"Have patience with me, Matthew," says I, seeing I had wounded his feelings by laughing at his terror. "I have been so unhappy that this change in our fortune has turned my head."
"Lord love you, master," says he kindly, "I like a jest as well as any man, but hang me if I see any joking matter here, or any change of fortune to be charmed with. For at the next station De Pino will get all the Portugals he can to return with his own fellows to restore this bridge, so we are like to have a score of arquebuses against us instead of ten or a dozen."
This brought our danger and our difficulties so clearly to my mind that I grew sober at once, and began to cast about with Matthew very earnestly how we might bridge the chasm. But there was nothing there for such a purpose, and there was no way but to climb up the rocks or down until we found some jutting points by which we could scramble along the face of the mountain. After calculating by which method we were least likely to break our necks, we resolved to go upwards, yet had we to go back some way to get at any part that could be scaled. But after climbing up some fifty feet we found ourselves (thanks be to God) on a ledge of smooth rock, which we had not seen from the road below for its height and the rock that overhung it. This ledge, as I judge, had been formed by a slip in the mountain, for there a seam of glittering rock ran all along beside it; but be that as it may, it formed a level path as good as that we had quitted, and better, though mighty narrow in parts, so that it was a ticklish business to go forward, and that sideways and clinging with every nail to the rock; and the narrowest part was (as luck would have it) just over that part where the bridge had been broken away, so that we felt exceeding grateful to Providence when we were safe on the other side.
We now considered whether we should get down again into the made road, but seeing the side was still vastly steep and difficult to descend, we were content to follow our ledge, in the hope we should presently come to a part where we might descend more easily. We had gone about a hundred yards when, looking over the side, I stopped, and called Matthew's attention to the road below.
"Lord love us, master," cried he, casting his eye down, "why, there's another bridge gone!"
There was, indeed, another great gap in the road, not less extensive than the first.
"Can you make out what this signifies?" says Matthew.
"No," says I. "'Tis no accident, that's pretty clear; and it looks as if it were done of a design to check pursuit."
"What pursuit had they for to fear?" says Matthew; "not ours, to be sure." Then scratching his head, after tilting his hat for'ard, as was his wont, he says, half aloud, as if trying to grasp the points of the problem: "They are going south; they cross the first bridge and come to the second. They destroy that so carefully that not a stick is left; go back, cross the first bridge again, and pull that down as carefully as they served the other." He could make nothing of it, which seemed to exasperate him; for he presently claps his hat back in its place, and dropping on his hands and knees, the better to survey the road, cranes over the edge of the rock, casting his eye to the right, and then to the left, and finally fixing it on the ground beneath.
"Master," says he, "do you tell me what marks you see in the road down there."