A Touch with the Brigands.IItis now several years ago since the author of this “little episode in his life” was travelling in Spain. “I was,” says he, “on the road between Madrid and Bayonne, where the road was rugged, the mountains high, the rivers loose, and the people poor. There were a good many passengers in the rumbling old coach—six within, and ten or twelve on the outside, behind-side, and fore-side of the vehicle. My companions were—a French opera-singer; an old clergyman, who had returned from Rome through Spain, after having embraced the Catholic faith; a French clown, named Moliere, who was, in Paris, said to be equal to one Joe Grimaldi (of facetious memory); an old lady, with her lap-dog and a monkey in a box, attended by her servant, companion, and myself; so that the carriage was almost as infinite in variety as Noah’s Ark, only on a smaller scale.“The other passengers I could tell but little of. Some, however, were Frenchmen, and others either Italian or Spanish; but there was one who struck my attention by therotundity of his person, who seemed to have been formed much upon the principle of apple-dumplings or a humming-top. This gentleman, broad, round, thick, and lumpy, was a taciturn Dutchman.“Now, in the part of Spain to which I have alluded, there is a set of people (Knights of the Moor, as Falstaff calls them), who make the mercurial art of robbery a profession—who pass for the mostcavalleros(gentleman-like) men. They are the padrones of old Castille. These brigands had, in the most polite manner imaginable, attacked several pleasure and business parties, with great benefit to themselves and discomfiture to their victims. The government, which in these countries, do everything, but nothing well, had our coach escorted by cavalry, as far as Baitroget; also certain stages between Arendo and Burgos. But when we got into one of the most cut-throat looking places, about three leagues from Orendo, at the cut-throat time in September of about eight in the evening, when the gloaming was fully set, and the moon had risen with a sickly, comsumptive aspect, our ‘John,’ or rather the head postillion was suddenly stopped short; a chain was immediately entangled in the wheel, the traces were cut, and both the postillions were pulled off their horses and thrown on the ground by a couple of surly, well-dressed brigands; while four others, two on each side, came to the carriage, and called upon the conductor and the people in the char-a-banc, as well as those in the coach, and those above, to come down and be robbed in a quiet way. One of the brigands had a hand-lantern, which he thrust into the ”interior“ of our vehicle. The old lady with her lap-dog gave a most piercing shriek, as didher waiting-woman, while the dog barked so furiously, that the brigand seemed excessively savage, and gave the yelping cur such a blow with the lantern, that it knocked the light out, and we were in a moderate degree of darkness. In a few moments, however, we felt the rough hands of two of the brigands, who pulled us out of the coach, and told us to lay down on our faces; the French opera-dancer appealed to their feelings as gentlemen, not to injure female delicacy, and to preserve the old lady, her waiting-woman, and herself from any unnecessary violence. The clown made a sudden summersault over the heads of the brigands, which astonished them to such a degree, that they thought they had come in contact with the Prince of Evil himself; while the Dutchman from the roof laid groaning and trembling all over like a jelly, and imploring for mercy. The other travellers were puthors de combatwithout ceremony, and the whole group presented as pretty a picture of still life as can well be imagined.“The driver and postillions had their hands bound behind with strong cords; these necessary precautions were soon exercised on us. The clown’s hands were tied—and so were his legs; and in addition to tying the hands of the old lady and her maid, a couple of gags were obliged to be put into their mouths to prevent their ‘sweet voices’ from disturbing the harmony of the scene. The captain of the band, a fine handsome fellow, with beard enough to stuff a sofa, called upon us, in very bad Castillian, to declare what money we had, and where it was—adding, that if we did not tell the truth, we should be cut-throated or burned. He interrogated us with all the acuteness of Mr. Pegler, (one of the bestdetectives, and also one of the best of men), frequently changing his tone and accent. ‘Who are you?’ ‘Whence do you come?’ ‘Where are you going?’ were questions put to us, and if we had the misfortune to belong to any place near the haunts of the brigands, or had happened to know the person of any of them, we should have been inevitably assassinated. In fact, a poor postillion was so served only three months before by these very identical brigands, because he happened to be acquainted with one of them.“They inquired of us whether we were Englishmen, or Americans, for if we had been the former, we should have been completely stripped. The Spanish lower order of people imagine that the clothes of the English and Americans are stitched with gold thread. The lady with the lap-dog, and her maid, unwittingly said they were English, and I, scorning to tell a lie, even in such a case, said that I was from Middlesex, which the chief brigand, whose geography was something like that of the pope, seemed to think an outlandish place, somewhere in the extreme corner of the earth. All these necessary preliminaries being gone through, the picturesque gentlemen began plundering the coach, throwing down and breaking, or ripping open with their long knives, all the boxes, trunks, bags, and packages. Knowing that they could not get at mine without a great deal of trouble, I looked up and told them that I would open my trunk and give them all the money it contained, if they would unbind my hands, for they had drawn the cord so tight that I was in great pain. They consented, and brought my trunk to me. The money they found in it did not satisfy them. They left me in the hands of one of their band, a young man not more than twentyyears of age, who continued to search my trunk, while an older and fiercer brigand watched my looks with his carbine levelled at me. The young man, although he made use of the coarsest oaths and other expressions, which beautifully illustrates the fact, that every variety of human speech can be adapted to blaspheme the ”good God who made us,“ was not so savage as the rest, and this was evidently his first expedition. He carried neither carbine nor sword, and the only weapon he had was a Catalonian knife stuck in his belt. Everything he saw in my trunk caused him surprise and wonder. He asked me to tell him the age of each. On finding some rosaries, he exclaimed—‘Ah, you are a priest!’ I told him no, but had bought the rosaries at a fair at Madrid as curiosities. He, however, with great devotion kissed the crosses suspended to them with other emblems, but finding they were of silver, he broke the stones, letting them all fall to the ground. He carefully picked them up, and again kissed each bead and emblem, but at the same time renewed his oaths at his awkwardness. He secured these, and everything else he thought valuable, between his shirt and his skin, but my clothes and linen he put into a large sack, which appeared to be the common receptacle. I had also some small knives and daggers. He asked what I did with them. I told him they had been sold to me as having been worn by the Manolas of Spain under their garters. At this he laughed, and throwing two of them to the ground to me, he put the rest into his private magazine.“I hoped to make something of my grand brigand, but while I was talking to him the captain came up suddenly, and struck me with violence on the back of the neck withthe butt-end of his carbine, saying, in a furious tone, ‘You are looking in his face that you might be able to recognise him!’ He then seized me by the right arm, while another took my left, and they again bound them behind my back. In my bad Spanish, I assured them I was a foreigner from the remote county of Middlesex; but they would not have cared had I been Joseph Hume himself, and threw me down like a sheep tied fast together ready for the slaughter, upon the body of the Hollander, who roared out loudly, and shook most convulsively all over, imploring the brigands not to kill him, for that he had several bills to take up on the 10th proximo at Amsterdam; beside which he had a wife, six children, and two sisters-in-law dependent upon him for support, and an aged mother and two children of a deceased brother. One of the brigands laughed at hearing all this, although he could not understand it in High-Dutch; but I, who knew a little of the language, ventured to translate it for him, which made the chief brigand laugh ten times more. Taking one of the crucifixes found on me he held it before his eyes, and told him to be at once a Catholic, and he would spare his life. ‘Kiss the cross,’ he said ‘or I will cut your throat!’ This was a plain and simple proposition, and the method of its solution freely given. However, much to the honour and glory of the Dutchman, he resolutely refused to do any such thing, and told the brigand that ‘he might kill him if he liked, and that God would take care of all those dependent upon him;’ and when the cross was again presented to his lips, the burly Dutchman turned himself right over on his side, and the ground on which he lay being upon a slight declivity, he began to roll, and his descent being accelerated as he moveddownwards, he in a few seconds obtained such a velocity, as to roll down the incline with a rapidity most wonderful—the brigands pausing in their work at so strange a sight, and laughing immoderately.“The next work of our friends was upon the French opera-dancer, and the old lady and her female companion, who had all been passed at the first movement, and who lay groaning, weeping, sobbing, and rolling about in the utmost trepidation. The dancing lady had fainted two or three times, and finding no one to attend upon her, had come to again of her own accord, till at last, upon one of the brigands approaching her, she went off in apparently a dead swoon. But these kind of things were nothing in the eyes of the bravos, who proceeded to strip her of her outward silk, and to rifle her of all her secret treasures, which had been stowed away in various parts of her inner dress. These consisted of various sums of money, stitched amid wadding and padding, trinkets, love-tokens, charms, bank-notes, &c.; but the brigands were particularly amazed when, upon turning madam over, they found a long, hard roll behind the lady, which was, ostensibly, a padding-machine made to keep the dress from falling down, and for making it to display itself with grace and dignity rearwards; this was manufactured entirely of Napoleons and French bank-notes, the former making up the more substantial part of the article alluded to, and the latter lining the outstanding portion. The fun and frolic of the brigands at this discovery were immense; they joked, they leaped, they danced, they swore, and committed many wild pranks in the joy of their discovery, and falling upon the old maid and her waiting-woman in the same way, they proceeded to unroll them both,as carefully as Professor Owen would an Egyptian mummy, but not finding the same treasures, they cursed and swore in the most vociferous manner, giving the old lady many a good cuff, and behaving to her companion with the same rough ceremony. At this time others of the brigands were knocking the carriage to pieces, and having fallen upon the box containing the monkey, with a blow demolished its upper postern, and in a moment—in less than the twinkling of an eve—out popped the imprisoned monkey, who, immediately leaping on to the shoulder of the nearest brigand, took hold of him by the ear, which it bit in two, and flying from his shoulder to the next, made a laceration of the second brigand’s nose, who, finding himself thus suddenly attacked by what was not very discernable in the moon-light, threw himself down, roaring out his ‘Aves,’ thinking that an imp of the Prince of Darkness was suddenly upon him. In vain did the other brigands make slashes and stabs at the monkey, who ran upon the shoulders of the next one, between the legs of another, up the back of a third, down the breast of a fourth, and kept the whole in perpetual alarm, till at last the poor wretch, having had one or two unlucky knocks, made his escape to some distance, where he sat chattering defiance, and picking up some stones, threatened to throw them at his pursuers.“The trunks, boxes, bales, and packages, having by this time been thoroughly ransacked, the next object of the brigands was to burn the carriage, in the hope of obtaining, by this means, all the concealed treasures it contained in its various hiding places which are so difficult to find out. Accordingly, straw, stubble, and dried boughs were procured, and a quantity being placed underneath the old vehicle, it wasvery soon under the horrifying process, and the flames rose up bravely, throwing a broad red light on the surrounding scenery, and the ungagged ladies uttered many loud screams and interjections. The brigands set themselves quietly down by the fire, and watched the progress of the flames upon each part of the burning