pack-mules and arrieros passed us about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Gracias! Who are you, and whither may you be wending, señores?”

“I am Sancho Mencar, at your service, señor coronel, a Government messenger, carrying despatches to General Salazar, at La Victoria. My companion is Señor Tesco, a merchant, who is journeying to the same place on business.”

“Good! you can go on. You will meet two troopers who are bringing on a prisoner. Do me the favor to tell them to make haste.”

“Certainly, señor coronel. Adios, señores.”

“Adio señores.”

And with that we rode on our respective ways.

“Two troopers and prisoner,” said Carmen, thoughtfully.

“So there are more of them, after all! How many, I wonder? If this prisoner be a patriot we must rescue him, señor Fortescue.”

“With all my heart—if we can.”

“Only two troopers! You and I are a match for six.”

“Possibly. But we don’t know that the two are not followed by a score! There seems to be no end of them.”

“I don’t think so. If there were the colonel would have asked us to tell them also to hurry up. But we shall soon find out. When we meet the fellows we will speak them fair and ask a few questions.”

Ten minutes later we met them.

“Buene noche, señores!” said Carmen, riding forward. “We bring a message from the colonel. He bids you make haste.”

“All very fine. But how can we make haste when we are hampered by this rascal? I should like to blow his brains out.”

“This rascal” was the prisoner, a big powerful fellow who seemed to be either a zambo or a negro. His arms were bound to his side, and he walked between the troopers, to whose saddles he was fastened by two stout cords.

“Why don’t you blow his brains out?”

“Because we should get into trouble. He is the colonel’s slave, and therefore valuable property. We have tried dragging him along; but the villain throws himself down, and might get a limb broken, so all we can do is prod him occasionally with the points of our sabres; but he does not seem to mind us in the least. We have tried swearing; we might as well whistle. Make haste, indeed!”

“A very hard case, I am sure. I sympathize with you, señores. Is the man a runaway that you have to take such care of him?”

“That is just it. He ran away and rambled for months in the forest; and if he had not stolen back to La Victoria and been betrayed by a woman, he would never have been caught. After that, the colonel would not trust him at large; but he thinks that at Caracas he will have him safe. And now, señores, with your leave we must go on.”

“Ah! You are the last, I suppose?”

“We are; curse it! The main body must be a league ahead by this time, and we shall not reach Caracas for hours. Adios!”

“Let us rescue the poor devil!” I whispered to Carmen.

“By all means. One moment, señores; I beg your pardon—now, Fortescue!”

And with that we placed our horses across the road, whipped out our pistols and pointed them at the troopers’ heads, to their owners’ unutterable surprise.

“We are sorry to inconvenience you, señores,” said my companion, politely; “but we are going to release this slave, and we have need of your horses. Unbuckle your swords, throw them on the ground, and dismount. No hesitation, or you are dead men! Shall we treat them as they proposed to treat the slave, Señor Fortescue? Blow out their brains? It will be safer, and save us a deal of trouble.”

“No! That would be murder. Let them go. They can do no harm. It is impossible for them to overtake the others on foot.”

Meanwhile the soldiers, having the fear of being shot before them, had dismounted and laid down their weapons.

“Go!” said Carmen, pointing northward, and they went.

“Your name?” (to the prisoner whose bonds I was cutting with my sword).

“Here they call me José. In my own country I was called Gahra—”

“Let it be Gahra, then. It is less common than José. Every other peon in the country is called José. You are a native of Africa?”

“Si, señor.”

“How came you hither?”

“I was taken to Cuba in a slave-ship, brought to this country by General Salazar, and sold by him to Colonel Canimo.”

“You have no great love for the Spaniards, I suppose?”

Gahra pointed to his arms which had been chafed by the rope till they were raw, and showed us his back which bore the marks of recent stripes.

“Can you fight?”

“Against the Spaniards? Only give me the chance, and you shall see,” answered the negro in a voice of intense hate.

“Come with us, and you shall have many chances. Mount one of those horses and lead the other.”

Gahra mounted, and we moved on.

We were now at the beginning of a stiff ascent. The road, which though undulating had risen almost continuously since we left Caracas, was bordered with richly colored flowers and shrubs, and bounded on either side by deep forests. Night was made glorious by the great tropical moon, which shone resplendent under a purple sky gilding the tree-tops and lighting us on our way. Owing to the nature of the ground we could not see far before us, but the backward view, with its wood-crowned heights, deep ravines, and sombre mountains looming in the distance, was fairy-like and fantastic, and the higher we rose the more extensive it became.

“Is this a long hill?” I asked Carmen.

“Very. An affair of half an hour, at least, at this speed; and we cannot go faster,” he answered, as he turned half round in his saddle.

“Why are you looking backward?”

“To see whether we are followed. We lost much time in the quebrado, and we have lost more since. Have you good eyes, Gahara? Born Africans generally have.”

“Yes, sir. My name, Gahra Dahra, signifies Dahra, the keen sighted!”

“I am glad to hear it. Be good enough to look round occasionally, and if you see anything let us know.”

