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Worse luck!" "Why?" "Because there may be more of them. You suggested just now the possibility of a squadron. How if we meet a regiment?" "We should be in rather a bad scrape." "We are in a bad scrape, amigo mio. Unless, I am greatly mistaken the regiment of Irun, or, at any rate, a squadron of it is on the march hitherward.
Its primitive use had been practical, for in Andalusia it stood at the entrance to some mezquita, and in its limpid waters the disciples of Mahomet performed their hygienic and religious ablutions. If the foreigner enter Spain by Irun, the first cathedral town on his way south is Vitoria.
I questioned Maurice as to my chances of getting across to Irun by land that night; but he assured me it was too late, and really dangerous; that the road was infested by gangs of desperadoes; and that it would be safer for me to travel, even in the day-time, without money or valuables.
Without owning that we were such travelers, I find this the place to say that, with the allowance of a hundred and thirty-two pounds free, our excess baggage in two large steamer-trunks did not cost us three dollars in a month's travel, with many detours, from Irun in the extreme north to Algeciras in the extreme south of Spain. But in this sordid detail I am keeping the reader from the scenery.
But we thought well of the place because we first experienced there the ample ease of a Spanish car. In Spain the railroad gauge is five feet six inches; and this car of ours was not only very spacious, but very clean, while the French cars that had brought us from Bordeaux to Bayonne and from Bayonne to Irun were neither.
But the priest caused seven-and-twenty Carabineros, taken prisoners at the bridge of Endarlasa, near Irun, to be shot, and this filled the cup to overflowing. The Carlists averred they would slay him; the Republicans vowed they would garrote him for a Madrid holiday; the French Government declared its intention of putting him under lock and key if it caught him within its jurisdiction.
"Yes," replied Ramuntcho, "in our country it is a trade, like any other, where one may earn a living, as long as strength lasts and one may go from time to time to South America, you know, as Irun and Gorosteguy have done, and bring back twenty, thirty thousand francs for a season, earned honestly at Buenos Ayres."
Everything depends on how soon the last of them go by. If we have only a few minutes start they will never overtake us, and once on the other side of Los Teycos we shall be safe both from discovery and pursuit. European cavalry are of no use in a Venezuelan forest; and I don't think these Irun fellows have any blood-hounds." "Blood-hounds!
When the bad breakfast was over, and the waiters were laying the table for another as bad, our Basque porter came in and led us to the train for San Sebastian which he had promised us. It was now raining outside, and we were glad to climb into our apartment without at all seeing what Irun was or was not like.
We strolled along with apparent carelessness, entered a posada on the road by the waterside and had refreshments. I said I should feel much obliged if they could let us have a trap to Irun and back, as we had business there, and my friend was tired and not much of a pedestrian. An open carriage was provided, and off we drove by the skirt of the hill of St.
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