'Pull up, you fools!' Mr. Macdonald shouted, but the mules were quite out of hand.
We came to the narrow part, the leading mules bumped into each other, then the others, till the wheelers were touching; our axles bumped once or twice, there was a lurch and a crash, the other carriage toppled over on to the bank, the wheeler mules were on their backs, and the mids. shot out head over heels as we flew past, the Angel and Bob cheering wildly.
Before we were out of sight we saw the four mids. and the driver on their feet again, trying to right the carriage, so I knew they weren't hurt.
Mr. Macdonald simply wagged his head from side to side. 'It was my weight brought us through--you'd have upset but for me.'
We were in the city itself by now, and the mules had steadied down on the rough stone streets crowded with people on foot or riding horses or mules. There were soldiers at every corner--quite smart chaps these--and they all had the vertical green and yellow stripes in their helmets or hats. The same colours, hoisted with the stripes vertical, hung at half-mast from nearly every house, and the few women, we saw, had the same colours too.
'There are some of de Costa's people,' Mr. Macdonald sung out, as we passed a group of sunburnt men outside a café. I looked, and saw that they had patches of green and black stripes worn horizontally.
'They call the two parties the Verticals and Horizontals,' Mr. Macdonald told me. 'Those are countrymen; you can see that by their rig.'
'Hi!' he sung out; 'look up there, up to the left, that's San Sebastian, where our chaps were put in "chokey" a fortnight ago.'
It was a crumbling old fort perched on a rocky hill just above the big building, and we three looked at it jolly keenly.
Then we got into the better part of the town, dazzling big white houses with gratings in front of every window, and women peering out from behind the curtains in most of them. Everywhere were soldiers, and the yellow and green flags drooping at half-mast.
Next we drove through a great open place, white with dust and dazzling in the sun, with a grand old weather-beaten cathedral on one side, and on the other some public garden with palms and huge tropical ferns. We had to draw up to let a regiment march into the square, and then we wedged our way out of it, into a side street, turned a corner, and stopped in front of a big door with strong iron gates, sentries with fixed bayonets on each side of it, and a whole jumble of French, English, German, American, and Dutch ensigns hanging down from a flagstaff above it. There was a wizened little black chap leaning up against the wall; he started when he saw me, and let his cigarette drop out of his mouth. He was an ugly-looking little beast.