All at once, on the side where the walls were the highest and rose perpendicularly over the precipice, a door was cautiously opened. Through its position over the precipice, this door could not be seen by the sentries, and the three persons who stepped through it one after the other, ran no risk of being perceived. These persons, who seemed perfectly acquainted with the dangerous road they were entering on, carefully closed the gate after them, and clinging to some projections probably arranged to facilitate the descent, descended the cliff without any hesitation, stopping at times to draw breath, or look inquiringly around them. The descent was a long one, for it could not be performed directly, and the bold adventurers were compelled to keep to their left, and often to march parallel with the gulf; but at length they reached the bottom without accident, and took a few minutes' rest by the side of a stream which ran silently at their feet. Nearly opposite the spot where the bold adventurers reached the bottom of the abyss, was the yawning mouth of a natural cavern. After taking a parting glance above their heads, as if to feel certain that no one had noticed their departure, and that the same tranquillity continued to prevail in the hacienda, they disappeared in the grotto. Then the person who marched last took off his zarapé, which he held before the opening, while one of his companions struck a light and lit a torch of ocote wood, a considerable pile of which was collected in a hole of the rock. By the glare of the torch, which suddenly cast a reddish tinge over the interior of the grotto, a spy would have easily recognized in these three persons, Doña Emilia, her daughter, and Don Melchior. When Doña Emilia, who held the torch, had gone far enough to prevent the light from being seen from the outside, Don Melchior pulled down his zarapé, and went off in his turn. The grotto had such numerous and sudden turns, that any stranger whom chance conducted to it would have been infallibly lost, and Doña Emilia and her companions must have known it for a long time when they ventured to enter it. After walking for about ten minutes, our friends reached a species of hall, on to which six passages opened, which ran in diametrically opposite directions probably for a great distance. This hall formed a rather large room, in which were several clumsily made equipales, a rickety table, and a sort of rack fastened to the wall, and filled with weapons of every description, lances, daggers, machetes, pistols, and muskets, with bullet bags of tapir hide and buffalo horns full of powder.