"If you will follow my advice we will not remain any longer here; the animal, I suspect, has gone down to drink, and will speedily return; let us not wait for it, but profit by its absence to be off."
The three men enthusiastically applauded the hunter's proposal; for, although of tried bravery, the contest appeared to them so disproportionate with this redoubtable adversary, that they did not at all desire to come face to face with it.
"Let us be off," they eagerly shouted.
Suddenly the sound of breaking branches was audible in the forest, and a formidable growling troubled the silence of night.
"It is too late," Valentine said; "here is the enemy, the fight will be a tough one."
The hunters leaned against the wall of rock, side by side, and in a few moments the hideous head of the grizzly appeared among the trees on a level with the platform.
"We are lost," Don Miguel muttered as he cocked his rifle; "for any flight from this rock is impossible."
"Who knows?" Valentine answered. "Heaven has done so much for us up to the present, that we should be ungrateful to suppose that we shall be abandoned in this new peril."
[1] This episode, incredible as it may appear, is rigorously true.—G.A.