ginning to flag a little in
his pace with the fatigue of our long ride.

The sun set behind the high trees of an island that bounded my view
westward, and there being little or no twilight in those southerly
latitudes, the broad day was almost instantaneously replaced by the
darkness of night. I could proceed no further without losing the track of
the three horsemen; and as I happened to be close to an island, I fastened
my mustang to a branch with the lasso, and threw myself on the grass under
the trees.

This night, however, I had no fancy for tobacco. Neither the cigars nor
the _dulcissimus_ tempted me. I tried to sleep, but in vain. Once or twice
I began to doze, but was roused again by violent cramps and twitchings in
all my limbs. There is nothing more horrible than a night passed in the
way I passed that one, faint and weak, enduring torture from hunger and
thirst, striving after sleep and never finding it. I can only compare the
sensation of hunger I experienced to that of twenty pairs of pincers
tearing at my stomach.

With the first grey light of morning I got up and prepared for departure.
It was a long business, however, to get my horse ready. The saddle, which
at other times I could throw upon his back with two fingers, now seemed
made of lead, and it was as much as I could do to lift it. I had still
more difficulty to draw the girths tight; but at last I accomplished this,
and scrambling upon my beast, rode off. Luckily my mustang's spirit was
pretty well taken out of him by the last two days' work; for if he had
been fresh, the smallest spring on one side would have sufficed to throw
me out of the saddle. As it was, I sat upon him like an automaton, hanging
forward over his neck, some times grasping the mane, and almost unable to
use either rein or spur.

I had ridden on for some hours in this helpless manner, when I came to a
place where the three horsemen whose track I was following had apparently
made a halt, perhaps passed the previous night. The grass was trampled and
beaten down in a circumference of some fifty or sixty feet, and there was
a confusion in the horse tracks as if they had ridden backwards and
forwards. Fearful of losing the right trace, I was looking carefully about
me to see in what direction they had recommenced their journey, when I
noticed something white amongst the long grass. I got off my horse to pick
it up. It was a piece of paper with my own name written upon it; and I
re