The relief brought by food and drink after their privation, and the delightful peace of calm security after their strenuous exertions, induced a languid drowsiness that became sleep almost as soon as the boys had lain down.
A cold night wind came down off the high mountains and whistled and wailed through the little ravine, but the boys in their cave were out of its course, and its moaning, instead of disturbing them, made them sleep sounder. As they had gone to sleep, however, with the closing-in of night, the long hours before morning brought thorough rest, and they were awake by break of day.
Raymond proposed that they should go up after their blankets before eating breakfast, and so perhaps get ahead of any early wood-chopper. The slope did not look so long as it had seemed the night before, and they were soon halfway up it. At that height they could see the village from which they had escaped, looking, from that distance, like a collection of big rocks. And they saw, too, coming on the trail which they had taken in the dark, a man who was driving a donkey ahead of him.
“There’s our wood-chopper, Ray,” said Sidney, “and he’s going to reach the blankets ahead of us.”
“Oh, well, he can’t get away with them, and we can take care of one man all right.”
Hurry as the boys might, the man with the donkey arrived first. He was, apparently, ignorant that there was any one near him, but the boys were sure that he must have seen them on the bare slope. When he came to the blankets he stopped and examined them for a moment, then quickly gathering them up, he threw them across the donkey and started on.
“Hold on, there!” shouted Raymond.
The man, however, instead of stopping, tried to whip his donkey to a swifter gait. But the little animal was so used to traveling at a walk that it could not be persuaded to go faster, and the boys soon overhauled them.
Raymond ran up on one side of the donkey, and taking hold of his head, stopped him. [The man, on the other side, drew a wicked-looking knife] and reaching across the animal’s back made a lunge at Raymond. Sidney, who was a few steps behind, saw the movement and cried a warning to his brother, who leaped back in time to avoid the thrust.
