Now it happened that Carlos' retreat up the valley chimed in excellently well with the scheme which was beginning to take shape within Jack's brain; the latter therefore lost no time in collecting together his little band of riflemen and leading them through the wood, round by the rear of the house and outbuildings, and along a bush path, to a spot at which he could intercept and join the retreating party, and at which, moreover, owing to the nature of the ground, he believed he could pretty effectually check the pursuit, and cover the retreat of the main body of the defenders. As he pressed forward at the head of his own scanty contingent the sounds of occasional shots told him that Carlos was still maintaining a good running fight: but, as the path which he was following constituted a short cut to the spot which he desired to reach, he soon left those sounds in his rear, and, pressing rapidly forward, at length arrived at the main path; and, aided by the lightning, which was now flashing incessantly, contrived to place his men in ambush behind a number of big boulders that studded the almost perpendicular sides of the bush-clad hill, just as the leading files of the retreating party came into view round a bend of the path. Jack saw with satisfaction that the retreat was being conducted in good order. First came a body of some fifty well-armed negroes, who were keeping a wary eye about them, to guard against the possibility of being ambuscaded by some portion of the enemy who might have pushed on and got in front of them--although such a thing was scarcely likely to have happened; then came the Senora, in a hammock suspended from a pole borne on the shoulders of two stout negroes, with Don Hermoso and Senor Calderon walking, one on either side of her; and behind these again came the main body of the retreating defenders, with the two Maxim guns in their midst, and with Carlos bringing up the rear in charge of a party 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.