e
it can't. Look here, you fellow, there is the sun setting there"--and
he pointed to it--"Gibraltar must lie somewhere over there, and that's
the way we mean to go."

The Spaniard looked surly, then he pointed to the road ahead, and
indicated that it bent round the next spur of the hill, and made a
detour in the direction in which Hawtry indicated that Gibraltar must
lie.

"What on earth shall we do, Jack? If this fellow means mischief, we
are in an awkward fix. I don't suppose he intends to attack us,
because we with our dirks would be a match for him with that long
knife of his. But if he means anything, he has probably got some other
fellows with him."

"Then hadn't we better go in for him at once," Jack said, "before he
gets any one to help him?"

Hawtry laughed.

"We can hardly jump off our mules and attack him without any specific
reason. We might get the worst of it, and even if we didn't how should
we get back again, and how should we account for having killed our
mule-driver? No. Whatever we are in for, we must go through with it
now, Jack. Let us look as though we trusted him."

So saying, they continued on the road by which they had previously
travelled.

"I don't believe," Hawtry said, after a short silence, "that they can
have any idea of cutting our throats. Midshipmen are not in the habit
of carrying much money about with them, but I have heard of Guerillas
carrying people off to the mountains and getting ransoms. There, we
are at the place where that fellow said the road turned. It doesn't
turn. Now, I vote we both get off our mules and decline to go a step
farther."

"All right," Jack said. "I shall know a good deal better what I am
doing on my feet than I shall perched up here!"

The two boys at once slid off their mules to the ground.

"There is no turning there," Hawtry said, turning to the hill. "You
have deceived us, and we won't go a foot farther," and turning, the
lads started to walk back along the road they had come.

The Spaniard leapt from his donkey, and with angry gesticulation
endeavored to arrest them. Finding that they heeded not his orders, he
put his hand on his knife, but in a moment the boys' dirks flashed in
the air.

"Now, my lad," Hawtry said. "Two can play at that game, and if you
draw that knife, we'll let daylight into you."

The Spaniard hesitated, then drew back and gave a loud, shrill whistle
which was, the boys fancied, answered in the distance.

"Come