LA BARRANCA.
As soon as Valentine was suspended from the abrupt edge of the precipice, and obliged to ascertain carefully where to place his foot, his excitement was dispersed to give place to the cool and lucid determination of the brave man. The task he had undertaken was not an easy one. In his perilous descent his eyes became useless to him; his hands and feet were his only guides. Often did he feel the stone upon which he thought he had placed his foot firmly crumble as he began to trust his weight to it, and the branch he had seized break in his grasp.
But firm in his resolution, he kept descending, following as far as was possible the track of his dog, who at a short distance beneath him stopped, from time to time, to guide him by his yelpings.
Presently he stopped to take breath, still continuing to repeat to his dog the words he had never ceased to cry from the commencement of his descent—
"Find her, Cæsar, find her!"
Suddenly the dog was mute. Much alarmed, Valentine renewed his call. It then appeared to him that, at about twenty feet below the spot where he then was, he could perceive a white form; but its outlines were so vague and indistinct that he thought he must be the sport of an illusion, and he ventured to lean still further over, to assure himself that he was not deceived.
At this moment, he felt himself strongly pulled back. Like a man delivered from a frightful nightmare, he took a confused glance around him. Cæsar with his forepaws firmly fixed upon the rock, was holding the end of his poncho in his clenched teeth.
"Can you reply to me now?" the Linda said.
"Perfectly, señorita," he replied.
"You will help me to save my daughter?"
"It was in search of her that I descended."
"Thanks, caballero!" she said, fervently; "she is close by."
Doña Rosario was lying insensible caught in some thick bushes hanging over an abyss of more than a thousand feet in depth! On perceiving her, Valentine's first impression was a feeling of wild terror. But as soon as the first moment was past, and he could look at her coolly, he became satisfied that she was in perfect safety.
All this had required much time, and the storm had subsided by degrees; the mist was clearing off and the sun had reappeared. Valentine then became aware of all the horror of the situation which the darkness had till then concealed from him.
To reascend was impossible; to descend was still worse. From the clump of myrtles near which they were, the walls of the precipice descended in a plumb line, without any salient point upon which a foot could be placed. One step forward was death.
The Linda saw nothing, thought of nothing, for she had her daughter to look at. In vain Valentine racked his brains to discover some means of overcoming this apparently insuperable difficulty. A bark from Cæsar made him raise his head. Louis had found the means which Valentine had despaired of finding. Collecting the lassos which Chilian horsemen always have suspended from their saddles, he had fastened them tightly together and had formed two ropes, which he let down the precipice.
Valentine uttered a cry of joy. Rosario was saved! As soon as the lassos were within his reach he seized them and quickly constructed a chair; but here a new difficulty presented itself; how was it possible to get the insensible girl from amidst the tangled growth?
"Wait a minute!" exclaimed Linda, and bounding like a panther, she sprang into the centre of the tangled mass, which bent under her feet, took her daughter in her arms, and with a spring as sure and as rapid as the first, regained the edge of the precipice.
The young man then tied Doña Rosario in the chair, and then made a signal for hoisting it. The Aucas warriors, directed by Louis, drew the lassos gently and firmly upwards, whilst Valentine and the Linda, clinging as well as they could to points of rocks and bushes, kept the young lady steady, and secured her from collision with the sharp stones that might have wounded her.
As soon as Don Tadeo perceived his daughter, he rushed towards her with a hoarse articulate cry, and pressing her to his panting breast he sobbed aloud, shedding a flood of tears.
"Oh!" cried the girl, clinging with childish terror to her father, and clasping her arms round his neck, "father! father! I thought I must have died!"
"My child," said Don Tadeo, "your mother was the first to fly to your assistance."
The Linda's face glowed with happiness, and she held out her arms to her daughter, with a supplicating look. Rosario looked at her with a mixture of fear and tenderness, and made a motion as if to throw herself into the arms that were open to her; but she suddenly checked herself.
"Oh I cannot! I cannot!"
The Linda heaved a heavy sigh, wiped the tears which inundated her cheeks, and retired on one side.
The two Frenchmen inwardly enjoyed the sight of the happiness of Don Tadeo, happiness which in part he owed to them. The Chilian approached them, pressed their hands warmly, and then turning to Rosario, said—
"My child, love these two gentlemen, you never can discharge your debt to them."
Both the young men blushed.
"Come, come, Don Tadeo," cried Valentine, "we have lost too much time already. To horse, and let us be gone!"
In spite of the roughness of this reply, Doña Rosario, who comprehended the delicacy that had dictated it, gave the young man a look of ineffable sweetness.
The party resumed their march. The Linda was henceforward treated with respect by all. The pardon of Don Tadeo, a pardon so nobly granted, had reinstated her in their eyes. Doña Rosario herself sometimes unconsciously smiled upon her, although she could not yet feel courage enough to respond to her caresses.
At the expiration of an hour they reached the "Sorcerer's Leap." At this place the mountain was divided in two by a fissure of inconceivable depth, and about twenty-five feet wide.
This difficult passage has been thus named by the Aucas because, according to the legend, at the period when the conquest of Araucania was attempted, a Huiliche sorcerer, being closely pursued by Castilian soldiers, leaped without hesitation over the chasm, sustained in his perilous passage by the genii of the air. Whatever be the truth of this legend, a bridge exists now, and our travellers passed over it without accident.
"Ah!" Trangoil-Lanec exclaimed, "now we have room before us, we are safe!"
"Not yet," Curumilla replied, pointing with his finger to a thin column of blue smoke, which curled up towards the heavens.
"Ooch!" replied the chief, "Can that be the Black Serpents again? Can they have preceded instead of pursuing us? How does it happen that they venture in this manner upon the Chilian territory? We had better retire for the night."