The sun was sinking as we passed las Rozas, but there was still an hour of daylight before us, and it seemed a pity to waste such a beautiful evening, so we launched out venturously on to the{239} moors. At first we had fellow-voyagers;—a homeward ploughman with his yoke of oxen,—a shepherd with his whip—(is there any other region where shepherds use whips?)—and his droop-necked flock earing the ground towards their fold. But soon the dusk won its will, and the darkling track lay empty. The only survivor astir was the habitual belated arriero, with his team outspanned for the night and his waggon beached upon the margin of the road. The stars had already begun to flicker up in the heavens, and we could see that Torrelodones, the next village, must be Hobson’s choice for ourselves.
At Torrelodones, saith the proverb, are twenty-four burgesses and twenty-five thieves (the twenty-fifth being the curate); yet there is no innkeeper among so many. Bread and wine, however, were forthcoming at one of the cabins, and eggs at a second, which we got cooked at a third; and if anyone wanted to wash himself, was there not the fountain on the village green? Beds, however, were a different matter. A muleteer would have rolled himself up on the floor in his blanket; but we had no blankets, and did not fancy the floor. As for the reputation of the villagers, no doubt that was wholly unmerited; but we thought of{240} the fresh air of heaven, and the scent of the clean sweet herbage was borne in to us upon the breeze.
It was already dark when we quitted the hamlet, and the distant lights of Madrid were twinkling up at us from the misty plain below. But another beacon rose in sight as we breasted the surge of the moorland—a large brilliantly-lighted building, apparently right in front of us and only a few hundred yards away. What was it? Evidently no ordinary farmstead—the lights were so many and so small. But anyway it would not do to camp right under its windows, so the question was shelved unanswered. We wheeled aside from the roadway, and picked out a bedroom under the lee of a huge boulder which promised us shelter from the wind.
Anyone who has ever tried the experiment must be perfectly well aware that the delights of an extemporary bivouac are better imagined than endured; but we had not bargained to take our discomfort in exactly the form that it came. The last few nights we had spent at Toledo kicking the last sheets off our beds in a vain endeavour to get reposefully cool.[43] But the boot was on the other leg up here in the lap of the mountains. In vain{241} did we empty our knapsacks; we could not get the clothes to keep us warm. About midnight the wind veered. Our faithless boulder no longer gave us shelter; and as we rose to shift our berth, behold, there was that brilliantly lighted building still shining in front of us as steadily as before. What could it be, keeping this night-long vigil when all the rest of the world was asleep? But now the mist had cleared and our eyes had grown accustomed to the starlight, and the true solution of the riddle flashed suddenly across our minds. A dozen miles off at the least, on the further side of the intervening valley, the thousand windows of the Escorial were staring out unwinkingly into the night!
The stars seemed to travel very slowly across the zenith as we dozed through the dog-watches in our chilly nest. But at last a lightening in the east heralded the approach of dawn; and no sooner was there enough light to swear by than we were again upon the road, thankful for the excuse to work some warmth into our shivering limbs. Our teeth fairly chattered as we dipped into the cold shadowy hollows; but the level rays of the rising sun caught us as we topped the ridges, and cheered us with an ample promise of a warm time to come. It was{242} not long before our troubles were forgotten, and a big bowl of hot coffee at Villalba sent us to the pass like giants refreshed.
The Puerto de Navacerrada is one thousand feet higher than that of Guadarrama, and the road, being less frequented, is unfortunately not so well kept. But for all that it can be cordially recommended to the traveller, for it boasts far finer scenery as a reward for the extra toil. To our right the shadowy dome of the Great Iron Head cut a bold arc of purple out of the glowing eastern sky, while to our front and left lay the long serrated ridge of the Seven Pikes, a prominent landmark to travellers across the northern plains. The hillsides were draped from foot to summit with the rich purple mantle of the flowering hard-head, variegated with vivid splashes of gold where the broom had ousted its hardier rival; and every here and there the slope was broken by groves of pine, or jutting crags of grey granite, with the cool blue shadows sleeping at their feet. Looking back over our left shoulders along the southern face of the mountains, our eyes were caught by the towers of the Escorial rising up nobly from the lower slopes, and scarcely dwarfed even by their mountain background; while, a little nearer, the Vigo road—a pyramid of persevering{243} zigzags—was struggling up the face of the range to reach the Puerto de Guadarrama.
Our own pass rejoices in the possession of a multitude of summits, and the sixth or seventh of these (upon which we had really pinned our faith) disappointed us bitterly by abdicating in favour of another, distant at least an hour away. This last, however, was guaranteed genuine by the inevitable hall-mark of a caminero’s hut, and was, moreover, on such intimate terms with the Seven Pikes that we felt there was no room for deception.