A simultaneous "Ee-ye-ho! ee-yuch-yuch!" came from the striving men at this moment, and our British acquaintance, with a hasty "Good night!" hurried off to see the result. It was this time a successful one; the leaning diligence was plucked out, restored to an upright position, and its passengers were reassembled. Once more on its way, our conductor returned to his own coach; and, with the help of our postilion, reharnessed our horses. But the difficulty now was to start them. Tired with their unexpected task of having to tug at another and a stuck-fast diligence,—made startlish with having to stand in the rain and chill night air, in the open road, while the debates were going on as to the best method of attaching them to the sunken vehicle,—when once put back into their own traces, they took to rearing and kicking instead of proceeding. It is by no means amusing to sit in a diligence behind five plunging horses, on a cliff-road,—one edge of which overhangs the sea, and the other consists of a deep ditch or water-way, beneath a sheer upright rock,—"when rain and wind beat dark December"; and even after whip and whoop had succeeded in prevailing on the rearers and kickers to "take the road" again, that road proved so unprecedentedly bad as almost to render futile the struggles of the poor beasts. They did their best; they strained their haunches, they bent their heads forward, they actually made leaps of motion, in trying to lug the clogged wheels on through the sludge and clammy soil; but this was a mauvais pas, where the cantonniers' good offices in road-mending had been lately neglected, and it seemed almost an impossibility to get through with our tired cattle. However, the thing was achieved, and the town of San Remo at length reached.

Here, with a change of horses, it was now our turn to have a drunken postilion; whom our conductor, after seizing him by the collar with both hands, permitted to mount to his high seat and gather up the reins, there being no other driver to be had. Smacking his long whip with an energy that made the night-echoes resound far and wide, galloping his horses up hill at a rate that swayed the coach to and fro and threatened speedy upsetting, screaming and raving like a wild Indian uttering his battle-cry, our charioteer pursued his headlong course, until brought to a stop by something that suddenly obstructed his career.

A voice before us shouted out, "We must all go back to San Remo!"

A silence ensued; and then our conductor got down, running forward to see what was the matter. The three in the coupé saw their alert friend of the banquette descend; which caused Velvet-cap to bestir himself, and let down the window. Not obtaining any satisfactory information by looking out into the darkness and confusion, he opened the door also, and called to some one to help him forth. Whereupon he found himself in the arms of the maudlin postilion; who, taking him doubtless for some foreign lady passenger in great alarm, hugged him affectionately, stuttering out, "N'ayez pas peur! Point de danger! point de danger!"

"Get off with you, will you?" was the ejaculation from Velvet-cap, as he pushed away the man, and went in search of his alert friend.

The latter soon came running back to the coach-side, bidding the sisters get out quickly and come and look at what was well worth seeing.

It was indeed! There lay a gigantic mass of earth, stones, and trees, among which were several large blocks of solid rock, hurled across the road, showing a jagged outline against the night-sky, like an interposing mountain-barrier but just recently dropped in their path. The whole had fallen not an hour ago; and it was matter of congratulation to the four, that it had not done so at the very moment their diligence passed beneath.

There was nothing to be done but what the voice (which proved to be that of the conductor belonging to the other diligence) had proposed, namely, to go back to San Remo.

Here the travellers of both diligences soon arrived; the four, as they passed to their rooms, hearing the British accent on the landing, in disconsolate appeal to a waiter: "Oh!—look here,—sack, you know, sack, sack!"

"Oui, monsieur; votre sac de nuit. Il est en bas,—en bas, sur la diligence. On le montera bientôt."