"Terrible!" added the Englishman, shuddering to think of the poor father, his friend, ignorant still of the happy fate of his child, and exposed to the overwhelming storm of the revolted serfs.
"It is good and bad, too," resumed the priest, "that the neighbours and kinsmen of don Benito will be flocking there to celebrate the ascension to heaven of his grandchild. Good, that so many heads of family should be under one roof, but bad that their own homes should be without commanders at such an emergency."
"The Indians," said Oliver authoritatively, "will move in a mass, for they have not been trained as individual warriors; hence they will attack this house, which contains all they hate, their masters. My vote is: on to don Benito's!"
The priest bowed at this utterance of a man of warfare. The English gentleman approved, if only out of eagerness to place doña Perla in her mother's arms.
"I'll show you the way!" said Father Serafino, smiting his mule with his slipper. "On to the Hacienda of Monte Tesoro, then."
"The Treasure Hill!" Don Benito had erected his chief farmhouse as a memorial of the haul in the Gulf of California.
They tailed away at once in a new order; the mule leading at a good pace, spite of the obscurity which little impeded one very familiar with the ground, bringing up the rear, ever and anon looking steadily behind him.
It was the middle of the night, amid falling raindrops of great size, that the little troop beheld the loopholed walls of an enclosure round the grounds of an imposing mansion rise up into view. All the gates and doors were wide open, and every window blazed with light. A number of peons, brandishing torches, rushed out to welcome those they took to be belated guests. But as soon as the illumination fell upon the beauteous face of the daughter of the proprietor, they sent up a ringing shout which revealed how deeply endeared was that master and all his kith and kin.
The farmhouse itself was engirt, and all its approaches encumbered by at least a hundred shanties (_chozas_) and mud brick cabins, of miserable aspect, scattered at haphazard, and used for the abodes of the house servants and farm labourers. At the present juncture, though, the misery was gilded, since every hut glowed with light, and out of the doorways poured the jingling of tambourines, the banging of _tambores_ or drums, and laughter; songs and shouts mingled with the tinkling and strumming of stringed instruments, in wild, thrilling native waltzes.