We had nearly reached the summit of the rise when the negro uttered an exclamation and turned his horse completely round.

“What is it?” asked Carmen and myself, following his example.

“I see figures on the brow of yonder hill.”

“You see more than I can, and I have not bad eyes,” said Carmen, looking intently. “What are they like, those figures?”

“That I cannot make out yet. They are many; they move; and every minute they grow bigger! That is all I can tell.”

“It is quite enough. The bodies of the two troopers have been found, the alarm has been given, and we are pursued. But they won’t overtake us. They have that hill to descend, this to mount; and our horses are better than theirs.”

“Are you going far, señor?” inquired Gahra.

“To the llanos.”

“By Los Teycos?”

“Yes. We shall easily steal through Los Teycos, and I know of a place in the forest beyond, where we can hide during the day.”

“Pardon me for venturing to contradict you, señor; but I fear you will not find it very easy to steal through Los Teycos. For three days it has been held by a company of infantry and all the outlets are strictly guarded. No civilian unfurnished with a safe conduct from the captain-general is allowed to pass.”

“Caramba! We are between two fires, it seems. Well, we must make a dash for it. The sentries cannot stop us, and we can gallop through before they turn out the guard.”

“The horses will be very tired by that time, señor, and the troopers can get fresh mounts at Los Teycos. But I know a way—”

“The Indian trail! Do you know the Indian trail?”

“Yes, sir. I know the Indian trail, and I can take you to a place in the forest where there is grass and water and game, and we shall be safe from pursuit as long as we like to stay.”

“How far off?”

“About two leagues.”

“Good. Lead on in heaven’s name. You are a treasure, Gahra Dahra. In rescuing you from those ruffianly Spaniards we did ourselves, as well as you, a good turn.”

Our pursuers, who numbered a full score, could now be distinctly seen, but in a few minutes we lost sight of them. After a sharp ride of half an hour, the negro called a halt.

“This is the place. Here we turn off,” he said.

“Here! I see nothing but the almost dry bed of a torrent.”

“So much the better. We shall make no footmarks,” said Carmen. “Go on, Gahra. But first of all turn that led horse adrift. Are you sure this place you speak of is unknown to the Spaniards?”

“Quite. It is known only to a few wandering Indians and fugitive slaves. We can stay here till sunrise. It is impossible to follow the Indian trail by night, even with such a moon as this.”

After we had partly ridden, partly walked (for we were several times compelled to dismount) about a mile along the bed of the stream, which was hemmed in between impenetrable walls of tall trees and dense undergrowth, Gahra, who was leading, called out: “This way!” and vanished into what looked like a hole, but proved to be a cleft in the bank so overhung by vegetation as to be well-nigh invisible.

It was the entrance to a passage barely wide enough to admit a horse and his rider, yet as light as a star-gemmed mid-night, for the leafy vault above us was radiant with fireflies, gleaming like diamonds in the dark hair of a fair woman.

But even with this help it was extremely difficult to force our way through the tangled undergrowth, which we had several times to attack, sword in hand, and none of us were sorry when Gahra announced that we had reached the end.

“Por todos los santos! But this is fairyland!” exclaimed Carmen, who was just before me. “I never saw anything so beautiful.”

He might well say so. We were on the shore of a mountain-tarn, into whose clear depths the crescent moon, looking calmly down, saw its image reflected as in a silver mirror. Lilies floated on its waters, ferns and flowering shrubs bent over them, the air was fragrant with sweet smells, and all around uprose giant trees with stems as round and smooth as the granite columns of a great cathedral; and, as it seemed in that dim religious light, high enough to support the dome of heaven.

I was so lost in admiration of this marvellous scene that my companions had unsaddled and were leading their horses down to the water before I thought of dismounting from mine.

Apart from the beauty of the spot, we could have found none more suitable for a bivouac! We were in safety and our horses in clover, and, tethering them with the lariats, we left them to graze. Gahra gathered leaves and twigs and kindled a fire, for the air at that height was fresh, and we were lightly clad. We cooked our tasajo on the embers, and after smoking the calumet of peace, rolled ourselves in our cobijas, laid our heads on our saddles, and slept the sleep of the just.

[Chapter XIII.]

On the Llanos.

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Only a moment ago the land had been folded in the mantle of darkness. Now, a flaming eye rises from the ground at some immeasurable distance, like an outburst of volcanic fire. It grows apace, chasing away the night and casting a ruddy glow on, as it seems, a vast and waveless sea, as still as the painted ocean of the poem, as silent as death, a sea without ships and without life, mournful and illimitable, and as awe-inspiring and impressive as the Andes or the Alps.

So complete is the illusion that did I not know we were on the verge of the llanos I should be tempted to believe that supernatural agency had transported us while we slept to the coasts of the Caribbean Sea or the yet more distant shores of the Pacific Ocean.

