Fortunately, in one way though not in another, it was a moonlight night, and we could see where to step. All around us towered huge mountains, grim and forbidding. We marched in single file by the edge of steep precipices, so close sometimes that we seemed to hang over the awful abyss. Further and further we penetrated into the dreary recesses. We seemed to be a body of ghosts traversing a dreary world. No man spoke; we heard the cry neither of bird nor of animal. The only sound to break the eerie silence was the occasional clatter of a stone, which, loosened by our passage, rolled over into the unknown depths. I looked neither to right nor to left, but kept my gaze fixed on Jose, who walked before me. The track narrowed down so that it hardly afforded footing for one, and I prayed in my heart that we might soon come to a better vantage-ground. I was no coward, and since leaving home had met with more than one adventure, but this was the most perilous of all. Despite every effort to keep firm, my limbs trembled, my head grew dizzy; I was seized by a strong temptation to launch myself into space. The fit passed as suddenly as it had come, but I felt the sweat trickling down my face. Presently we emerged on to a broad platform, and Jose, stopping, seized my hand. He was trembling now, but it was at the thought of danger past. One by one the men stole cautiously along while we waited, watching with fascinated eyes, and drawing a deep breath of relief as each stepped safely from the perilous path. Whether they had also felt fearful I could not tell; their faces were wonderfully impassive, and, except when roused by savage anger, quite expressionless. At a sign from Jose they dropped to the ground behind a group of boulders, and he, addressing them in some Indian dialect, issued his instructions. I gathered very little from his speech; but presently the men disappeared, gliding like serpents along the side of the cliffs, and leaving me with Jose and the guide. "I don't much like this, Jack," said Jose. "I almost wish you had stayed behind. I hope the colonel can depend on this fellow." "What is it?" I asked. "I suppose we didn't come out just for the pleasure of exercising ourselves on that goat-track?" "No," said he; "though, to be sure, that was an uncommon diversion. The real thing is just about to begin, and this is the way of it. According to the guide, La Hera is in a cave close at hand." "All the more chance of trapping him." "I'm not so sure of that. The entrance to the cave is some sixty feet from the ground, in the side of a steep cliff." "Well, we've had some experience in mountain-climbing." "Yes, but not this sort. The face of the cliff is as perpendicular as the side of a house." "The other fellows got up."