r almost at once a
bugle was sounded above, obviously as a warning to the dragoons at the
foot of the pass, who halted and spread themselves along the lower
slopes to cut us off. Our one chance now lay in abandoning our horses
and crawling deep into the covert of the low oaks where cavalry would
have much ado to follow. This we promptly did, and for twenty minutes
we managed to elude them, so that my hopes began to grow. But
unhappily a knot of officers on the ridge above had watched this
manoeuvre through their telescopes, and now detached small parties of
infantry down either side of the pass to beat the covers. Our hiding
place quickly became too hot, and as we broke cover and dashed across
another small clearing we were spied again by those on the ridge, who
shouted to the soldiers and directed the chase by waving their caps.
For another ten minutes we baffled them, and then crawling on hands
and knees from a thicket where we could hear our enemies not a dozen
yards away beating the bushes with the flat of their swords, we came
face to face with a second party advancing straight upon us. I stood
up straight and was on the point of making a last desperate run for it
when I saw Jose sink on his face exhausted.

"'Do not shoot!' I called to the officer. 'We have hurt no man,
monsieur.'--For it is, as you know, a fact that in our business I
strongly disapprove of bloodshed, and in all our expeditions together
Jose had never done physical injury to a living creature.

"But I was too late. The young officer fired, and though the ball
entered my poor servant's skull and killed him on the instant, a
hulking fellow beside him had the savagery to complete what was
finished with a savage bayonet-thrust through the back.

"I stood still, fully expecting to be used no more humanely, but the
officer lowered his pistol and curtly told me I was his prisoner. By
this time the fellows had come up from beating the thicket behind and
surrounded me. I therefore surrendered, and was marched up the hill
to the camp with poor Jose's body at my heels borne by a couple of
soldiers.

"In all the hurry and heat of this chase I had found time to wonder
how our pursuers happened to be so well posted. For a good fortnight
and more--in fact, since my escape across the ford at Huerta--I could
remember nothing that we had done to give the French the slightest
inkling that we were watching them or, indeed, were anywhere near. And
yet the affair