Six days are gone by since we left our bivouac by the mountain-tarn: three we have wandered in the woods under the guidance of Gahra, three sought Mejia and his guerillas, who, being always on the move, are hard to find. Last night we reached the range of hills which form, as it were, the northern coast-line of the vast series of savannas which stretch from the tropics to the Straits of Magellan; and it is now a question whether we shall descend to the llanos or continue our search in the sierra.

“It was there I left him,” said Carmen, pointing to a quebrada some ten miles away.

“Where we were yesterday?”

“Yes; and he said he would be either there or hereabout when I returned, and I am quite up to time. But Mejia takes sudden resolves sometimes. He may have gone to beat up Griselli’s quarters at San Felipe, or be making a dash across the llanos in the hope of surprising the fortified post of Tres Cruces.”

“What shall we do then; wait here until he comes back?”

“Or ride out on the llanos in the direction of Tres Cruces. If we don’t meet Mejia and his people we may hear something of them.”

“I am for the llanos.”

“Very well. We will go thither. But we shall have to be very circumspect. There are loyalist as well as patriot guerillas roaming about. They say that Morales has collected a force of three or four thousand, mostly Indios, and they are all so much alike that unless you get pretty close it is impossible to distinguish patriots from loyalists.”

“Well, there is room to run if we cannot fight.”

“Oh, plenty of room,” laughed Carmen. “But as for fighting—loyalist guerillas are not quite the bravest of the brave, yet I don’t think we three are quite a match for fifty of them, and we are not likely to meet fewer, if we meet any. But let us adventure by all means. Our horses are fresh, and we can either return to the sierra or spend the night on the llanos, as may be most expedient.”

Ten minutes later we were mounted, and an hour’s easy riding brought us to the plain. It was as pathless as the ocean, yet Carmen, guided by the sun, went on as confidently as if he had been following a beaten track. The grass was brown and the soil yellow; particles of yellow dust floated in the air; the few trees we passed were covered with it, and we and our horses were soon in a like condition. Nothing altered as we advanced; sky and earth were ever the same; the only thing that moved was a cloud, sailing slowly between us and the sun, and when Carmen called a halt on the bank of a nearly dried-up stream, it required an effort to realize that since we left our bivouac in the hills we had ridden twenty miles in a direct line. Hard by was a deserted hatto, or cattle-keeper’s hut, where we rested while our horses grazed.

“No sign of Mejia yet,” observed Carmen, as he lighted his cigar with a burning-glass. “Shall we go on toward Tres Cruces, or return to our old camping-ground in the hills?”

“I am for going on.”

“So am I. But we must keep a sharp lookout. We shall be on dangerous ground after we have crossed the Tio.”

“Where is the Tio?”

“There!” (pointing to the attenuated stream near us).

“That! I thought the Tio was a river.”

“So it is, and a big one in the rainy season, as you may have an opportunity of seeing. I wish we could hear something of Mejia. But there is nobody of whom we can inquire. The country is deserted; the herdsmen have all gone south, to keep out of the way of guerillas and brigands, all of whom look on cattle as common property.”

“Somebody comes!” said Gahra, who was always on the lookout.

“How many?” exclaimed Carmen, springing to his feet.

“Only one.”

“Keep out of sight till he draws near, else he may sheer off; and I should like to have a speech of him. He may be able to tell us something.”

The stranger came unconcernedly on, and as he stopped in the middle of the river to let his horse drink, we had a good look at him. He was well mounted, carried a long spear and a macheto (a broad, sword-like knife, equally useful for slitting windpipes and felling trees), and wore a broad-brimmed hat, shirt, trousers, and a pair of spurs (strapped to his naked feet).

As he resumed his journey across the river, we all stepped out of the hatto and gave him the traditional greeting, “Buenas dias, señor.”

The man, looking up in alarm, showed a decided disposition to make off, but Carmen spoke him kindly, offered him a cigar, and said that all we wanted was a little information. We were peaceful travellers, and would much like to know whether the country beyond the Tio was free from guerillas.

The stranger eyed us suspiciously, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, said that he had heard that Mejia was “on the war-path.”

“Where?” asked Carmen.

“They say he was at Tres Cruces three days ago; and there has been fighting.”

“And are any of Morale’s people also on the war-path?”

“That is more than I can tell you, señores. It is very likely; but as you are peaceful travellers, I am sure no one will molest you. Adoiso, señores.”

And with that the man gave his horse a sudden dig with his spurs, and went off at a gallop.

“What a discourteous beggar he is!” exclaimed Carmen, angrily. “If it would not take too much out of my mare I would ride after him and give him a lesson in politeness.”

“I don’t think he was intentionally uncivil. He seemed afraid.”

“Evidently. He did not know what we were, and feared to commit himself. However, we have learned something. We are on Mejia’s track. He was at Tres Cruces three days since, and if we push on we may fall in with him before sunset, or, at any rate, to-morrow morning.”

“Is it not possible that this man may have been purposely deceiving us, or be himself misinformed?” I asked.

“Quite. But as we had already decided to go on it does not matter a great deal whether he is right or wrong. I think, though, he knew more about the others than he cared to tell. All the more reason for keeping a sharp lookout and riding slowly.”

