The Padre from the inner chamber came to our assistance, and by our joint exertions we at length got the door to again and barricaded, after which we made our exit from the lee-side of the house by a window. Under other circumstances, it would have been difficult to refrain from laughing at the appearance we made. We were all drenched in an instant after we left the shelter of the house, and there was old Campana, naked to the waist, with his large sombrero and long pigtail hanging down his back, like a mandarin of twenty buttons. Next followed his two black assistants, naked as I have described them, all three with their coils of rope in their hands, like a hangman and his deputies; then advanced friend Bang and myself, without our coats or hats, with handkerchiefs tied round our heads, and our bodies bent down so as to stem the gale as strongly as we could. But the planting attorney, a great schemer, a kind of Will Wimble in his way, had thought fit, of all things in the world, to bring his umbrella, which the wind, as might have been expected, reversed most unceremoniously the moment he attempted to hoist it, and tore it from the staff, so that, on the impulse of the moment, he had to clutch the flying red silk and thrust his head through the centre, where the stick had stood, as if he had been some curious flower. As we turned the corner of the house, the full force of the storm met us right in the teeth, when flap flew Don Ricardo’s hat past us; but the two blackamoors had taken the precaution to strap each of theirs down with a strong grass lanyard. We continued to work to windward, while every now and then the hollo came past us on the gale louder and louder, until it guided us to the fording which we had crossed on our first arrival. We stopped there;--the red torrent was rushing tumultuously past us, but we saw nothing save a few wet and shivering negroes on the opposite side, who had sheltered themselves under a cliff, and were busily employed in attempting to light a fire. The holloing continued. “Why, what can be wrong?” at length said Don Ricardo, and he shouted to the people on the opposite side. He might as well have spared his breath, for, although they saw his gestures and the motion of his lips, they no more heard him than we did them, as they very considerately in return made mouths at us, bellowing no doubt that they could not hear us. “Don Ricardo--Don Ricardo!” at this crisis sung out Caspar, who had clambered up the rock, to have a peep about him--“Ave Maria--Alla son dos pobres, que peresquen pronto, si nosotros no pueden Hydros.” “Whereabouts?” said Campana--“whereabouts? speak, man, speak.” “Down in the valley--about a quarter of a league, I see two men on a large rock, in the middle of the stream; the wind is in that direction, it must be them we heard.”