'We're in the forest, Billums,' Gerald sang out; 'old Zorilla's in the middle of it. You'll hear bullets before the sunrise.'
I didn't feel quite so enthusiastic about bullets just then--it was too gloomy under those trees--and it was lucky that the horses could see where they were going, for we ourselves could not.
We kept on meeting long strings of pack mules on their way back from the front, and some of them were carrying wounded men. It was jolly disconcerting at first, because they came upon you so suddenly, and made so little noise--the men being barefooted and the mules unshod. On ahead we'd hear our little messenger-groom sing out something, and then we'd come right on the long string of dark shadows, the mules breathing heavily under their creaking packs as they shuffled past.
Gerald told me they were clearing the country of food, and were taking it all into San Fernando.
'How did you learn all this war business?' I asked him, after he had told me his plans.
There was no need for me to ask him why he'd left his rubber plantation.
'Not yet,' he said, stopping for me to fill his pipe again.
'Do you know,' he said presently, 'that, nearly three hundred years ago, twenty-two Spanish cavaliers rode along this road, as we are riding to-night, to capture Santa Cruz city. San Fernando was a fortified Spanish settlement then, and a native ruled in Santa Cruz. He'd collared the Governor's daughter; she'd been shipwrecked somewhere up the coast whilst on her way to Spain, and the twenty-two in their armour--fancy armour in this climate--riding their big Spanish horses, with a couple of hundred native bowmen in their quilted cotton armour[#] to help them, actually sacked the town. They stopped there, too, and built the fort of San Sebastian.'
[#] In those days the natives wore thick quilted coats, stuffed with cotton fibre, as a defence against sword-cuts.
'Yes,' Gerald told me. He was full of such stories--the good news about _La Buena Presidente_ had made him quite talkative--and you can imagine how the glamour of the past chivalry excited me. I almost imagined to myself that I was in armour, and should presently have to put lance in rest and charge through crowded ranks of archers and swordsmen.