on the stony bottom and fall back, almost burying his haunches, but with two short heaves he had gained the good gravel and was plunging after us.  The infantry spied him first—­the two vedettes were in the act of wheeling about and heard the warning before they saw.  Before they could put their charges to the gallop Captain McNeill was past us and climbing the bank between them.  A bullet or two sang over us from the Huerta shore.  Not knowing of what his horse was capable, I feared he might yet be headed off; but the troopers in their flurry had lost their heads and their only chance unless they could drop him by a fluking shot.  They galloped straight for the ford-head, while the Captain slipped between, and were almost charging each other before they could pull up and wheel at right angles in pursuit.

“Good,” said Jose simply.  A shot had struck one of our panniers, smashing a dozen eggs (by the smell he must have bought them cheap), and he halted and gesticulated in wrath like a man in two minds about returning and demanding compensation.  Then he seemed to think better of it, and we moved forward; but twice again before we reached dry land he turned and addressed the soldiers in furious Spanish across the babble of the ford.  Jose had gifts.

For my part I was eager to watch the chase which the rise of the bank hid from us, though we could hear a few stray shots.  But Jose’s confidence proved well grounded, for when we struck the high road there was the Captain half a mile away within easy reach of the wood, and a full two hundred yards ahead of the foremost trooper.

“Good!” said Jose again.  “Now we can eat!” and he pulled out a loaf of coarse bread from the injured pannier, and trimming off an end where the evil-smelling eggs had soaked it, divided it in two.  On this and a sprig of garlic we broke our fast, and were munching and jogging along contentedly when we met the returning vedettes.  They were not in the best of humours, you may be sure, and although we drew aside and paused with crusts half lifted to our open mouths to stare at them with true yokel admiration, they cursed us for taking up too much of the roadway, and one of them even made a cut with his sabre at the near pannier of eggs.

“It’s well he broke none,” said I as we watched them down the road.  “I don’t deny you and your master any reasonable credit, but for my taste you leave a little too much to luck.”

Our road now began to skirt the wood into which the Captain had escaped, and we followed it for a mile and more, Jose all the while whistling a gipsy air which I guessed to carry a covert message; and sure enough, after an hour of it, the same air was taken up in the wood to our right, where we found the Captain dismounted and seated comfortably at the foot of a cork tree.