nd was thus occupied when another messenger arrived from Carlos
to tell him that all was lost, and that Carlos, with the remnant of his
party--with whom were Don Hermoso and his wife--was retreating up the
valley, hotly pursued by a strong party of Spanish soldiers; while other
Spaniards were in possession of the house and the several outbuildings,
which they were obviously preparing to set on fire: and the message
concluded by requesting Jack to follow with his party, and join the
fugitives, if possible.

Now it happened that Carlos' retreat up the valley chimed in excellently
well with the scheme which was beginning to take shape within Jack's
brain; the latter therefore lost no time in collecting together his
little band of riflemen and leading them through the wood, round by the
rear of the house and outbuildings, and along a bush path, to a spot at
which he could intercept and join the retreating party, and at which,
moreover, owing to the nature of the ground, he believed he could pretty
effectually check the pursuit, and cover the retreat of the main body of
the defenders. As he pressed forward at the head of his own scanty
contingent the sounds of occasional shots told him that Carlos was still
maintaining a good running fight: but, as the path which he was
following constituted a short cut to the spot which he desired to reach,
he soon left those sounds in his rear, and, pressing rapidly forward, at
length arrived at the main path; and, aided by the lightning, which was
now flashing incessantly, contrived to place his men in ambush behind a
number of big boulders that studded the almost perpendicular sides of
the bush-clad hill, just as the leading files of the retreating party
came into view round a bend of the path.

Jack saw with satisfaction that the retreat was being conducted in good
order. First came a body of some fifty well-armed negroes, who were
keeping a wary eye about them, to guard against the possibility of being
ambuscaded by some portion of the enemy who might have pushed on and got
in front of them--although such a thing was scarcely likely to have
happened; then came the Senora, in a hammock suspended from a pole borne
on the shoulders of two stout negroes, with Don Hermoso and Senor
Calderon walking, one on either side of her; and behind these again came
the main body of the retreating defenders, with the two Maxim guns in
their midst, and with Carlos bringing up the rear in charge of a pa