"Oho!" thought I. "Danger, eh? It is time for me to be making a muster." I therefore rolled out of bed and, without waiting to strike a light, felt for my clothes, scrambled into them, and made my way to the entrance hall just as Don Luis, having joined his unexpected visitors, had succeeded in lighting the great hall lamp. The strangers were five in number, and I was hurriedly presented to each of them in turn. First, there was Don Esteban de Mendouca, a tall, thin, cadaverous-looking man, with intensely dark eyes, a thin crop of hair, exceedingly long moustache with thin, drooping ends, and a pointed Vandyke beard, all dark, but beginning to be sprinkled with grey. Then there was Dona Christina, his wife, a small woman, as dark as her husband, but with a perfectly preserved complexion--fat, and fifty if a day. Next there was Don Pedro de Mendouca, Don Esteban's elder son, a very proud and haughty-looking man of about twenty-seven years of age; Don Silvio, his brother, some three years younger, and exceedingly like his elder brother, but with a much more agreeable expression of countenance; and lastly, but by no means least in attractiveness, Senorita Eugenia, Don Esteban's daughter, a most lovely young woman of about seventeen years of age, exquisitely fair, and with a pair of melting blue eyes. They all acknowledged the introduction with that stately courtesy which seems natural to the Spaniard; and then, as Don Esteban began his brief story, I had time to take a good look at them all. It was easy enough to see that they had risen from their beds and fled in the utmost haste, for the toilette of each had been very inadequately performed; but despite this the predominating impression which they produced upon me was distinctly favourable. Indeed, the only thing of which I in the least disapproved was the demeanour of Don Pedro de Mendouca, which struck me as being a good deal more haughty and arrogant than there was any excuse for. The circumstance that, I think, surprised me most was that these people should have fled in such apparent unreasoning panic, abandoning a fine property and absolutely all that they possessed, excepting the horses they had ridden and the clothes they stood up in, to a parcel of lawless negroes. I was soon to learn, however, that it was not lack of courage that had inspired their flight.