"Very good, now you can sleep if you think proper."
"Then you have nothing more to say to me?"
"Nothing."
"In that case I will avail myself of the permission you are kind enough to grant me, and try to make up for lost time."
The soldier then rose, stiffing a long yawn, walked a few paces off, lay down on the ground, and seemed within a few minutes plunged in a deep sleep.
The Captain remained awake. The conversation he had held with his guide only increased his anxiety, by proving to him that this man concealed great cunning beneath an abrupt and trivial manner. In fact, he had not answered one of the questions asked him, and after a few minutes had succeeded in making the Captain turn from the offensive to the defensive, by giving him speciously logical arguments to which the officer was unable to raise any objection.
Don Juan was, therefore at this moment in the worst temper a man of honour can be in, who is dissatisfied with himself and others, fully convinced that he was in the right, but compelled, to a certain extent, to allow himself in the wrong.
The soldiers, as generally happens in such cases, suffered from their chief's ill temper; for the officer, afraid of adding the darkness to the evil chances he fancied he had against him, and not at all desirous to be surprised by night in the inextricable windings of the forest, cut the halt short much sooner than he would have done under different circumstances.
At about two o'clock P.M. he ordered the boot and saddle to be sounded, and gave the word to start.
The greatest heat of the day had passed over, the sunbeams being more oblique, had lost a great deal of their power, and the march was continued under conditions comparatively better than those which preceded it.