carriage, having the satisfaction to see several pieces of gold, in the shape of Napoleons, fly out as the parts separated, which they snatched eagerly from the fire with their daggers, and often burnt their fingers to secure. Just as the blaze was at its proudest height, and the brigands were at the full point of triumph, a tremendous discharge of musketry was heard close behind, and three of the robbers fell wounded. The others sprang up, levelled their carbines, and fired in the direction of the noise. Another rapid but irregular discharge, then an immediate onslaught, for, by the light of the moon which then broke out rather brightly, was seen coming onwards some twenty armed cavaliers, who rushed upon the brigands, sword in one hand and pistol in the other, and immediately a most furious combat between the two parties took place. The brigands fought desperately, and their assailants bravely. The three women screamed lustily. I looked on quietly, as did the Dutchman who had rolled to the bottom of the slope. In less than half-an-hour, five of the brigands had been shot down, the rest had dispersed; in the meantime, the carriage had been carefully consumed, and the cavaliers stood victors over five dead brigands, eight bound men, and three bound women. Of course the bound were soon unbound, and then we discovered to whom we had been indebted for our delivery.Cottage“And this was to no less a person than our clown. He hadbeen bound hand and foot at the first, but having, by virtue of his profession, been enabled to walk on his back without any aid from his legs, he had shuffled or wriggled himself off, in the confusion, to a considerable distance without being observed, and when sufficiently away from the daggers of his enemies, managed to get clear of his bandages, and running off in the direction we had left, had the good luck to come up with our escort, which had halted at a kind of halfway-house below us and the nearest town, for the purpose of watering their horses andcome-ing themselves; and beingsomewhat overtaken with the delectable comforts of the hostlery, had stayed much longer than their commission gave them licence to do. Here our clown found them, and they immediately gave chase and came up in the ‘nick of time’ described.“As soon as the whole of our party could be collected together, we were put one behind each of the cavaliers, and picking up our scattered matters, and robbing the dead bodies of the fallen brigands of that which belonged to us, we all proceeded back to the small village of Orguillas, about half a league from where we had been stopped, and here we were all shown into the ‘venta’ of the village, which consisted of little more than a kitchen with four bare walls, where we laid down, like so many pigs, among the straw till the morning, when we were taken before the Alcade, who gravely heard our depositions, took them down, examined our cavaliers, and told us for our especial benefit that we must find our way back to Madrid as we could. So getting away from the village, and plenty of straw in, then we set off as quickly as bad horses, bad drivers, and bad roads would allow us, and reached the chief city of Spain in the most deplorable plight imaginable. So ended my acquaintance with Spanish Brigands.”decorated line
I
Itis now several years ago since the author of this “little episode in his life” was travelling in Spain. “I was,” says he, “on the road between Madrid and Bayonne, where the road was rugged, the mountains high, the rivers loose, and the people poor. There were a good many passengers in the rumbling old coach—six within, and ten or twelve on the outside, behind-side, and fore-side of the vehicle. My companions were—a French opera-singer; an old clergyman, who had returned from Rome through Spain, after having embraced the Catholic faith; a French clown, named Moliere, who was, in Paris, said to be equal to one Joe Grimaldi (of facetious memory); an old lady, with her lap-dog and a monkey in a box, attended by her servant, companion, and myself; so that the carriage was almost as infinite in variety as Noah’s Ark, only on a smaller scale.
“The other passengers I could tell but little of. Some, however, were Frenchmen, and others either Italian or Spanish; but there was one who struck my attention by therotundity of his person, who seemed to have been formed much upon the principle of apple-dumplings or a humming-top. This gentleman, broad, round, thick, and lumpy, was a taciturn Dutchman.
