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516 The rain now began to fall in torrents, and it was with the utmost difficulty that I could keep Smith, who had become quite insensible, upon his horse. After a struggle of nearly an hour, we at length reached the venda, which stood on a high precipitous bank above the road, up which the lad scrambled to rouse the inmates; whilst I remained below holding the horses and supporting my insensible companion, who now and then muttered a few inarticulate words, upon my shoulder. It seemed an age before the arriero returned, accompanied by a decrepid old man bearing a lantern, who piloted us up the bank by a circuitous path which brought us to the back of the venda. This I found to be a long, low building, one end of which was appropriated to cattle, and the other end, shut off by a rough partition, was the kitchen and day-room, while a loft above it formed the sleeping-room of its inhabitants.

I succeeded in getting my intoxicated friend—just then I entitled him a drunken beast—into this shelter, and laid him at full length upon the floor beside a fire of pine-wood which burned at the further end, supporting his head upon the alforges with little regard for the botanical specimens with which he had crammed them, and loosening his scarf and collar. I then sat down on the other side of the fire, lighted my pipe, and tried as well as I could to dry my saturated garments. I was in the greatest perplexity what to do; it was absolutely necessary that I should be in Coimbra at an early hour in the morning, to make up and despatch by that day’s post, which left at ten o’clock for Lisbon, several business letters which it was important should go by the next day’s mail steamer to England. It was now past midnight, and Smith was in a state of stolid insensibility from which there seemed no prospect of his recovering for hours. The old man and woman, who seemed to be the sole inmates of our refuge, were both of them upwards of sixty years of age; and I knew that the pesantry of this part of Portugal, though wretchedly poor, are generally honest and inoffensive. I therefore set myself to interrogate the arriero, who having led his beasts into the other end of the cottage, and shaken them out a scanty meal of maize husks, the only fodder procurable, was now crouched in front of the fire, puffing his cigarro, as to whether he thought it would be safe to leave Smith here, while we pushed on to Coimbra with the two horses. I had some difficulty in explaining to him in my imperfect Portuguese, that it was necessary that I should reach Coimbra before the mail left in the morning, but when I had succeeded in doing so, he assured me that the Señor would be perfectly safe where he was, and that a seje (a species of hooded gig) could be sent for him in the morning. The hesitation which I had fancied he manifested before taking us to the venda had passed away so thoroughly, that I thought it must have been merely my imagination which had conjured it up to add to my other perplexities. I proceeded to explain to the old man and woman what I proposed doing, and in their presence emptied my friend’s pockets of his money and watch, covered him over with a manta, and left him, with his head supported by the alforges, to sleep off his intoxication, while we rode on through the storm which still raged without. We had some difficulty in getting the horses down the steep pathway, and when we reached the road, which was little more than a bridle-path, we could proceed but slowly, for the night was pitchy dark, and the arriero seemed less certain of his way, as we had diverged from the direct road to Coimbra for the purpose of getting to the venda. We had not gone above two miles, and had just entered a thick pine-wood, when we heard the trampling of a horse approaching in the direction we were going. The lad hailed the rider; but the latter, instead of pulling up, spurred his horse as we approached him, and dashed past us at a hard gallop. I was astonished at this unlooked-for proceeding, and still more so when the arriero stopped, listened till the footfall of the stranger’s horse died away in the distance, and then declared that we were in the wrong road, and should never reach Coimbra in the direction in which we were going. I could not account for this sudden change of purpose, and insisted on proceeding until, finding me determined, he at length told me, after much hesitation, that he believed the man who had passed us so abruptly to be the son of the old couple who kept the venda, that he was a noted contrabandista, and a lawless and unscrupulous character. He confessed that his fear, lest this man should be at home, had been the cause of the hesitation he had shown in going there in the first instance, which had been set at rest when the old folks informed him that their son had gone to Figuera, the nearest seaport, and was not expected home for some days. He said also that we must now be in the road to Figuera, which he had mistaken for that to Coimbra, and urged me to return at once to the venda to see to the safety of my friend. On this statement of facts, I at once assented, and we hurried back on the way we had come as speedily as the darkness would permit us.

On reaching the foot of the bank on which the venda stood we found, after several attempts, that it was impossible to get the horses up the steep and narrow pathway without a light, or some one who knew its windings better than we did, and I therefore left him at the bottom with the animals and scrambled up alone. On reaching the building I knocked heavily at the door without receiving any answer, though I fancied I could hear a movement within. My anxiety for my friend’s safety grew intense; for though the old people had seen me take possession of his watch and money, the contrabandista did not know this, and I feared that he might have entered the house, and perhaps murdered him before my return. I went round to a small window in the inhabited part of the house, first taking the precaution to open a large clasp knife which I had about me, and to place it in my bosom ready for a hasty grasp. I succeeded in unfastening the window, or rather shutters,—for glazed windows are a luxury unknown in the rural districts of Portugal;—but on throwing it open my worst fears seemed realised; my poor friend lay almost in the position in which I had eftleft [sic] him; but I was horrified to