LA BARRANCA.
As soon as Valentine was suspended from the abrupt edge of the
precipice, and obliged to ascertain carefully where to place his foot,
his excitement was dispersed to give place to the cool and lucid
determination of the brave man. The task he had undertaken was not an
easy one. In his perilous descent his eyes became useless to him; his
hands and feet were his only guides. Often did he feel the stone upon
which he thought he had placed his foot firmly crumble as he began to
trust his weight to it, and the branch he had seized break in his grasp.
But firm in his resolution, he kept descending, following as far as
was possible the track of his dog, who at a short distance beneath him
stopped, from time to time, to guide him by his yelpings.
Presently he stopped to take breath, still continuing to repeat to his
dog the words he had never ceased to cry from the commencement of his
descent--
"Find her, Cæsar, find her!"
Suddenly the dog was mute. Much alarmed, Valentine renewed his call. It
then appeared to him that, at about twenty feet below the spot where
he then was, he could perceive a white form; but its outlines were
so vague and indistinct that he thought he must be the sport of an
illusion, and he ventured to lean still further over, to assure himself
that he was not deceived.
At this moment, he felt himself strongly pulled back. Like a man
delivered from a frightful nightmare, he took a confused glance around
him. Cæsar with his forepaws firmly fixed upon the rock, was holding
the end of his poncho in his clenched teeth.
"Can you reply to me now?" the Linda said.
"Perfectly, señorita," he replied.
"You will help me to save my daughter?"
"It was in search of her that I descended."
"Thanks, caballero!" she said, fervently; "she is close by."
Doña Rosario was lying insensible caught in some thick bushes hanging
over an abyss of more than a thousand feet in depth! On perceiving
her, Valentine's first impression was a feeling of wild terror. But as
soon as the first moment was past, and he could look at her coolly, he
became satisfied that she was in perfect safety.
All this had required much time, and the storm had subsided by degrees;
the mist was clearing off and the sun had reappeared. Valentine then
became aware of all the horror of the situation which the darkness had
till then concealed from him.
To reascend was impossible; to descend was still worse. From the clump
of myrtles near which they were, the walls of the precipice descended
in a plumb line, without any salient point upon which a foot could be
placed. One step forward was death.
The Linda saw nothing, thought of nothing, for she had her daughter to
look at. In vain Valentine racked his brains to discover some means of
overcoming this apparently insuperable difficulty. A bark from Cæsar
made him raise his head. Louis had found the means which Valentine had
despaired of finding. Collecting the lassos which Chilian horsemen
always have suspended from their saddles, he had fastened them tightly
together and had formed two ropes, which he let down the precipice.
Valentine uttered a cry of joy. Rosario was saved! As soon as the
lassos were within his reach he seized them and quickly constructed a
chair; but here a new difficulty presented itself; how was it possible
to get the insensible girl from amidst the tangled growth?
"Wait a minute!" exclaimed Linda, and bounding like a panther, she
sprang into the centre of the tangled mass, which bent under her feet,
took her daughter in her arms, and with a spring as sure and as rapid
as the first, regained the edge of the precipice.
The young man then tied Doña Rosario in the chair, and then made a
signal for hoisting it. The Aucas warriors, directed by Louis, drew
the lassos gently and firmly upwards, whilst Valentine and the Linda,
clinging as well as they could to points of rocks and bushes, kept the
young lady steady, and secured her from collision with the sharp stones
that might have wounded her.
As soon as Don Tadeo perceived his daughter, he rushed towards her with
a hoarse articulate cry, and pressing her to his panting breast he
sobbed aloud, shedding a flood of tears.
"Oh!" cried the girl, clinging with childish terror to her father, and
clasping her arms round his neck, "father! father! I thought I must
have died!"
"My child," said Don Tadeo, "your mother was the first to fly to your
assistance."
The Linda's face glowed with happiness, and she held out her arms to
her daughter, with a supplicating look. Rosario looked at her with
a mixture of fear and tenderness, and made a motion as if to throw
herself into the arms that were open to her; but she suddenly checked
herself.
"Oh I cannot! I cannot!"
The Linda heaved a heavy sigh, wiped the tears which inundated her
cheeks, and retired on one side.
The two Frenchmen inwardly enjoyed the sight of the happiness of Don
Tadeo, happiness which in part he owed to them. The Chilian approached
them, pressed their hands warmly, and then turning to Rosario, said--
"My child, love these two gentlemen, you never can discharge your debt
to them."
Both the young men blushed.
"Come, come, Don Tadeo," cried Valentine, "we have lost too much time
already. To horse, and let us be gone!"
In spite of the roughness of this reply, Doña Rosario, who comprehended
the delicacy that had dictated it, gave the young man a look of
ineffable sweetness.
The party resumed their march. The Linda was henceforward treated with
respect by all. The pardon of Don Tadeo, a pardon so nobly granted,
had reinstated her in their eyes. Doña Rosario herself sometimes
unconsciously smiled upon her, although she could not yet feel courage
enough to respond to her caresses.
At the expiration of an hour they reached the "Sorcerer's Leap."
At this place the mountain was divided in two by a fissure of
inconceivable depth, and about twenty-five feet wide.
This difficult passage has been thus named by the Aucas because,
according to the legend, at the period when the conquest of Araucania
was attempted, a Huiliche sorcerer, being closely pursued by Castilian
soldiers, leaped without hesitation over the chasm, sustained in his
perilous passage by the genii of the air. Whatever be the truth of this
legend, a bridge exists now, and our travellers passed over it without
accident.
"Ah!" Trangoil-Lanec exclaimed, "now we have room before us, we are
safe!"
"Not yet," Curumilla replied, pointing with his finger to a thin column
of blue smoke, which curled up towards the heavens.
"Ooch!" replied the chief, "Can that be the Black Serpents again? Can
they have preceded instead of pursuing us? How does it happen that they
venture in this manner upon the Chilian territory? We had better retire
for the night."