Next came Smoke-Jack, in attendance on the ladies, much exhilarated by the dignity of his position, yet ludicrously on his good behaviour, and afraid of committing himself, on the score of manners, by word or deed. The Marquise and her daughter walked hand in hand, wasting few words, and busied each with her own thoughts. They seemed to have exchanged characters with the events of the last few hours. Cerise, ever since her rescue, had displayed an amount of energy and resolution scarcely to be expected from her usual demeanour, making light of present fatigue and coming peril in a true military spirit of gaiety and good-humour; while her mother, on the contrary, betrayed in every word and gesture the languor of subdued emotion, and a certain softened, saddened preoccupation of manner, seldom to be remarked in the self-possessed and brilliant Marquise. Captain George, with Slap-Jack and the rest of the blue-jackets, brought up the rear. His fighting experience warned him that in no previous campaign had he ever found himself in so critical a position as at present. He was completely surrounded by the enemy. His own force, though well-armed and full of confidence, was ridiculously weak in numbers. He was encumbered with baggage (not to speak it disrespectfully) that must be protected at any sacrifice, and he had to make a forced march, through ground of which he was ignorant, dependent on the guidance of a half-savage girl, who might after all turn out to be a traitress. Under so many disadvantages, the former captain of musketeers showed that he had not forgotten his early training. All eyes and ears, he seemed to be everywhere at once, anticipating emergencies, multiplying precautions, yet finding a moment every now and then for a word of politeness and encouragement to the ladies, to regret the roughness of the path, to excuse the prospective discomforts of the brigantine, or to assure them of their speedy arrival in a place of safety. On these occasions he invariably directed his speech to the Marquise and his looks to her daughter. Presently, as they continued to wind up the hill, the ascent grew more precipitous. At length, having crossed the bed of a rivulet that they could hear tumbling into a cascade many hundred feet below, they reached a pass on the mountain side where the path became level, but seemed so narrow as to preclude farther progress. It turned at a sharp angle round the bare face of a cliff, which rose on one side sheer and perpendicular several fathoms above their heads, and on the other shelved as abruptly into a dark abyss, the depth of which, not even one of the seamen, accustomed as they were to giddy heights, dared measure with his eye. Fleurette alone, standing on the brink, peered into it without wavering, and pointing downwards, looked back on the little party with triumph.