We came to a sharp bend in the road, where it turned over a high bridge crossing a deep ravine. Bella heard the braying of the lead donkey already across the bridge and on the other side of the ravine, and suddenly, without consulting me, turned aside and plunged, like a goat, from rock to rock down into the blackness of the ravine. I had been in the tail of the train, and no one missed me, I knew. She would not be checked on her downward course; in fact I was too busy clinging to the precious camera and holding on, to attempt to argue with her. The limbs of olive-trees and the raking thorns of the _mura_ swept us from stem to stern. If she knew where she was going I felt very glad, for I certainly did not. High and faint above me I could hear the voices of the party. I was wondering what my chances were for getting out without a broken neck, when suddenly my fair beast struck level ground, and in an instant more a steep ascent. All sounds to show that the party was still in the vicinity had died away. The donkey went up that precipitous slope with an action that seemed nearly “hand over hand,” and, holding the strap of the camera in my teeth, I merely clung desperately about her neck. A stone loosened by her hoofs went crashing, down, down, down, and a cold sweat broke out on my brow. But in a short time, without one misstep or one minute’s uncertainty, she made the climb, came out into a level open space, and stood stock still, looking to the left, and working her ears. I bent down and touched the ground with my fingers, encountering the warm, thick dust of the highway, and in a moment more heard the voices of our party as they turned a bend. Bella had taken a short cut across the ravine. Not having missed us they did not wonder how we had got so far ahead, and I said nothing about the matter. Soon we wound through the slumbering town of Pagia. A head was now and then thrust out to murmur a sleepy “_Bona notte_,” and when some one of us answered, “We go to America,” there was always a hearty, “_Bon viaggio e bona fortuna_.” Just beyond the village we heard something, encountered often before, but never under such eerie surroundings. Somewhere in the paths higher up, a shrill young voice raised a wild, plaintive song, and at the end of the first line held the note long drawn out and rounded, though nasal, while many other voices, men, women and children, struck in on a major chord and held it as long as they had breath. This was repeated over and over. It was a band of peasants already on their way to their distant work, singing in the plagal modes, in the darkness and loneliness of the hills. CHAPTER X FROM SICILY TO NAPLES