!Tention, page 229 by George Manville Fenn
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nd a couple of fierce-looking, goatskin-clothed, half-savage Spanish goat-herds, one of whom kicked at the fire, making it burst into a temporary blaze which lit up their swarthy features and flashed in their eyes, and, what was more startling still, on the blades of the two long knives which they snatched from their belts.
"Amigos, amigos!" cried Pen, and he grounded arms, Punch following his example.
"Amigos! No, Franceses," shouted one of the men, as the fire burnt up more brightly; and he pointed at Pen's musket.
"No," cried Pen, "Ingleses." And laying down his piece near the fire, he coolly seated himself and began to warm his hands. "Come on, Punch," he said, "sit down; and give me your haversack."
The boy obeyed, and as the two men looked at them doubtingly Pen took the haversack, held it out, thrust his hand within two or three times, and shook his head before pointing to his lips and making signs as if he wanted to eat.
"El pano, agua," he said.
The men turned to gaze into each other's eyes as if in doubt, and then began slowly to thrust their long, sharp knives into their belts; and it proved directly afterwards that Pen's pantomime had been sufficiently good, for one of them strode away into the darkness, where the lads could make out a sort of wind-shade of piled-up stones, from which he returned directly afterwards with what proved to be a goatskin-bag, which he carried to his companion, and then went off again, to return from somewhere behind the stones, carrying a peculiar-looking earthen jar, which proved to be filled with water.
Just then Punch drew the two muskets a little farther from the fire, and to Pen's surprise took off his jacket and carefully covered their locks.
"Afraid of the damp," muttered Pen to himself; and then he smiled up in the face of the fiercer-looking of the two goat-herds as the man placed a cake of coarse-looking bread in his hands and afterwards turned out from the bag a