“So as to save our horses?”

“Exactly. We may have to ride for our lives before the sun goes down. And now let us mount and march.”

Our course was almost due west, and the sun being now a little past the zenith, its ardent rays—which shone right in our faces—together with the reverberations from the ground, made the heat almost insupportable. The stirrup-irons burned our feet; speech became an effort; we sat in our saddles, perspiring and silent; our horses, drooping their heads, settled into a listless and languid walk. The glare was so trying that I closed my eyes and let Pizarro go as he would. Open them when I might, the outlook was always the same, the same yellow earth and blue sky, the same lifeless, interminable plain, the same solitary sombrero palms dotting the distant horizon.

This went on for an hour or two, and I think I must have fallen into a doze, for when, roused by a shout from Gahra, I once more opened my eyes the sun was lower and the heat less intense.

“What is it,” asked Carmen, who, like myself, had been half asleep. “I see nothing.”

“A cloud of dust that moves—there!” (pointing).

“So it is,” shading his eyes and looking again. “Coming this way, too. Behind that cloud is a body of horsemen. Be they friends or enemies—Mejia and his people or loyalist guerillas?”

“That is more than I can say, señor. Mejia, I hope.”

“I also. But hope is not certainty, and until we can make sure we had better hedge away toward the north, so as to be nearer the hills in case we have to run for it.”

“You think we had better make for the hills in that case?” I asked.

“Decidedly. Mejia is sure to return thither, and Morale’s men are much less likely to follow us far in that direction than south or east.”

So, still riding leisurely, we diverged a little to the right, keeping the cloud-veiled horsemen to our left. By this measure we should (if they proved to be enemies) prevent them from getting between us and the hills, and thereby cutting off our best line of retreat.

Meanwhile the cloud grew bigger. Before long we could distinguish those whom it had hidden, without, however, being able to decide whether they were friends or foes.

Carmen thought they numbered at least two hundred, and there might be more behind. But who they were he could, as yet, form no idea.

The nearer we approached them the greater became our excitement and surprise. A few minutes and we should either be riding for our lives or surrounded by friends. We looked to the priming of our pistols, tightened our belts and our horses’ girths, wiped the sweat and dust from our faces, and, while hoping for the best, prepared for the worst.

“They see us!” exclaimed Carmen. “I cannot quite make them out, though. I fear…. But let us ride quietly on. The secret will soon be revealed.”

A dozen horsemen had detached themselves from the main body with the intention, as might appear, of intercepting our retreat in every direction. Four went south, four north, and four moved slowly round to our rear.

“Had we not better push on?” I asked. “This looks very like a hostile demonstration.”

“So it does. But we must find out—And there is no hurry. We shall only have the four who are coming this way to deal with, the others are out of the running. All the same, we may as well draw a little farther to the right, so as to give them a longer gallop and get them as far from the main body as may be.”

The four were presently near enough to be distinctly seen.

“Enemies! Vamonos!” cried Carmen, after he had scanned their faces. “But not too fast. If they think we are afraid and our horses tired they will follow us without waiting for the others, and perhaps give us an opportunity of teaching them better manners. Your horse is the fleetest, señor Fortescue. You had better, perhaps, ride last.”

On this hint I acted; and when the four guerillas saw that I was lagging behind they redoubled their efforts to overtake me, but whenever they drew nearer than I liked, I let Pizarro out, thereby keeping their horses, which were none too fresh, continually on the stretch. The others were too far in the rear to cause us concern. We had tested the speed of their horses and knew that we could leave them whenever we liked.

After we had gone thus about a couple of miles Carmen slackened speed so as to let me come up with him and Gahra.

“We have five minutes to spare,” he said. “Shall we stop them?”

I nodded assent, whereupon we checked our horses, and wheeling around, looked our pursuers in the face. This brought them up short, and I thought they were going to turn tail, but after a moment’s hesitation they lowered their lances and came on albeit at no great speed, receiving as they did so a point-blank volley from our pistols, which emptied one of their saddles. Then we drew our swords and charged, but before we could get to close quarters the three men sheered off to the right and left, leaving their wounded comrade to his fate. It did not suit our purpose to follow them, and we were about to go on, when we noticed that the other guerillas, who a few minutes previously were riding hotly after us, had ceased their pursuit, and were looking round in seeming perplexity. The main body had, moreover, come to a halt, and were closing up and facing the other way. Something had happened. What could it be?

“Another cloud of dust,” said Gahra, pointing to the north-west.

So there was, and moving rapidly. Had our attention been less taken up with the guerillas this new portent would not so long have escaped us.

“Mejia! I’ll wager ten thousand piasters that behind that cloud are Mejia and his braves,” exclaimed Carmen, excitedly. Hijo de Dios! Won’t they make mince-meat of the Spaniard? How I wish I were with them! Shall we go back Señor Fortescue?”

“If you think—”

“Think! I am sure. I can see the gleam of their spears through the dust. By all means, let us join them. The Spaniards have too much on their hands just now to heed us. But I must have a spear.”

