except Prometheus alone. Here his eternal
agony and boundless despair might not have been out of place.

There was no comfort in the river. It came out of unknown and inhospitable
mystery, and went into a mystery equally unknown and inhospitable. To what
fate it might lead was as uncertain as whence it arrived. A sombre flood,
reddish brown in certain lights, studded with rocks which raised ghosts of
unmoving foam, flowing with a speed which perpetually boiled and eddied,
promising nothing to the voyager but thousand-fold shipwreck, a breathless
messenger from the mountains to the ocean, it wheeled incessantly from
stony portal to stony portal, a brief gleam of power and cruelty. The
impression which it produced was in unison with the sublime malignity and
horror of the landscape.

Depressed by fatigue, the desperate situation of the party, and the menace
of the frightful scene around her, Mrs. Stanley could not and would not
speak to Thurstane when he mounted the roof, and turned away to hide the
tears in her eyes.

"You see I am housekeeping," said Clara with a smile. "Look how clean the
room in the tower has been swept. I had some brooms made of tufted grass.
There are our beds in the corners. These hard-finished walls are really
handsome."

She stopped, hesitated a moment, looked at him anxiously, and then added,
"Have you seen Pepita?"

"Yes," he replied, deciding to be frank. "I think I have discovered her
tied to a tree."

"Oh! to be tortured!" exclaimed Clara, wringing her hands and beginning to
cry.

"We will ransom her," he hurried on. "I am going down to hold a parley
with the Apaches."

"_You_!" exclaimed the girl, catching his arm. "Oh no! Oh, why did we come
here!"

Fearing lest he should be persuaded to evade what he considered his duty,
he pressed her hand fervently and hurried away. Yes, he repeated, it was
_his_ duty; to parley with the Apaches was a most dangerous enterprise; he
did not feel at liberty to order any other to undertake it.

Finding Coronado, he said to him, "I am going down to ransom Pepita. You
know the Indians better than I do. How many people shall I take?"

A gleam of satisfaction shot across the dark face of the Mexican as he
replied, "Go alone."

"Certainly," he insisted, in response to the officer's stare of surprise.
"If you take a party, they'll doubt you. If you go alone, they'll parley.
But, my dear Lieutenant, you are magnificent. This is the finest moment of