As we have already stated, the night was moonless, and the sky black as ink. A profound silence, interrupted at long intervals by the shrill cries of the night birds, brooded over the country.
They continued to advance thus without exchanging a word for about half an hour, and then the majordomo halted.
"We have arrived," he said in a low voice; "get off your horses, we are in safety here."
"Do you think so?" said Dominique; "I fancied during the march the cries of night birds too well imitated to be true."
"You are right," Leo Carral answered; "they are the enemy's sentries challenging each other; we have been scented, but thanks to the night and my acquaintance with the roads, we have temporarily, at any rate thrown out those who started in pursuit of us, they are seeking us in a direction opposed to the one in which we are."
"That is what I fancied I could understand," Dominique remarked.
The count eagerly listened to this conversation, but to no effect, for what the two men said was Hebrew to him; for the first time since he had been in the world, accident placed him in a situation so singular; hence he was completely deficient in experience; he was far from suspecting that he had passed through all the outposts of a hostile camp; had been within pistol shot of sentinels ambuscaded on the right and left, and had escaped death perhaps twenty times by a miracle.
"Señores, take the bags off the horses, as they are no longer wanted, while I light a torch of ocote wood," Leo Carral then said.
The young men obeyed, for they tacitly recognized the majordomo as the leader of the expedition.
"Well, is it done?" the majordomo asked a moment after.
"Yes," the count answered, "but we cannot see anything; are you not going to light your torch?"
"It is lighted, but it would be too imprudent to show a light here; follow me, drawing your horses after you by the bridle."
He went in front again as guide, and they advanced once more, but this time on foot.
Ere long a light glistened in front of them, and illuminated them sufficiently to enable them to distinguish surrounding objects.
They were in a natural grotto; this grotto opened at the end of a passage, sufficiently winding for the light of the torch not to be seen from the outside.