And with that Carmen slipped from his horse and picked up the lance of the fallen guerilla.

“Do you prefer a spear to a sword?” I asked, as we rode on.

“I like both, but in a charge on the llanos I prefer a spear decidedly. Yet I dare say you will do better with the weapon to which you have been most accustomed. If you ward off or evade the first thrust and get to your opponent’s left rear you will have him at your mercy. Our llaneros are indifferent swordsmen; but once turn your back and you are doomed. Hurrah! There is Mejia, leading his fellows on. Don’t you see him? The tall man on the big horse. Forward, señors! We may be in time for the encounter even yet.”

[Chapter XIV.]

Caught.

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A smart gallop of a few minutes brought us near enough to see what was going on, though as we had to make a considerable détour in order to avoid the Spaniards, we were just too late for the charge, greatly to Carmen’s disappointment.

In numbers the two sides were pretty equal, the strength of each being about a thousand men. Their tactics were rather those of Indian braves than regular troops. The patriots were, however, both better led and better disciplined than their opponents, and fought with a courage and a resolution that on their native plains would have made them formidable foes for the “crackest” of European cavalry.

The encounter took place when we were within a few hundred yards of Mejia’s left flank. It was really a charge in line, albeit a very broken line, every man riding as hard as he could and fighting for his own land. All were armed with spears, the longest, as I afterward learned, being wielded by Colombian gauchos. These portentous weapons, fully fourteen feet long, were held in both hands, the reins being meanwhile placed on the knees, and the horses guided by voice and spur. The Spaniards seemed terribly afraid of them, as well they might be, for the Colombian spears did dire execution. Few missed their mark, and I saw more than one trooper literally spitted and lifted clean out of his saddle.

Mejia, distinguishable by his tall stature, was in the thick of the fray. After the first shock he threw away his spear, and drawing a long two-handed sword, which he carried at his back, laid about like a coeur-de-lion. The combat lasted only a few minutes, and though we were too late to contribute to the victory we were in time to take part in the pursuit.

It was a scene of wild confusion and excitement; the Spaniards galloping off in all directions, singly and in groups, making no attempt to rally, yet when overtaken, fighting to the last, Mejia’s men following them with lowered lances and wild cries, managing their fiery little horses with consummate ease, and making no prisoners.

“Here is a chance for us; let us charge these fellows!” shouted Carmen, as eight or nine of the enemy rode past us in full retreat; and without pausing for a reply he went off at a gallop, followed by Gahra and myself; for although I had no particular desire to attack men who were flying for their lives and to whom I knew no quarter would be given, it was impossible to hold back when my comrades were rushing into danger. Had the Spaniards been less intent on getting away it would have fared ill with us. As it was, we were all wounded. Gahra got a thrust through the arm, Carmen a gash in the thigh; and as I gave one fellow the point in his throat his spear pierced my hat and cut my head. If some of the patriots had not come to the rescue our lives would have paid the forfeit of our rashness.

The incident was witnessed by Mejia himself, who, when he recognized Carmen, rode forward, greeted us warmly and remarked that we were just in time.

“To be too late,” answered Carmen, discontentedly, as he twisted a handkerchief round his wounded thigh.

“Not much; and you have done your share. That was a bold charge you made. And your friends? I don’t think I have the pleasure of knowing them.”

Carmen introduced us, and told him who I was.

“I am delighted to make your acquaintance, señor,” he said, graciously, “and I will give you of my best; but I can offer you only rough fare and plenty of fighting. Will that content you?”

I bowed, and answered that I desired nothing better. The guerilla leader was a man of striking appearance, tall, spare, and long limbed. The contour of his face was Indian; he had the deep-set eyes, square jaws, and lank hair of the abonguil race. But his eyes were blue, his hair was flaxen, and his skin as fair as that of a pure-blooded Teuton. Mejia, as I subsequently heard, was the son of a German father and a mestizma mother, and prouder of his Indian than his European ancestry. It was probably for this reason that he preferred being called Mejia rather than Morgenstern y Mejia, his original appellation. His hereditary hatred of the Spaniards, inflamed by a sense of personal wrong, was his ruling passion. He spared none of the race (being enemies) who fell into his hands. Natives of the country, especially those with Indian blood in their veins, he treated more mercifully—when his men would let him, for they liked killing even more than they liked fighting, and had an unpleasant way of answering a remonstrance from their officers with a thrust from their spears.

Mejia owed his ascendancy over them quite as much to his good fortune in war as to his personal prowess and resolute character.

“If I were to lose a battle they would probably take my life, and I should certainly have to resign my command,” he observed, when we were talking the matter over after the pursuit (which, night being near, was soon abandoned); “and a llanero leader must lead—no playing the general or watching operations from the rear—or it will be the worse for him.”

“I understand; he must be first or nowhere.”

“Yes, first or nowhere; and they will brook no punishment save death. If a man disobeys me I either let it pass or shoot him out of hand, according to circumstances. If I were to strike a man or order him under arrest, the entire force would either mutiny or disband. Si señor, my llaneros are wild fellows.”

