herefore promptly decided to follow it so long
as it ran their way.

About a mile from the spot where our two travellers came upon the road
it entered a dense wood; and here the fog still hung thickly. But the
friends decided that this was of little consequence, since the road,
though its surface was broken up and much overgrown, was still easily
distinguishable; accordingly they plunged into the wood without
hesitation. A quarter of an hour later, as they rounded a bend in the
road, they made the exceedingly unwelcome discovery that they had walked
right into the midst of a party of some fifty Spanish soldiers who,
having recently partaken of breakfast, were now resting by the roadside
until the fog should clear.

The encounter was so sudden, so absolutely unexpected on the part of the
Englishmen, that almost before they realised the presence of the
Spaniards the latter--who had heard Dick and Phil talking together as
they approached--had surrounded them, rendering flight an impossibility,
and in a trice the pair were disarmed and, hemmed in by an escort of a
dozen armed men, conducted to the spot where the captain--a tall, dark,
handsome man, in full armour, but without a helmet--with his horse
standing beside him, was reclining against the trunk of an enormous
pine.

"Ah, Jorge!" exclaimed this individual, in Spanish, rising to his feet,
as the party approached; "what have we here? Prisoners? Who and what
are they? Surely not Indians--although they might well be, from their
garb."

"Truly, senor Capitan, I know not who or what they are," answered the
man addressed as Jorge, and who seemed, from his dress and equipment, to
be some sort of inferior officer, possibly a sergeant; "but we heard
them approaching along the road, and as their speech was strange I
deemed it my duty to seize them; I therefore hastily arranged an ambush,
into which they the next moment walked; and--here they are. If they
were not so dark in colour I should say that they might possibly be
Englishmen."

"Ingles! here!" exclaimed the captain. "But that is impossible! Who
are you, picaros?"

Now, during their six weeks' residence in Cartagena, under the
hospitable roof of the senoritas Clara and Dolores, the two Englishmen
had, by assiduous study, acquired a sufficient knowledge of Spanish to
enable them to understand the nature of the question thus contemptuously
addressed to them; and Phil--who, as usual, took the lead whenever an