"What do you think of this weather, chief?" the count asked anxiously to Trangoil-Lanec.
"Bad—very bad," the latter replied, "unless we could possibly pass the Sorcerer's Leap."
"Are we in danger, then?"
"We are lost," the Indian replied.
"Hum! that is not very comforting," said Valentine. "Do you think, then, that the peril is so great?"
"Much greater than I can tell my brother. Do you think it possible to resist the hurricane, here?"
"That is true," Valentine muttered, hanging his head. "May Heaven preserve us!"
In fact the situation of the travellers appeared desperate. They were following one of those roads cut in the living rock which wind round the Andes, a road of scarcely four feet in its greatest width, which on one side was bordered by a wall of granite more than a thousand feet high, and on the other by precipices of incalculable depth, at the bottom of which invisible waters coursed with dull, mysterious murmurs. In such a spot all hope of safety seemed little short of madness. And yet the travellers proceeded, advancing in Indian file—that is, one after the other, silent and gloomy.
"Are we still far from the Sorcerer's Leap?" Valentine asked, after a long silence.
"We are approaching it," Trangoil-Lanec replied.