“Now, in the part of Spain to which I have alluded, there is a set of people (Knights of the Moor, as Falstaff calls them), who make the mercurial art of robbery a profession—who pass for the mostcavalleros(gentleman-like) men. They are the padrones of old Castille. These brigands had, in the most polite manner imaginable, attacked several pleasure and business parties, with great benefit to themselves and discomfiture to their victims. The government, which in these countries, do everything, but nothing well, had our coach escorted by cavalry, as far as Baitroget; also certain stages between Arendo and Burgos. But when we got into one of the most cut-throat looking places, about three leagues from Orendo, at the cut-throat time in September of about eight in the evening, when the gloaming was fully set, and the moon had risen with a sickly, comsumptive aspect, our ‘John,’ or rather the head postillion was suddenly stopped short; a chain was immediately entangled in the wheel, the traces were cut, and both the postillions were pulled off their horses and thrown on the ground by a couple of surly, well-dressed brigands; while four others, two on each side, came to the carriage, and called upon the conductor and the people in the char-a-banc, as well as those in the coach, and those above, to come down and be robbed in a quiet way. One of the brigands had a hand-lantern, which he thrust into the ”interior“ of our vehicle. The old lady with her lap-dog gave a most piercing shriek, as didher waiting-woman, while the dog barked so furiously, that the brigand seemed excessively savage, and gave the yelping cur such a blow with the lantern, that it knocked the light out, and we were in a moderate degree of darkness. In a few moments, however, we felt the rough hands of two of the brigands, who pulled us out of the coach, and told us to lay down on our faces; the French opera-dancer appealed to their feelings as gentlemen, not to injure female delicacy, and to preserve the old lady, her waiting-woman, and herself from any unnecessary violence. The clown made a sudden summersault over the heads of the brigands, which astonished them to such a degree, that they thought they had come in contact with the Prince of Evil himself; while the Dutchman from the roof laid groaning and trembling all over like a jelly, and imploring for mercy. The other travellers were puthors de combatwithout ceremony, and the whole group presented as pretty a picture of still life as can well be imagined.
“The driver and postillions had their hands bound behind with strong cords; these necessary precautions were soon exercised on us. The clown’s hands were tied—and so were his legs; and in addition to tying the hands of the old lady and her maid, a couple of gags were obliged to be put into their mouths to prevent their ‘sweet voices’ from disturbing the harmony of the scene. The captain of the band, a fine handsome fellow, with beard enough to stuff a sofa, called upon us, in very bad Castillian, to declare what money we had, and where it was—adding, that if we did not tell the truth, we should be cut-throated or burned. He interrogated us with all the acuteness of Mr. Pegler, (one of the bestdetectives, and also one of the best of men), frequently changing his tone and accent. ‘Who are you?’ ‘Whence do you come?’ ‘Where are you going?’ were questions put to us, and if we had the misfortune to belong to any place near the haunts of the brigands, or had happened to know the person of any of them, we should have been inevitably assassinated. In fact, a poor postillion was so served only three months before by these very identical brigands, because he happened to be acquainted with one of them.
“They inquired of us whether we were Englishmen, or Americans, for if we had been the former, we should have been completely stripped. The Spanish lower order of people imagine that the clothes of the English and Americans are stitched with gold thread. The lady with the lap-dog, and her maid, unwittingly said they were English, and I, scorning to tell a lie, even in such a case, said that I was from Middlesex, which the chief brigand, whose geography was something like that of the pope, seemed to think an outlandish place, somewhere in the extreme corner of the earth. All these necessary preliminaries being gone through, the picturesque gentlemen began plundering the coach, throwing down and breaking, or ripping open with their long knives, all the boxes, trunks, bags, and packages. Knowing that they could not get at mine without a great deal of trouble, I looked up and told them that I would open my trunk and give them all the money it contained, if they would unbind my hands, for they had drawn the cord so tight that I was in great pain. They consented, and brought my trunk to me. The money they found in it did not satisfy them. They left me in the hands of one of their band, a young man not more than twentyyears of age, who continued to search my trunk, while an older and fiercer brigand watched my looks with his carbine levelled at me. The young man, although he made use of the coarsest oaths and other expressions, which beautifully illustrates the fact, that every variety of human speech can be adapted to blaspheme the ”good God who made us,“ was not so savage as the rest, and this was evidently his first expedition. He carried neither carbine nor sword, and the only weapon he had was a Catalonian knife stuck in his belt. Everything he saw in my trunk caused him surprise and wonder. He asked me to tell him the age of each. On finding some rosaries, he exclaimed—‘Ah, you are a priest!’ I told him no, but had bought the rosaries at a fair at Madrid as curiosities. He, however, with great devotion kissed the crosses suspended to them with other emblems, but finding they were of silver, he broke the stones, letting them all fall to the ground. He carefully picked them up, and again kissed each bead and emblem, but at the same time renewed his oaths at his awkwardness. He secured these, and everything else he thought valuable, between his shirt and his skin, but my clothes and linen he put into a large sack, which appeared to be the common receptacle. I had also some small knives and daggers. He asked what I did with them. I told him they had been sold to me as having been worn by the Manolas of Spain under their garters. At this he laughed, and throwing two of them to the ground to me, he put the rest into his private magazine.
