"Heaven help us!"
"If these are not your prayers, señores," said one fellow in Spanish, with a slight Murcian accent, "you had better betake yourselves to them, for in less than ten minutes you will be at the bottom of this terrible place, and be swept through the bowels of the mountain towards the Guadalquiver."
The man spoke gently and with some emotion; it was evident that his dreadful life had not yet obliterated every remnant of civilisation and humanity. There was, moreover, something terribly impressive in his words, when heard amid the hoarse rush of that deep and subterranean torrent, whose waters came we knew not from where, and traversed depths and caverns, of which we could have no conception, in their way to the valley below.
There was a refined cruelty in bringing us to such a place, and to die such a death; for the mind "shrunk back upon itself and trembled," when contemplating the dark profundity through which this mysterious torrent poured.
"Pray, good señores, pray," said this man, kindly again, as he touched me on the shoulder, "down upon your knees, for here comes the capitano, and he never tarries with his prisoners on the brink of the Rio de Muerte, or the Cima de Cabra."
"What does the fellow say?" asked poor Slingsby, who looked a little pale, and whose nether lip was tightly clenched.
"He bids us lose no time, but to pray."
"Pray!" reiterated Jack, fiercely; "I pray to Heaven only that my hands were loose for one moment, that I might strike a blow for life or for revenge."
"Threats are absurd, señor," said Fabrique de Urquija, throwing the end of his cigar with perfect deliberation into the chasm that yawned before us: "and bribes are alike useless——"
"Can it be, brave Spaniards," said I, becoming desperate, and encouraged by the evident sympathy of one to endeavour to soften the rest; "can it be that you will prove so cruel and so merciless to two unoffending strangers, who——"