They looked it. Most of them wore only a ragged shirt over equally ragged trousers. Their naked feet were thrust into rusty stirrups. Some rode bare-backed, and there were among them men of every breed which the country produced; mestizoes, mulattoes, zambos, quadroons, negroes, and Indios, but all born gauchos and llaneros, hardy and in high condition, and well skilled in the use of lasso and spear. They were volunteers, too, and if their chief failed to provide them with a sufficiency of fighting and plunder, they had no hesitation in taking themselves off without asking for leave of absence.

When Mejia heard that a British force was being raised for service against the Spaniards, he was greatly delighted, and offered me on the spot a command in his “army,” or, alternatively, the position of his principal aide-de-camp. I preferred the latter.

“You have decided wisely, and I thank you, señor coronel. The advice and assistance of a soldier who has seen so much of war as you have will be very valuable and highly esteemed.”

I reminded the chief that, in the British army, I had held no higher rank than that of lieutenant.

“What matters that? I have made myself a general, and I make you a colonel. Who is there to say me nay?” he demanded, proudly.

Though much amused by this summary fashion of conferring military rank, I kept a serious countenance, and, after congratulating General Mejia on his promotion and thanking him for mine, I said that I should do my best to justify his confidence.

We bivouacked on the banks of a stream some ten miles from the scene of our encounter with the loyalists. On our way thither, Mejia told us that he had taken and destroyed Tres Cruces, and was now contemplating an attack on General Griscelli at San Felipe, as to which he asked my opinion.

I answered that, as I knew nothing either of the defense of San Felipe or of the strength and character of the force commanded by General Griscelli, I could give none. On this, Mejia informed me that the place was a large village and military post, defended by earthworks and block-houses, and that the force commanded by Griscelli consisted of about twenty-five hundred men, of whom about half were regulars, half native auxiliaries.

“Has he any artillery?” I asked.

“About ten pieces of position, but no field-guns.”

“And you?”

“I have none whatever.”

“Nor any infantry?”

“Not here. But my colleague, General Estero, is at present organizing a force which I dare say will exceed two thousand men, and he promises to join me in the course of a week or two.”

“That is better, certainly. Nevertheless, I fear that with one thousand horse and two thousand foot, and without artillery, you will not find it easy to capture a strong place, armed with ten guns and held by twenty-five hundred men, of whom half are regulars. If I were you I would let San Felipe alone.”

Mejia frowned. My advice was evidently not to his liking.

“Let me tell you, señor coronel” he said, arrogantly, “our patriot soldiers are equal to any in the world, regular or irregular. And, don’t you see that the very audacity of the enterprise counts in our favor? The last thing Griscelli expects is an attack. We shall find him unprepared and take him by surprise. That man has done us a great deal of harm. He hangs every patriot who falls into his hands, and I have made up my mind to hang him!”

After this there was nothing more to be said, and I held my peace. I soon found, moreover, that albeit Mejia often made a show of consulting me he had no intention of accepting my advice, and that all his officers (except Carmen) and most of his men regarded me as a gringo (foreign interloper) and were envious of my promotion, and jealous of my supposed influence with the general.

We bivouacked in a valley on the verge of the llanos, and the next few days were spent in raiding cattle and preparing tasajo. We had also another successful encounter with a party of Morale’s guerillas. This raised Mejia’s spirits to the highest point, and made him more resolute than ever to attack San Felipe. But when I saw General Estero’s infantry my misgivings as to the outcome of the adventure were confirmed. His men, albeit strong and sturdy and full of fight, were badly disciplined and indifferently armed, their officers extremely ignorant and absurdly boastful and confident. Estero himself, though like Mejia, a splendid patriotic leader, was no general, and I felt sure that unless we caught Griscelli asleep we should find San Felipe an uncommonly hard nut to crack. I need hardly say, however, that I kept this opinion religiously to myself. Everybody was so confident and cock-sure, that the mere suggestion of a doubt would have been regarded as treason and probably exposed me to danger.

A march of four days partly across the llanos, partly among the wooded hills by which they were bounded, brought us one morning to a suitable camping-ground, within a few miles of San Felipe, and Mejia, who had assumed the supreme command, decided that the attack should take place on the following night.

“You will surely reconnoitre first, General Mejia,” I ventured to say.

“What would be the use? Estero and I know the place. However, if you and Carmen like to go and have a look you may.”

Carmen was nothing loath, and two hours before sunset we saddled our horses and set out. I could speak more freely to him than to any of the others, and as we rode on I remarked how carelessly the camp was guarded. There were no proper outposts, and instead of being kept out of sight in the quebrado, the men were allowed to come and go as they liked. Nothing would be easier than for a treacherous soldier to desert and give information to the enemy which might not only ruin the expedition but bring destruction on the army.

“No, no, Fortescue, I cannot agree to that. There are no traitors among us,” said my companion, warmly.

