When they had passed we continued to ascend the mountain. Yet this adventure was fraught with great peril. There was no road to go upon; trees and rough boulders were strewn everywhere; and the higher we rose the more imminent it became that we should step over some steep precipice that lay concealed in the darkness. Sir Richard Pendragon made use of his scabbard in the same way that a blind man uses his staff. He tried every yard of the ground before his feet passed over it, for, as he said, “he desired not to fall into the Devil’s Kitchen, lest he met man’s Evil Adversary who was bound to perplex a good Catholic.” The Englishman being spared this calamity, owing to the exercise of much skill, we came at last to a large wood. Very grateful we felt for its promise of protection, yet its precincts looked so black that Sir Richard Pendragon said it would not surprise him at all if a wicked ogre dwelt in it, or a fell magician, or even a wizard or a salamander. In spite of these forebodings which he declared to be the natural fruit of a brain that had been nourished upon the Roman authors in its youth, we felt ourselves to be quite safe from detection among the thick trees and with the dark night also to cover us. We led our weary horses within the wood and tied them up. Then, seeking out a dry and sheltered place, we spread our own weariness upon the green earth and folded our cloaks about us. All through these long yet sweet hours of utter darkness my two comrades continued to sleep--the Count of Nullepart lightly and fitfully, Sir Richard Pendragon with the perseverance of the fabled ones of Ephesus. And as thus I was stretched upon what I was fain to consider my first battlefield, with this fragrant redress never farther from my eyes, I was minded to resummon the image of the night’s wild business; and with that natural instinct for the foibles of my fellowmen--a habit of philosophy which I can only ascribe to my mother--I proceeded to ruminate on the nature of those who lay by my side. I think I may say these reflections were not unpleasant. My companions were strange, diverse, and foreign men; and one of them was certainly barbarous in the comparison with the gentlemen of our peninsula, who in matters of high civility are allowed to be the first in the world. Yet I found that I had already come to entertain towards them a sentiment of liberal fellowship, nay, even of love. The dangers we had already shared together, and perhaps the thought of those which were to come, which made my heart beat high as I lay upon the bare ground, caused me to forget their nation and their idiosyncrasy, and to cherish a feeling towards them which the gentle reader will hardly think consistent in one who boasted the sangre azul of Spain.