“I hoped to make something of my grand brigand, but while I was talking to him the captain came up suddenly, and struck me with violence on the back of the neck withthe butt-end of his carbine, saying, in a furious tone, ‘You are looking in his face that you might be able to recognise him!’ He then seized me by the right arm, while another took my left, and they again bound them behind my back. In my bad Spanish, I assured them I was a foreigner from the remote county of Middlesex; but they would not have cared had I been Joseph Hume himself, and threw me down like a sheep tied fast together ready for the slaughter, upon the body of the Hollander, who roared out loudly, and shook most convulsively all over, imploring the brigands not to kill him, for that he had several bills to take up on the 10th proximo at Amsterdam; beside which he had a wife, six children, and two sisters-in-law dependent upon him for support, and an aged mother and two children of a deceased brother. One of the brigands laughed at hearing all this, although he could not understand it in High-Dutch; but I, who knew a little of the language, ventured to translate it for him, which made the chief brigand laugh ten times more. Taking one of the crucifixes found on me he held it before his eyes, and told him to be at once a Catholic, and he would spare his life. ‘Kiss the cross,’ he said ‘or I will cut your throat!’ This was a plain and simple proposition, and the method of its solution freely given. However, much to the honour and glory of the Dutchman, he resolutely refused to do any such thing, and told the brigand that ‘he might kill him if he liked, and that God would take care of all those dependent upon him;’ and when the cross was again presented to his lips, the burly Dutchman turned himself right over on his side, and the ground on which he lay being upon a slight declivity, he began to roll, and his descent being accelerated as he moveddownwards, he in a few seconds obtained such a velocity, as to roll down the incline with a rapidity most wonderful—the brigands pausing in their work at so strange a sight, and laughing immoderately.
“The next work of our friends was upon the French opera-dancer, and the old lady and her female companion, who had all been passed at the first movement, and who lay groaning, weeping, sobbing, and rolling about in the utmost trepidation. The dancing lady had fainted two or three times, and finding no one to attend upon her, had come to again of her own accord, till at last, upon one of the brigands approaching her, she went off in apparently a dead swoon. But these kind of things were nothing in the eyes of the bravos, who proceeded to strip her of her outward silk, and to rifle her of all her secret treasures, which had been stowed away in various parts of her inner dress. These consisted of various sums of money, stitched amid wadding and padding, trinkets, love-tokens, charms, bank-notes, &c.; but the brigands were particularly amazed when, upon turning madam over, they found a long, hard roll behind the lady, which was, ostensibly, a padding-machine made to keep the dress from falling down, and for making it to display itself with grace and dignity rearwards; this was manufactured entirely of Napoleons and French bank-notes, the former making up the more substantial part of the article alluded to, and the latter lining the outstanding portion. The fun and frolic of the brigands at this discovery were immense; they joked, they leaped, they danced, they swore, and committed many wild pranks in the joy of their discovery, and falling upon the old maid and her waiting-woman in the same way, they proceeded to unroll them both,as carefully as Professor Owen would an Egyptian mummy, but not finding the same treasures, they cursed and swore in the most vociferous manner, giving the old lady many a good cuff, and behaving to her companion with the same rough ceremony. At this time others of the brigands were knocking the carriage to pieces, and having fallen upon the box containing the monkey, with a blow demolished its upper postern, and in a moment—in less than the twinkling of an eve—out popped the imprisoned monkey, who, immediately leaping on to the shoulder of the nearest brigand, took hold of him by the ear, which it bit in two, and flying from his shoulder to the next, made a laceration of the second brigand’s nose, who, finding himself thus suddenly attacked by what was not very discernable in the moon-light, threw himself down, roaring out his ‘Aves,’ thinking that an imp of the Prince of Darkness was suddenly upon him. In vain did the other brigands make slashes and stabs at the monkey, who ran upon the shoulders of the next one, between the legs of another, up the back of a third, down the breast of a fourth, and kept the whole in perpetual alarm, till at last the poor wretch, having had one or two unlucky knocks, made his escape to some distance, where he sat chattering defiance, and picking up some stones, threatened to throw them at his pursuers.