“I hope not. Yet how can you guarantee that among two or three thousand men there is not a single rascal! In war, you should leave nothing to chance. And even though none of the fellows desert it is possible that some of them may wander too far away and get taken prisoners, which would be quite as bad.”

“You mean it would give Griscelli warning?”

“Exactly, and if he is an enterprising general he would not wait to be attacked. Instead of letting us surprise him he would surprise us.”

“Caramba! So he would. And Griscelli is an enterprising general. We must mention this to Mejia when we get back, amigo mio.”

“You may, if you like. I am tired of giving advice which is never heeded,” I said, rather bitterly.

“I will, certainly, and then whatever befalls I shall have a clear conscience. Mejia is one of the bravest men I know. It is a pity he is so self-opinionated.”

“Yes, and to make a general a man must have something more than bravery. He must have brains.”

Carmen knew the country we were in thoroughly, and at his suggestion we went a roundabout way through the woods in order to avoid coming in contact with any of Griscelli’s people. On reaching a hill overlooking San Felipe we tethered our horses in a grove of trees where they were well hidden, and completed the ascent on foot. Then, lying down, and using a field-glass lent us by Mejia, we made a careful survey of the place and its surroundings.

San Felipe, a picturesque village of white houses with thatched roofs, lay in a wide well-cultivated valley, looking south, and watered by a shallow stream which in the rainy season was probably a wide river. At each corner of the village, well away from the houses, was a large block-house, no doubt pierced for musketry. From one block-house to another ran an earthen parapet with a ditch, and on each parapet were mounted three guns.

“Well, what think you of San Felipe, and our chances of taking it?” asked Carmen, after a while.

“I don’t think its defences are very formidable. A single mortar on that height to the east would make the place untenable in an hour; set it on fire in a dozen places. It is all wood. But to attempt its capture with a force of infantry numerically inferior to the garrison will be a very hazardous enterprise indeed, and barring miraculously good luck on the one side or miraculously ill luck on the other cannot possibly succeed, I should say. No, Carmen, I don’t think we shall be in San Felipe to-morrow night, or any night, just yet.”

“But how if a part of the garrison be absent? Hist! Did not you hear something?”

“Only the crackling of a branch. Some wild animal, probably. I wonder whether there are any jaguars hereabout—”

“Oh, if the garrison be weak and the sentries sleep it is quite possible we may take the place by a rush. But, on the other hand, it is equally possible that Griscelli may have got wind of our intention, and—”

“There it is again! Something more than a wild animal this time, Fortescue,” exclaims Carmen, springing to his feet.

I follow his example; but the same instant a dozen men spring from the bushes, and before we can offer any resistance, or even draw our swords, we are borne to the ground and despite our struggles, our arms pinioned to our sides.

[Chapter XV.]

An Old Enemy.

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Our captors were Spanish soldiers.

“Be good enough to rise and accompany us to San Felipe, señores,” said the non-commissioned officer in command of the detachment, “and if you attempt to escape I shall blow your brains out.”

“Dios mio! It serves us right for not keeping a better lookout,” said Carmen, with a laugh which I thought sounded rather hollow. “We shall be in San Felipe sooner than we expected, that is all. Lead on, sergeant; we have a dozen good reasons for not trying to escape, to say nothing of our strait waistcoats.”

Whereupon we were marched down the hill and taken to San Felipe, two men following with our horses, from which and other circumstances I inferred that we had been under observation ever since our arrival in the neighborhood. The others were doubtless under observation also; and at the moment I thought less of our own predicament (in view of the hanging propensities of General Griscelli, a decidedly unpleasant one) than of the terrible surprise which awaited Mejia and his army, for, as I quickly perceived, the Spaniards were quite on the alert, and fully prepared for whatever might befall. The place swarmed with soldiers; sentries were pacing to and fro on the parapets, gunners furbishing up their pieces, and squads of native auxiliaries being drilled on a broad savanna outside the walls.

Many of the houses were mere huts—roofs on stilts; others, “wattle and dab;” a few, brown-stone. To the most imposing of these we were conducted by our escort. Above the doorway, on either side of which stood a sentry, was an inscription: “Headquarters: General Griscelli.”

The sergeant asked one of the sentries if the general was in, and receiving an answer in the affirmative he entered, leaving us outside. Presently he returned.

“The general will see you,” he said; “be good enough to come in.”

We went in, and after traversing a wide corridor were ushered into a large room, where an officer in undress uniform sat writing at a big table. Several other officers were lounging in easy-chairs, and smoking big cigars.

“Here are the prisoners, general,” announced our conductor.

The man at the table, looking up, glanced first at Carmen, then at me.

“Caramba!” he exclaimed, with a stare of surprise, “you and I have met before, I think.”

I returned the stare with interest, for though I recognized him I could hardly believe my own eyes.

“On the field of Salamanca?”

“Of course. You are the English officer who behaved so insolently and got me reprimanded.” (This in French.)

“I did no more than my duty. It was you that behaved insolently.”

“Take care what you say, señor, or por Dios—There is no English general to whom you can appeal for protection now. What are you doing here?”

