I am here describing in detail, and with the tranquillity of closet retrospect, thoughts that follow one another with the rapidity of lightning flashes. To say that I reflected coolly, would not be true: I was at that moment too much under the influence of fear for tranquil reflection. I perceived at once that the situation was more than dangerous: it was desperate. Flight was my first thought, or rather my first instinct: for, on reflection, it failed. The idea was to fling off the packs, mount the two pedestrians upon the mules, and gallop back for the canon. The conception was good enough, if it could have been carried out, but of this there was no hope. The defile was too distant to be reached in time. The two who might ride the mules could never make it--they must fall by the way. Even if all four of us should succeed in getting back to the canon, what then? Was it likely we should ever emerge from it? We might for a time defend ourselves within its narrow gorge; but to pass clear through and escape at the other end would be impossible. A party of our pursuers would be certain to take over the ridge, and head us below. To anticipate them in their arrival there, and reach the woods beyond, would be utterly out of our power. The trail through the canon was full of obstacles, as we had already discovered--and these would delay us. Without a prospect of reaching the forest below it would be of no use attempting flight. In the valley around us there was no timbered tract--nothing that deserved the name of a wood: only copses and groves, the largest of which would not have sheltered us for an hour.