No! I certainly hadn’t quite got over that terrible fifteen minutes while the poor old _Hector_ was being shattered. I followed him in a second or two, but we had barely gone twenty paces before we heard some one slipping at that corner we had just passed; there was a scream—it sounded again hundreds of feet below us—then absolute silence, while I waited, with my ears tingling, for the crash. At last it came up to us out of the darkness, just like the noise a plum would make if you threw it on the ground. I dug my bare heel among the stones and clutched some bushes. ’Come along!’ Gerald whispered nervously, but stopped again because there were more screams from that awful corner. He groped his way back. ’I’ll make them join their belts together and form a line round there,’ he said, as the ’Gnome,’ José, and I waited shivering for him. ’_Don Geraldio, mucho bueno_,’ the ’Gnome’ muttered under his breath. My brother’s voice sounded again after what seemed like half an hour, ’I had to go round that blessed corner place, Billums, but I’ve got a dozen belts fixed together and men holding them on each side, so it’s pretty safe now.’ I myself wouldn’t have gone round that corner, or whatever it was, for anything in the world. We scrambled on, and the rain came tumbling down; in five minutes the path we were in was a raging torrent, and my naked feet slipped back one step for every three I made. They were getting tender now—very tender. ’We’re past the worst part, put your boots on again,’ Gerald sang out, and I tried to do so, but they were so wet and my feet so swollen that they wouldn’t go on, so I had to do without them. ’What’s the time?’ I asked Gerald presently, when we’d halted to let the column close up. ’Is it safe to light a match?’ ’My goodness, no! Zorilla’s people would see us for miles; he has watchers all over the hills. Whatever time it is I’m afraid we shall be late.’ We _were_ late too, and by the time it was light enough to see my wretched feet—and wasn’t I jolly glad to begin to see anything—it was half-past two, and we still had a long climb before us. But we went much faster now, and began edging away to the right, bearing round a tremendous mountain shoulder that loomed up over our heads. ’On the other side is Santa Cruz,’ Gerald whispered. That was exciting enough, if you like. He was busy hurrying on his men, who now began slipping past us, going on ahead. They looked pretty well exhausted, and most of them had done as I had done—hung their boots round their necks; but in spite of their being soaked to the skin, and in spite of their tremendous climb, they were cheerful enough, and their eyes were flashing all right—at the prospect of sacking Santa Cruz, I expect. The officers looked much more weather-beaten than they did.