rty
of about twenty riflemen, who were covering the retreat by frequently
facing round and exchanging shots with the pursuers. As these last came
into view, Jack rose from his place of ambush--at the imminent risk of
being shot by his friends before they could recognise him--and made the
fact of his presence and that of his party known, bidding the others
pass on and leave the heaviest of the covering work to him. Their
losses, Jack could see, had been terribly heavy, and they looked weary
to death with their long hours of fighting: yet he was gratified to
observe that, with very few exceptions, the men carried themselves as
resolutely as ever, and displayed the effect of his training by taking
the fullest advantage of every particle of cover, dodging behind rocks,
boulders, trunks of trees, and clumps of bush; taking as careful aim as
though they were shooting in a match; re-loading, and then flitting from
cover to cover to take up a fresh position.

The rear-guard under Carlos had not passed much more than a hundred
yards ahead when the leading files of the pursuers appeared round the
bend of the path, breathless, from the fact that the retreating party
had no sooner disappeared round the elbow than the Spaniards had broken
into a run, taking advantage of the circumstance that they were for a
moment out of sight of the enemy to shorten the distance between
themselves and the pursued. As the vanguard of some twenty pursuing
Spaniards dashed round the bend they dropped on one knee and raised
their rifles to their shoulders, availing themselves of the lightning
flashes to take aim at the little crowd of retreating figures
imperfectly seen here and there through the overhanging and swaying
branches.

The Cruise of the Thetis--by Harry Collingwood

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

TRAPPED!

Never for a moment did they suspect the existence of the little body of
men concealed among the ferns and undergrowth and boulders, some sixty
feet up the precipitous side of the hill round the base of which they
were winding, until, before the quickest of them could pull trigger,
there rang out above them an irregular volley, aimed with such deadly
precision that every man of them went down before it, and were there
found, blocking the path, when their comrades arrived upon the scene a
minute or two later. As these in turn swung round the bend and came
upon the prostrate forms, they naturally halted and proceeded to examine
the bodies