“Not much good, I fear. Your men brought me: I had not the least desire to come, I assure you.”

“You were caught on the hill yonder, surveying the town through a glass, and Sergeant Prim overheard part of a conversation which leaves no doubt that you are officers in Mejia’s army. Besides, you were seen coming from the quarter where he encamped this morning. Is this so?”

Carmen and I exchanged glances. My worst fears were confirmed—we had been betrayed.

“Is this so? I repeat.”

“It is.”

“And have you, an English officer who has fought for Spain, actually sunk so low as to serve with a herd of ruffianly rebels?”

“At any rate, General Griscelli, I never deserted to the enemy.”

The taunt stung him to the quick. Livid with rage he sprung from his chair and placed his hand on his sword.

“Do you know that you are in my power?” he exclaimed. “Had you uttered this insult in Spanish instead of in French, I would have strung you up without more ado.”

“You insulted me first. If you are a true caballero give me the satisfaction which I have a right to demand.”

“No, señor; I don’t meet rebels on the field of honor. If they are common folk I hang them; if they are gentlemen I behead them.”

“Which is in store for us, may I ask?”

“Por Dios! you take it very coolly. Perhaps neither.”

“You will let me go, then?”

“Let you go! Let you go! Yes, I will let you go,” laughing like a man who has made a telling joke, or conceived a brilliant idea.

“When?”

“Don’t be impatient, señor; I should like to have the pleasure of your company for a day or two before we part. Perhaps after—What is the strength of Mejia’s army?”

“I decline to say.”

“I think I could make you say, though, if it were worth the trouble. As it happens, I know already. He has about two thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry. What has he come here for? Does the fool actually suppose that with a force like that he can capture San Felipe? Such presumption deserves punishment, and I shall give him a lesson he will not easily forget—if he lives to remember it. Your name and quality, señor” (to Carmen).

“Salvador Carmen, teniente in the patriot army.”

“I suppose you have heard how I treat patriots?”

“Yes, general, and I should like to treat you in the same way.”

“You mean you would like to hang me. In that case you cannot complain if I hang you. However I won’t hang you—to-day. I will either send you to the next world in the company of your general, or let you go with—”

“Señor Fortescue?”

“Thank you—with Señor Fortescue. That is all, I think. Take him to the guard-house, sergeant—Stay! If you will give me your parole not to leave the town without my permission, or make any attempt to escape, you may remain at large, Señor Fortescue.”

“For how long?”

“Two days.”

As the escape in the circumstances seemed quite out of the question, I gave my parole without hesitation, and asked the same favor for my companion.

“No” (sternly). “I could not believe a rebel Creole on his oath. Take him away, sergeant, and see that he is well guarded. If you let him escape I will hang you in his stead.”

Despite our bonds Carmen and I contrived to shake hands, or rather, touch fingers, for it was little more.

“We shall meet again.” I whispered. “If I had known that he would not take your parole I would not have given mine. Let courage be our watchword. Hasta mañana!”

“Pray take a seat, Señor Fortescue, and we will have a talk about old times in Spain. Allow me to offer you a cigar—I beg your pardon, I was forgetting that my fellows had tied you up. Captain Guzman (to one of the loungers), will you kindly loose Mr. Fortescue? Gracias! Now you can take a cigar, and here is a chair for you.”

I was by no means sure that this sudden display of urbanity boded me good, but being a prisoner, and at Griscelli’s mercy, I thought it as well to humor him, so accepted the cigar and seated myself by his side.

After a talk about the late war in Spain, in the course of which Griscelli told some wonderful stories of the feats he had performed there (for the man was egregiously vain) he led the conversation to the present war in South America, and tried to worm out of me where I had been and what I had done since my arrival in the country. I answered him courteously and diplomatically, taking good care to tell him nothing that I did not want to be known.

“I see,” he said, “it was a love of adventure that brought you here—you English are always running after adventures. A caballero like you can have no sympathy with these rascally rebels.”

“I beg your pardon; I do sympathize with the rebels; not, I confess, as warmly as I did at first, and if I had known as much as I know now, I think I should have hesitated to join them.”

“How so?”

“They kill prisoners in cold blood, and conduct war more like savages than Christians.”

“You are right, they do. Yes, killing prisoners in cold blood is a brutal practice! I am obliged to be severe sometimes, much to my regret. But there is only one way of dealing with a rebellion—you must stamp it out; civil war is not as other wars. Why not join us, Señor Fortescue? I will give you a command.”

“That is quite out of the question, General Griscelli; I am not a mere soldier of fortune. I have eaten these people’s salt, and though I don’t like some of their ways, I wish well to their cause.”

“Think better of it, señor. The alternative might not be agreeable.”

“Whatever the alternative may be, my decision is irrevocable. And you said just now you would let me go.”

“Oh, yes, I will let you go, since you insist on it” (smiling). “All the same, I think you will regret your decision—Mejia, of course, means to attack us. He can have come with no other object—by your advice?”

“Certainly not.”