United States or Portugal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A cool wind, the forerunner of morning, swept across the valley, bringing pleasant refreshment to the heated soldiery, as they leaned upon their muskets and waited the orders of their chief. On either hand videttes were advanced, keeping vigilant watch. El Mochuelo exchanged a few words with Paco and the Tuerto, and then turned to Herrera.
A rocky pool received the foaming element, and fed a pellucid stream that soon disappeared amongst the trees, on its way to irrigate and fertilize the neighbouring fields. The water fell from the least elevated part of the mountain buttress above described, a height of seventy or eighty feet. "This is the place," said El Tuerto to the Mochuelo.
In reply to Herrera's enquiries as to the original authors of this curious contrivance, and the manner in which he had discovered it, the Mochuelo informed him that the Frenchman, Roche, or El Tuerto, as his Spanish comrades styled him, had, previously to the war, been one of a band of outlaws, smugglers avowedly, and on occasion, as it was affirmed, something worse, who for a considerable period had carried on their illegal avocations in the Navarrese Pyrenees and their contiguous ranges.
The order was obeyed, and, turning to the left, the guerillas quitted the defile and entered the smaller of the two valleys connected by it. Guided by the Tuerto, they presently approached a projecting hill, jutting out into the valley like some huge buttress placed there to support the mountain wall.
For two years she has been trying to contrive his escape, but she could do nothing until the authorities took it into their heads to change the surgeon. She soon managed to come to an understanding with this new one. * One-eyed man. "You may imagine how pleasant this news was for me. I soon saw Garcia el Tuerto. He was the very ugliest brute that was ever nursed in gipsydom.
He is described as a tall man, with red hair and a white complexion, blind of one eye, and with a mole on his hand. The Spanish historians call him Tarik el Tuerto, meaning either "one-eyed" or "squint-eyed." Such was the man whom Musa sent to begin the conquest of Spain. The army of invasion consisted of seven thousand men,—a handful to conquer a kingdom.
El Tuerto, here, is well acquainted with these mountains, and has had many a narrow escape amongst them whilst pursuing a less honest calling than the present. He has told me of a place of concealment, where it is scarcely possible we should be discovered. At any rate we must leave this spot, or some early-rising peasant will stumble upon us. There is danger here."
For a while he rode in rear of his men, talking in low tones with Paco the muleteer, who accompanied the party, and with an old grim-visaged Frenchman, a sergeant in his corps, who, on account of his having but one eye, went by the name of El Tuerto.
"'Yes! he replied, 'married to Garcia el Tuerto* as cunning a gipsy as she is herself. The poor fellow has been at the galleys. Carmen has wheedled the surgeon of the presidio to such good purpose that she has managed to get her rom out of prison. Faith! that girl's worth her weight in gold.
The result of his conversation with these two men seemed satisfactory to him, and, on taking his place at the head of the column, he told Herrera that he had good hopes of success. Silence, however, was the order of the night, and he entered into no details. Paco and the Tuerto kept near him, apparently as guides.
Word Of The Day