Just then I heard a lot of firing much farther away on our front, and some messengers came dashing up, singing out, ’_Yuesencia_![#] _Don Geraldio_!’ [#] ’Yuesencia’ is a contraction for ’excellencia.’ ’It’s just as I thought, Billums; that firing at us was all a bluff. Zorilla has broken through our chaps on the right and is marching along the track to El Castellan.’ Somebody brought a lantern, and he began scribbling orders, tearing the pages out of a note book and handing them to messengers, who ran off. He was doing it quite calmly, and was actually smiling. Some officers sitting on the ground, with their swords over their knees, looked absolutely played out, but they roused themselves when Gerald spoke to them, got on their feet, and took their natives into the forest again. ’If these messengers do their work in time,’ he said, ’Zorilla will never get through to El Castellan. I’ve turned on the _machetos_. We’ll go round there and see how things are going.’ I shuddered to think of these little chaps, with their awful-looking _machetes_, gliding among the trees all round them. He had just sent for our horses, when another bare-footed messenger came panting into the light and was led up to him. Something glittered in his hand; he held it out to Gerald, and what do you think it was? My cigarette case! ’It’s mine,’ I sang out; ’I changed cases with Navarro, Zorilla’s fat little A.D.C., when he was decent to me in San Sebastian.’ ’Well, he’s a prisoner now and badly wounded,’ Gerald said, after he’d spoken to the man. ’He’s sent it to me hoping I shall recognise it and do something for him. He was in command of a foraging party we cut off this morning, and is lying with the rest of the wounded in some hut about two miles away—so this man says.’ Well, it was up to me to do something for him, and I told Gerald so. ’Right you are,’ Gerald nodded. ’This chap will show you the way. You’ll be as safe as a house with your yellow head of hair. Do what you like. He’s badly wounded, I fancy. Get back here by daylight, and if you don’t find me, make your way into San Fernando.’ I looked at my watch by the lantern light. It was ten minutes to one, and there would be another two hours and a half before daylight. In five minutes I was on my horse, the man who’d brought my cigarette case was leading him, and we had plunged into the forest to the left of the road, Gerald going away to the right, after Zorilla. How the little chap found his way I don’t know, but he did somehow or other, cutting through the brushwood with his _machete_, and jabbering to me in Spanish all the time. The bush and the fallen trees were so treacherous that, after Jim had stumbled badly once or twice, and was trembling with fright, I got off and helped to lead him too, and wished I’d left him behind.