"Muchos gratias, señor--my own mother would not have known me. I took care of that, and now I shall take care of you." "It is incredible that a companion so jovial as the Major de Lucena could contemplate this intended atrocity," exclaimed Slingsby. "Have you not his sister's letter here?" asked Fabrique, displaying that little document, of which his searchers had deprived me; "you Inglesos would doubt the holy face of Jaen, even if it were placed before you! I received a thousand dollars to shoot you down like dogs or wild pigs, and here we are chattering away like so many magpies. Vamos alla--to the mountains--cammarados, basta!" "We are not, then, to be shot?" I asked, as a gleam of hope brightened before me. "No," said he, with an icy smile, as his dark fierce face came close to mine, like that of a handsome spectre in the moonlight and as the whole band began to move; "we will give you to drink of the Rio de Muerte." The River of Death!--our blood ran cold at these words; but no time was left us for expostulation, as we were hurried up the hills, over wild and furzy banks, where the laurel, the vine, and the fair yellow paunch of the gourd grew together in luxuriance; and among rocks, where the nimble goat browsed, and the untamed porker flew before us, squeaking from his lair, among the aromatic plants, the long reedy grass, the giant fern, and the broad-leaved dock. Up, up we went, alternately clambering, or being pushed and dragged, until we gained the brow of a steep hill, from which we saw beneath us in the broad, clear, liquid moonlight, the waters of the Guadalquiver winding away between groves of the orange and the olive, to San Lucar, and in the middle distance, but far down below us, the white houses of Trohniona clustered round their little church. CHAPTER XIII. PEDRO THE CONTRABANDISTA. After a painful and anxious hour elapsed, and we had traversed about two miles of a steep and craggy ascent, until we reached a part of the mountain range which was entirely covered by a little forest of laurels. Above us, in the dark blue sky, the moon was hanging like a large silver globe, and the flood of clear cold light it diffused over the distant landscape enabled us to distinguish objects with great minuteness. Thus I could trace the gleaming course of the Guadalquiver, as it wound down from Seville past Borminos, the mouth of the Guadamar, and the hills that overhang Dos Hermanos; while other sierras in the distance undulated afar off, like the waves of a petrified sea, if such a simile may be allowed me. Light glinted at times upon the river. It came from a passing steamer. Down there in the valley was the civilisation of our own time; yet we were about to perish by the hands of outlaws, whose bearing and character were worthy of the middle ages, or the mistier time that lies beyond them.