Upon reaching the reverse point, the Conde and I were assigned the most likely posts; and these being also the highest, a final heart-breaking climb up a thousand feet of loose rocks succeeded. Chamois, like ibex, when disturbed instinctively make for the highest ground, hence our occupation of the topmost passes. Cheered on by the Conde, himself as hard as steel, the effort was accomplished, and I sank down, breathless, parched, and exhausted, behind a big rock that was indicated as my position. The lower passes had meanwhile been occupied by the Padre and by sundry shepherds armed with primitive-looking guns.
On recovering some degree of breath and strength, I surveyed my surroundings. We were both stationed on the topmost arête, in a nick that broke for 80 or 100 yards the rim of a knife-edged ridge that separated two stupendous gorges. On my right, while facing the beat, and not 30 yards away, the nick was terminated by a rock-mass perpendicular and four-square as a cathedral tower, that uprose some 100 feet sheer. On the left also rose cliffs though not quite so abrupt. The position was such that any game attempting to pass the nick must appear within 50 or 60 yards--so, in our simplicity, we thought.
[Illustration: A CHAMOIS DRIVE--PICOS DE EUROPA
Diagram illustrative of text. Our positions on arête marked (1) and (2); "Cathedral" on right. Valley beyond full of driving mist (passing our power to depict).]
Behind us dipped away the long moraine of loose rocks by which we had ascended; while in front, by stepping but a few paces across the narrow neck, we could look down into the depths of the gorge whence the quarry was to approach, as we feebly attempt to show in diagram annexed.
The panorama from these altitudes was superb beyond words. We were here far above the stratum of mist which enshrouded our camp and the sierra for some distance above it. We looked down upon a billowy sea of white clouds pierced here and there by the summits and ridges of outstanding crags like islands on a surf-swept coast.
Of bird-life there was no sign beyond choughs and a soaring eagle that our guides called aguila pintada (_Aquila bonellii_, immature). There are wild-boar in the forests far below, with occasional wolves and yet more occasional bear.