The appearance of the soldiers quelled somewhat the panic of the fugitives. It was clear that, after all that the enemy was man, and no ghostly apparition. No sooner were the troops visible beyond possibility of doubt than the woman shook her fears from her as leaves from a tree, and began to command again.
"Cowards!" she cried, with a curious forgetfulness of her own state five minutes gone, "cowards! will you let them shoot you as you ride? Where is your courage? Do you fear a handful of carabineers, who are as dirt beneath your feet? I have shame for you."
But to Messenger she said—
"This is the moment. The second bridge is three hundred yards from here. Once past that the danger is no more. But we must run the gauntlet, and some will fall. How light it is; a curse upon it! I never saw such a night."
"You didn't look to find men here—at least you never mentioned it to me," said he, biting his lip in his perplexity.
"I did not look for the unexpected," she said in answer. "These men are returning, and not going; they have tired of the business yonder, and are getting home again. I could not foresee that. Their laziness has trapped us, and now they will shoot."
"If the light would only fail," said he next, "it would be as easy as walking along a road. I can't make it out; we seem to be focussed in the very centre of it. And what a light!"
She could not answer him, for as she turned about her startled exclamation was joined to his.
"Great God!" said he, "the wood is on fire!"
A deep lurid light glowed upon him as he spoke; it cast a crimson flush upon the darker shadows of the wood; it lit up the face of the precipice with an unsurpassable brilliancy. The fire kindled as a beacon on the hill-top had set flame to the surrounding thickets; and now from grass to grass, and bush to bush, and tree to tree the devastation leaped with insatiable tongue. Even at the cramped station of the goat track the company could follow its path—the path of radiant light and rolling smoke and horrid roaring. It was as if some huge volcano had begun to vomit flames of wood, to wrap in its far-reaching light the stately pines, the coniferæ, the spreading chestnut, the climbing creepers. Now hissing, now crackling, now marking its way with the bursting asunder of rock and root, the fire crept on, bridging chasms, enveloping thickets, running swiftly to the summits of the loftiest trunks, sending the birds screaming and circling above it, driving the swine headlong into chasms and ravines, painting the sky with a quivering scarlet beneath which the mighty clouds of smoke lay as hills and mountains raised magically in the ether.
Soon the hither valley was incarnadined; the troop of horsemen stood clear to be viewed as in the sun's light; the river shone as with red of blood; the flocks rushed wildly from pasture to pasture in unrestrained terror; the bells of the churches began to ring; the sleeping hamlets awoke. But those upon the ledge, for the most part dumb with their terror, could only rush on headlong toward the distant bridge, which would carry them from the amphitheatre of the hills; and as they went the fire crept slowly down to them, flakes of burning matter fell upon their mules, red-hot branches struck their faces; they were in danger of immediate suffocation from the vapour and the smoke which began to roll around them.
To the soldiers in the valley the spectacle was one for profound amazement. They had been sent to hunt down the Spanish woman and the English fugitives, but here was nature doing the work. And they stood dumb with astonishment, while the mules cried upon the path above, and the woman roared for the mule-men to push on, and the fire came down and yet down, so that at last it burned upon the very edge of the goat-track, and men and mules and ponies began to fall headlong to the rocks below. And thus it stood that of the sixteen mules, seven had rolled into the valley, and there were but eight men left of the whole company when the small plateau which led to the ledge across the second chasm came in sight.
At this plateau a great ravine opened irregularly, having a breadth of thirty yards where the bridge was, but almost closing upon its summit, so that the fire raging above dropped burning flakes upon the woodwork of the bridge, and threatened every moment to consume it; while boughs and chunks of flaming wood and red-hot stones and dying beasts were heaped pell-mell upon the open plane of rock which gave access to the passage.
To this semblance of shelter came at last the woman and Messenger and Fisher; but the nigger had gone over, and the number of mules was five, with but six men of the whole Spanish company. These now fell gasping upon the secure shelter of the plateau, and cried for the death which they felt must so surely come to them. But Messenger, almost falling from his pony, began to moan pitifully, and held to Fisher with a nervous grip which was eloquent of his fate. Fire had struck him in the face, and he was then quite blind.
"Hal!" he cried, as he clutched the strong hand held out to him, "I have lost my eyes! Hal, I'm blind, man, blind! my brain's burning! Let me have your hands! Oh, what darkness! my eyes are gone!"
"It can't be as bad as that, old man!" cried Fisher, who held the extended hands with a firm grip; "Cling to me now, for we must cross the bridge. It won't last another ten minutes. Did you ever hear such a pandemonium as that old hag is making?"
"Where is she?" asked the other, holding to the lad with terrible desperation; "where are they all? Is the money safe? Don't you see that I'm in darkness? My brain's burning; I can't bear it; there's fire in my eyes now! Great Heaven, what pain!"
"The woman is now flogging the mule-men with her whip—at least the five that are left," said Fisher. "They won't face the fire, and she's making them. Can't you hear her voice? But this is no place to stop, money or no money; the rocks are heating, and the bridge is beginning to burn."
"I'll stand by the woman, any way!" said Messenger, suddenly drawing back; "we will sink or swim together. She's stood by me; and there's five hundred thousand pounds in it! Do you hear? I say the money's there; take me to it. I'll see it through! Where's Burke? And old Kenner? Halloa, there, Kenner! Why don't you hail, man? You always were a tenderfoot, Kenner; you think on liquor. Ha! ha! drown your old carcase in it! Take me to the woman, lad; do you hear?"
Fisher, regardless of his delirium, quickly led him across the bridge, telling him that the way to the money lay there. It was a short passage, but the soldiers in the valley fired a volley vainly at them as they went; and the woodwork burned in places so fiercely that the soles of their feet were scorched. When they had come to the other side, the man dropped exhausted upon a grass bank; but the other stood up to watch the Spanish hag, who had compelled the muleteers now to venture upon the transit. She herself waited until the six men and the five beasts were treading the structure before she rode boldly upon it, and, still commanding harshly, drove the terrified men forward toward the dangerous place where the fire burned most fiercely, and the wood was crackling briskly, as wood long dry and ready for the flame.
Had the bridge strength left for their passage? The question must have been put by a hundred men who watched the passage from the valley below, for this was the supreme moment of the fire, when the hills stood up with amazing clearness in the flood of light, and the valley of the rocks was red with a dazzling radiance as of the glow of jewels. The whole path of the burning in the wood now showed in a crimson field of ash of trees and grasses that shone red with the consuming heat. A few coverts—and these containing many great trees—yet burned about the chasm as torches, exceeding brilliant and fierce in their fires. The bridge itself was alight with flame; and men, both upon it and below it, heard themselves breathing in the moment of the peril.
It is just possible, had the Spaniards and the woman dared the passage on foot, that they had come to safety. The timidity of horse or mule in the face of fire is a fact as old as man; and it was the terror of the mules that ultimately brought the end of the venture. Although the arrieros had blindfolded the quaking brutes with strips torn from the shirts upon their backs, they were driven to the dangerous place only with a measure of extreme cruelty; and so soon as the tongue of the flame was blown near to the first of them the beast reared straight up, and fell back upon the one that followed him. A moment after, the pair of them, with their packs and