While we were at this repast, our guides, starting as if they had caught a sound (though we heard none save the horrid bursting of water), looked down, and one of them, clapping two dirty fingers in his mouth, made a shrill whistle. Then we, looking down, presently spied two mules far below on the path we had come, but at such a distance that we could scarce make out whether they were mounted or not.
"Who are they?" asks Don Sanchez, sternly, as I managed to understand.
"Friends," replies one of the fellows, with a grin that seemed to lay his face in two halves.
_How we were entertained in the mountains, and stand in a fair way to have our throats cut._
"We will go on when you are ready," says Don Sanchez, turning to us.
"Aye," growled Jack in my ear, "with all my heart. For if these friends be of the same kidney as Don Lopez, we may be persuaded to take a better road, which God forbid if this be a sample of their preference."
So being in our saddles forth we set once more and on a path no easier than before, but worse--like a very housetop for steepness, without a tinge of any living thing for succour if one fell, but only sharp, jagged rocks, and that which now added to our peril was here and there a patch of snow, so that the mules must cock their ears and feel their way before advancing a step, now halting for dread, and now scuttling on with their tails betwixt their legs as the stones rolled under them.
But the longest road hath an end, and so at length reaching that gap we had seen from below, to our great content we beheld through an angle in the mountain a tract of open country below, looking mighty green and sweet in the distance. And at the sight of this, Moll clapt her hands and cried out with joy; indeed, we were all as mad as children with the thought that our task was half done. Only the Don kept his gravity. But turning to Moll, he stretches out his hand towards the plain and says with prodigious pride, "My country!"
And now we began the descent, which was actually more perilous than the ascent, but we made light of it, being very much enlivened by the high mountain air and the relief from dread uncertainty, shouting out our reflections one to another as we jolted down the rugged path.