Presently I heard an Ola! and a laugh, and soon
the voice of Antonio summoned me to advance. On reaching the fire
I found two dark lads, and a still darker woman of about forty; the
latter seated on what appeared to be horse or mule furniture. I
likewise saw a horse and two donkeys tethered to the neighbouring
trees. It was in fact a Gypsy bivouac. . . . "Come forward,
brother, and show yourself," said Antonio to me; "you are amongst
friends; these are of the Errate, the very people whom I expected
to find at Trujillo, and in whose house we should have slept."
"And what," said I, "could have induced them to leave their house
in Trujillo and come into this dark forest in the midst of wind and
rain, to pass the night?"
"They come on business of Egypt, brother, doubtless," replied
Antonio; "and that business is none of ours, Calla boca! It is
lucky we have found them here, else we should have had no supper,
and our horses no corn."
"My ro is prisoner at the village yonder," said the woman, pointing
with her hand in a particular direction; "he is prisoner yonder for
choring a mailla (stealing a donkey); we are come to see what we
can do in his behalf; and where can we lodge better than in this
forest, where there is nothing to pay? It is not the first time, I
trow, that Calore have slept at the root of a tree."
One of the striplings now gave us barley for our animals in a large
bag, into which we successively introduced their heads, allowing
the famished creatures to regale themselves till we conceived that
they had satisfied their hunger. There was a puchero simmering at
the fire, half full of bacon, garbanzos, and other provisions; this
was emptied into a large wooden platter, and out of this Antonio
and myself supped; the other Gypsies refused to join us, giving us
to understand that they had eaten before our arrival; they all,
however, did justice to the leathern bottle of Antonio, which,
before his departure from Merida, he had the precaution to fill.
I was by this time completely overcome with fatigue and sleep.
Antonio flung me an immense horse-cloth, of which he bore more than
one beneath the huge cushion on which he rode; in this I wrapped
myself, and placing my head upon a bundle, and my feet as near as
possible to the fire, I lay down.
Antonio and the other Gypsies remained seated by the fire
conversing. I listened for a moment to what they said, but I did
not perfectly understand it, and what I did understand by no means
interested me:
