"It is Petion himself!" gasped Don Esteban in accents of dismay, "and if we should be so unfortunate as to fall into his hands after resisting him, our fate will be too dreadful for description!  Would it not be better," he suggested, with quivering ashen lips, "that we should surrender at discretion, without attempting resistance?  If we do so we shall probably be shot, out of hand; but even that would be preferable to being carried off into the mountains, and there dying a lingering death by torture, as we know that many other whites have done who have dared to resist Petion."