"We can hardly jump off our mules and attack him without any specific
reason. We might get the worst of it, and even if we didn't how should
we get back again, and how should we account for having killed our
mule-driver? No. Whatever we are in for, we must go through with it
now, Jack. Let us look as though we trusted him."

So saying, they continued on the road by which they had previously
travelled.

"I don't believe," Hawtry said, after a short silence, "that they can
have any idea of cutting our throats. Midshipmen are not in the habit
of carrying much money about with them, but I have heard of Guerillas
carrying people off to the mountains and getting ransoms. There, we
are at the place where that fellow said the road turned. It doesn't
turn. Now, I vote we both get off our mules and decline to go a step
farther."

"All right," Jack said. "I shall know a good deal better what I am
doing on my feet than I shall perched up here!"

The two boys at once slid off their mules to the ground.

"There is no turning there," Hawtry said, turning to the hill. "You
have deceived us, and we won't go a foot farther," and turning, the
lads started to walk back along the road they had come.

The Spaniard leapt from his donkey, and with angry gesticulation
endeavored to arrest them. Finding that they heeded not his orders, he
put his hand on his knife, but in a moment the boys' dirks flashed in