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-negroes, having arranged among themselves a course of action during the short period while Carlos and Jack were preparing for the expedition, were enacting a very cleverly carried out piece of comedy, so cleverly performed, indeed, that neither of the young men had the slightest suspicion that they were being deceived.