“The trunks, boxes, bales, and packages, having by this time been thoroughly ransacked, the next object of the brigands was to burn the carriage, in the hope of obtaining, by this means, all the concealed treasures it contained in its various hiding places which are so difficult to find out. Accordingly, straw, stubble, and dried boughs were procured, and a quantity being placed underneath the old vehicle, it wasvery soon under the horrifying process, and the flames rose up bravely, throwing a broad red light on the surrounding scenery, and the ungagged ladies uttered many loud screams and interjections. The brigands set themselves quietly down by the fire, and watched the progress of the flames upon each part of the burning carriage, having the satisfaction to see several pieces of gold, in the shape of Napoleons, fly out as the parts separated, which they snatched eagerly from the fire with their daggers, and often burnt their fingers to secure. Just as the blaze was at its proudest height, and the brigands were at the full point of triumph, a tremendous discharge of musketry was heard close behind, and three of the robbers fell wounded. The others sprang up, levelled their carbines, and fired in the direction of the noise. Another rapid but irregular discharge, then an immediate onslaught, for, by the light of the moon which then broke out rather brightly, was seen coming onwards some twenty armed cavaliers, who rushed upon the brigands, sword in one hand and pistol in the other, and immediately a most furious combat between the two parties took place. The brigands fought desperately, and their assailants bravely. The three women screamed lustily. I looked on quietly, as did the Dutchman who had rolled to the bottom of the slope. In less than half-an-hour, five of the brigands had been shot down, the rest had dispersed; in the meantime, the carriage had been carefully consumed, and the cavaliers stood victors over five dead brigands, eight bound men, and three bound women. Of course the bound were soon unbound, and then we discovered to whom we had been indebted for our delivery.
Cottage
“And this was to no less a person than our clown. He hadbeen bound hand and foot at the first, but having, by virtue of his profession, been enabled to walk on his back without any aid from his legs, he had shuffled or wriggled himself off, in the confusion, to a considerable distance without being observed, and when sufficiently away from the daggers of his enemies, managed to get clear of his bandages, and running off in the direction we had left, had the good luck to come up with our escort, which had halted at a kind of halfway-house below us and the nearest town, for the purpose of watering their horses andcome-ing themselves; and beingsomewhat overtaken with the delectable comforts of the hostlery, had stayed much longer than their commission gave them licence to do. Here our clown found them, and they immediately gave chase and came up in the ‘nick of time’ described.
“As soon as the whole of our party could be collected together, we were put one behind each of the cavaliers, and picking up our scattered matters, and robbing the dead bodies of the fallen brigands of that which belonged to us, we all proceeded back to the small village of Orguillas, about half a league from where we had been stopped, and here we were all shown into the ‘venta’ of the village, which consisted of little more than a kitchen with four bare walls, where we laid down, like so many pigs, among the straw till the morning, when we were taken before the Alcade, who gravely heard our depositions, took them down, examined our cavaliers, and told us for our especial benefit that we must find our way back to Madrid as we could. So getting away from the village, and plenty of straw in, then we set off as quickly as bad horses, bad drivers, and bad roads would allow us, and reached the chief city of Spain in the most deplorable plight imaginable. So ended my acquaintance with Spanish Brigands.”
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