"Well."
"All has been useless: even now, I believe that my terror increases with my efforts to overcome it."
"What! You who are so brave!"
"My friend," the general answered with a sad smile, "courage is an affair of the nerves; it is no more possible for a man to be constantly brave than to be continually a coward; there are days when the matter overcomes the intellect, and physical feelings gain the upper hand over the moral. On those days the most intrepid man is afraid; and this is one of those days with me, that is all."
"Come, my friend," Valentine answered, "reflect a little; hang it all; you cannot remain here—returning is impossible; make a virtue of necessity."
"All you say to me," the general interrupted him, "I have said to myself; and I repeat to you, that, sooner than venture by that cord, I would blow out my brains."
"Why, that is madness," the hunter shouted; "there is no common sense in it."
"Call it what you like; I understand as well as you do how ridiculous I am, but it is stronger than I am."
Valentine stamped his foot angrily as he looked across at his comrades, who, collected on the other side of the barranca, knew not to what to attribute this incomprehensible delay.
"Listen, general," he said, after a moment's delay. "I will not desert you thus, whatever may happen; too many reasons connect us for me to leave you to perish of hunger on this rock; you do not live nearly a year with a man in the desert, sharing with him dangers, cold and heat, hunger and thirst, to separate in this way. If it be really impossible for you to cross the canyon as your comrades have done, and will leave me to act, I will find other means."