, and who had
the reputation of being a marvellously expert tracker, was ordered to
examine the ground about the tobacco shed for tracks, and to hold
himself ready to accompany the hunters; and Jack and Carlos then
returned to the house to equip themselves. In something less than half
an hour the party, consisting of Jack and Carlos, mounted, and each
armed with a rifle, and half a dozen negroes, including Juan, set out.

The hunt began at the tobacco shed, beneath the unbolted shutter of
which Juan declared that, despite the hardness of the ground, he had
succeeded in detecting the footprints of the fugitive; and thence it
took its course northward, strange to say, in the direction of the
mountains, instead of toward Pinar del Rio, as the two young white men
had naturally expected. This was so surprising that, as soon as the
direction became apparent, Carlos called a halt and openly expressed his
conviction that the Fantee was making a mistake; but Juan confidently
declared that he was doing nothing of the sort, and, in support of his
statement, pointed to certain barely perceptible marks here and there on
the ground, which he asserted were the tracks of the fugitive--this
assertion being corroborated by the other negroes. To the eyes of the
white men the marks in question were so very slight and vague as to
convey absolutely no meaning at all; indeed, they could not in some
cases convince themselves that there really were any marks; but then the
ground was so dry and hard that even their horses left scarcely a trace
of their passage: they were therefore obliged to take Juan's word for it
that they were on the right track, and follow where he led.

They were of opinion that, considering Alvaros' condition after the
terrific punishment which Carlos had inflicted upon him only a few hours
previously, and the circumstance that he seemed to have been travelling
for several hours in darkness, over country that must have been
absolutely strange to him, he could not have made very rapid progress,
or gone very far; and after the first hour they were in momentary
expectation of coming upon him: but mile after mile was traversed, and
still Juan asserted that the fugitive was yet some distance ahead, and
that they did not appear to be gaining on him very rapidly--due, as the
negro pointed out, to the extreme difficulty of tracking over such hard
and, for the most part stony, ground. The fact was that Juan and his
fellow-negr