His thoughts once turned upon Rosa, the colonel could talk of little else, and Cueto realized that the girl had indeed made a deep impression upon him.  The overseer was well pleased, and when Cobo finally took himself off to bed he followed in better spirits than he had enjoyed for some time.  For one thing, it was agreeable to look forward to a night of undisturbed repose.  Pancho’s apprehensions had fattened upon themselves, and he had been living of late in a nightmare of terror.

But it seemed to him that he had barely closed his eyes when he was awakened by a tremendous vibration and found himself in the center of the floor, undecided whether he had been hurled from his bed or whether he had leaped thither.  Still in a daze, he heard a shout from the direction of Cobo’s room, then a din of other voices, followed by a rush of feet; the next instant his door was flung back and he saw, by the light of high-held torches, Esteban Varona and a ragged rabble of black men.  Cueto knew that he faced death.  He uttered a shrill scream of terror, and, seizing the revolver which was always close at his hand, he fired blindly.  Then his foes were upon him.  What happened thereafter took but an instant.  He dodged a blow from Esteban’s clubbed rifle only to behold the flash of a machete.  Crying out again, he tried to guard himself from the descending blade, but too late; the sound of his hoarse terror died in his throat, half born.

“Quick!  Soak the bed with oil and fire it,” Esteban directed; then he ran out into the hall to investigate that other shouting.  He found the chamber whence it issued and tried to smash the door; but at the second blow he heard a gun-shot from within and the wood splintered outward almost into his face.  Simultaneously, from somewhere outside the house, arose the notes of a Spanish bugle-call.

Young Varona waited to hear no more.  Nor did his men; realizing the peril into which they had been led, they bolted from the house as fast as they could go.  There was no need for questions; from the direction of the sugar-mill came bellowed orders and the sound of men shouting to their horses.  Evidently those were troops—­and trained troops, too, for they took no time to saddle; they were up and mounted almost before the marauders had gained the backs of their own animals.  There was no opportunity to choose a retreat across the fields; Esteban spurred down the driveway toward the main calzada, yelling to his men to follow him.

The approach to La Joya was by way of a notable avenue, perhaps a half-mile in length, and bordered by tall, even rows of royal palms.  These stately trees shaded the avenue by day and lent it a cavern-like gloom by night.  Near the public causeway the road was cut through a bit of rising ground, and was walled by steep banks overgrown with vines.

Into the black tunnel formed by the palms the fugitives plunged, with the clatter of hoofs close behind them.  Those of the Volunteers who pressed them hardest began to shoot wildly, for this typically Cuban refusal to stand ground enraged them beyond measure.