"I hope so, captain; but in the meanwhile I do not think it advisable to spend the night here in contemplating what there is at the base of this species of precipice, and I think we should not do wrong in returning to the forest, or seeking the road that leads to the place that lies before us."
"It is too late to dream of getting any nearer the city today. As for the road, we shall find it by bearing a little to the right, for the ground seems to trend in that direction."
"In that case, captain, we must put off the affair till tomorrow."
"Yes; and now let us return to the llama."
And joining action to words, Leon turned back, and exactly following the track which his body had left in the grass, he soon found himself—as did Wilhelm, who followed all his movements—once again on the skirt of the forest.
The silence which reigns at midday beneath these gloomy arches of foliage and branches had been succeeded by the hoarse sounds of a savage concert composed of the shrill cries of the nocturnal birds, which awoke, and prepared to dash at the loritos and hummingbirds belated far from their nests; of the yells of the pumas, and the hypocritical and plaintive miaulings of the tigers and panthers, whose echoes were hurled back in mournful notes by the roofs of the inaccessible caverns and the yawning pits which served as the lurking places of these dangerous guests.
Going back along the road which they had traced with the axe, the smugglers soon afterwards found themselves close to a fire of dead leaves and branches burning in the centre of a clearing. Some fifteen yards from them a magnificent llama, carelessly lying at the foot of a tree, watched them approach, and fixed on them its large eyes as melancholy and intelligent as those of a stag, though it did not appear at all astonished or startled by their presence.
"Well, Jemmy, my boy, you were not tired of waiting for us?" Wilhelm said, as he went up to the animal and patted it on the neck.
Leon threw a few branches on the fire, which was beginning to decay.
"On my honour, captain, I am not curious," the German continued, "but I should like to know what you intend doing with this llama which we have dragged after us for the last fortnight? Now that we have reached our journey's end, do you not think it time to kill and roast it?"