Then he stared in bewilderment; for, instead of cutting the prisoner down, Ridge began to sever the lashings by which he was bound.
As the keen-edged machete cut through the last of these, the released man fell forward in a faint, and the young American, catching him in his arms, laid him on the sward.

"Bring water!" he ordered, with a sharp tone of authority, and the negro obeyed.
"You no kill him ?" he asked, as he watched Ridge bathe the blood from the unconscious man's face.
"Not now," was the evasive answer.

"Where did you get him ?" Little by little, one word at a time, he gained from the taciturn negro an idea of what had taken place while he slept.

It seemed that, while he had followed rough mountain trails in his roundabout course to and from the refugee camp, there was a much better road to which they had closely approached, when he was forced by exhaustion to call a halt.
After he fell asleep, Dionysio, going for water to a spring that he knew of, had detected a sound of hoof-beats advancing along this road from the direction of Holguin.

Concealing himself near the spring, he waited until the horseman, a Spanish officer, rode up to it.