Darkness had long since overtaken us, when we saw at
a distance a large clearing, in the middle of which lights shone
from the windows of a large house whose dim and shadowy outline
appeared to us surrounded by a halo of peace.
But we were nearly forced to fight for it. The proprietor of the
hacienda himself answered our none too gentle knock at the door,
and he had no sooner caught sight of us than he let out a yell as
though he had seen the devil in person, and slammed the door
violently in our faces. Indeed, we were hardly recognizable as
men.
Naked, black, bruised, and bleeding, covered with hair on our
faces and parts of our bodies--mine, of recent growth, stubby and
stiff--our appearance would have justified almost any suspicion.
But we hammered again on the door, and I set forth our pedigree
and plight in as few words as possible. Reassured, perhaps, by my
excellent Spanish--which could not, of course, be the tongue of
the devil--and convinced by our pitiable condition of our
inability to do him any harm, he at length reopened the door and
gave us admittance.
When we had succeeded in allaying his suspicions concerning our
identity--though I was careful not to alarm his superstitions by
mentioning the cave of the devil, which, I thought, was probably
well known to him--he lost no time in displaying his humanity.
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