While we were at this repast, our guides, starting as if they had caught a sound (though we heard none save the horrid bursting of water), looked down, and one of them, clapping two dirty fingers in his mouth, made a shrill whistle. Then we, looking down, presently spied two mules far below on the path we had come, but at such a distance that we could scarce make out whether they were mounted or not.
“Who are they?” asks Don Sanchez, sternly, as I managed to understand.
“Friends,” replies one of the fellows, with a grin that seemed to lay his face in two halves.
CHAPTER VIII.
How we were entertained in the mountains, and stand in a fair way to have our throats cut.
“We will go on when you are ready,” says Don Sanchez, turning to us.
“Aye,” growled Jack in my ear, “with all my heart. For if these friends be of the same kidney as Don Lopez, we may be persuaded to take a better road, which God forbid if this be a sample of their preference.”
So being in our saddles forth we set once more and on a path no easier than before, but worse—like a very housetop for steepness, without a tinge of any living thing for succour if one fell, but only sharp, jagged rocks, and that which now added to our peril was here and there a patch of snow, so that the mules must cock their ears and feel their way before advancing a step, now halting for dread, and now scuttling on with their tails betwixt their legs as the stones rolled under them.
But the longest road hath an end, and so at length reaching that gap we had seen from below, to our great content we beheld through an angle in the mountain a tract of open country below, looking mighty green and sweet in the distance. And at the sight of this, Moll clapt her hands and cried out with joy; indeed, we were all as mad as children with the thought that our task was half done. Only the Don kept his gravity. But turning to Moll, he stretches out his hand towards the plain and says with prodigious pride, “My country!”
And now we began the descent, which was actually more perilous than the ascent, but we made light of it, being very much enlivened by the high mountain air and the relief from dread uncertainty, shouting out our reflections one to another as we jolted down the rugged path.
“After all, Jack,” says I to him at the top of my voice, being in advance and next to Don Sanchez; “after all, Don Lopez was not such a bad friend to us.”
Upon which, the Don, stopping his mule at the risk of being cast down the abyss, turns in his saddle, and says:
“Fellow, Don Lopez is a Spaniard. A Castilian of noble birth—” but here his mule deciding that this was no fit place for halting, bundled onward at a trot to overtake the guides, and obliged his rider to turn his attention to other matters.
By the look of the sun it must have been about two in the afternoon when, rounding a great bluff of rock, we came upon a kind of tableland which commanded a wide view of the plain below, most dazzling to our eyes after the gloomy recesses of the pass; and here we found trees growing and some rude attempt at cultivation, but all very poor and stunted, being still very high and exposed to the bleak winds issuing from the gorges.
Our guides, throwing themselves on the ground, repaired once more to their store of onions, and we, nothing loath to follow their examples, opened our saddle bags, and with our cold meat and the hogskin of wine made another good repast and very merry. And the Don, falling into discourse with the guides, pointed out to us a little white patch on the plain below, and told us that was Ravellos, where we should find one of the best posadas in the world, which added to our satisfaction. “But” says he, “’tis yet four hours’ march ere we reach it, so we had best be packing quickly.”
Thereupon we finished our meal in haste, the guides still lying on the ground eating onions, and when we were prepared to start they still lay there and would not budge. On this ensued another discussion, very indignant and passionate on the part of Don Sanchez, and as cool and phlegmatic on the side of the guides, the upshot of which was, as we learned from Don, that these rascals maintained they had fulfilled their bargain in bringing us over into Spain, but as to carrying us to Ravellos they would by no means do that without the permission of their zefe, who was one of those they had whistled to from our last halting place, and whom they were now staying for.
Then, beginning to quake a bit at the strangeness of this treatment, we looked about us to see if we might venture to continue our journey alone. But Lord! one might as easily have found a needle in a bundle of hay as a path amidst this labyrinth of rocks and horrid fissures that environed us; and this was so obvious that the guides, though not yet paid for their service, made no attempt to follow or to stay us, as knowing full well we must come back in despair. So there was no choice but to wait the coming up of the zefe, the Don standing with his legs astride and his arms folded, with a very storm of passion in his face, in readiness to confront the tardy zefe with his reproaches for this delay and the affront offered to himself, we casting our eye longingly down at Ravellos, and the guides silently munching their onions. Thus we waited until the fine ear of our guides catching a sound, they rose to their feet muttering the word “zefe,” and pull off their hats as two men mounted on mules tricked out like our own, came round the corner and pulled up before us. But what was our surprise to see that the foremost of these fellows was none other than the Don Lopez de Calvados we had entertained to supper the night before, and of whose noble family Don Sanchez had been prating so highly, and not a thread better dressed than when we saw him last, and full as dirty. That which gave us most uneasiness, however, was to observe that each of these “friends” carried an ugly kind of musket slung across his back, and a most unpleasant long sheath knife in his waist cloth.
Not a word says our Don Sanchez, but feigning still to believe him a man of quality, he returns the other Don’s salutation with all the ceremony possible. Then Don Lopez, smiling from ear to ear, begs us (as I learnt afterwards) to pardon him for keeping us waiting, which had not happened, he assures us, if we had not suffered him to oversleep himself. He then informs us that we are now upon his domain, and begs us to accept such hospitality as his Castillo will furnish, in return for our entertainment of last night. To this Don Sanchez replies with a thousand thanks that we are anxious to reach Ravellos before nightfall, and that, therefore, we will be going at once if it is all the same to him. With more bowing and scraping Don Lopez amiably but firmly declines to accept any refusal of his offer or to talk of business before his debt of gratitude is paid. With that he gives a sign to our guides, who at once lead off our mules at a brisk trot, leaving us to follow on foot with Don Lopez and his companion, whom he introduces as Don Ruiz del Puerto—as arrant a cut-throat rascal to look at as ever I clapt eyes on.
So we with very dismal forebodings trudge on, having no other course to take, Don Sanchez, to make the best of it, warranting that no harm shall come to us while we are under the hospitable protection of a Spaniard, but to no great effect—our faith being already shaken in his valuation of Spaniards.
Quitting the tableland, ten minutes of leaping and scrambling brought us to a collection of miserable huts built all higgledy-piggledy along the edge of a torrent, overtopped by a square building of more consequence, built of grey stone and roofed with slate shingles, but with nothing but ill-shaped holes for windows; and this, Don Lopez with some pride told us was his castillo. A ragged crew of women and children, apprised of our coming by the guide, maybe, trooped out of the village to meet us and hailed our approach with shouts of joy, “for all the world like a pack of hounds at the sight of their keeper with a dish of bones,” whispers Jack Dawson in my ear ominously. But it was curious to see how they did all fall back in two lines, those that had hats taking them off as Don Lopez passed, he bowing to them right and left, like any prince in his progress.
So we up to the castillo, where all the men of the village are assembled and all armed like Don Lopez, and