the Indians, with their short, quick step,
covered mile after mile of the uneven, rocky road, without the slightest
apparent effort or any visible sign of distress. Then it began to dawn
upon him gradually that, even should he find a suitable opportunity to
give his custodians the slip, they could easily run him down and
recapture him. Besides, he was by no means certain that he could now
find his way back to the camp. He had not the remotest notion of the
direction in which the camp lay, for during many hours of his journey he
had been asleep, and the Indians were not only continually changing the
direction of their travel, but were apparently taking a constant
succession of short cuts across country, now winding their way for a
mile or two along the face of some dizzy precipice by means of a ledge
only a foot or two in width, anon clambering some hundreds of feet up or
down an almost vertical rock face, where a slip or a false step meant
instant death; now crossing some ghastly chasm by means of a frail and
dilapidated suspension bridge constructed of cables of maguey fibres and
floored with rotten planking, which swung to the tread until the
oscillation threatened to precipitate the entire party into the terrible
abyss that yawned beneath them, and perhaps half an hour later forcing
their way, slowly and with infinite labour and difficulty, up the
boulder-strewn bed of some half-dry mountain stream that was liable at
any moment--if there happened to be rain higher up among the hills--to
become swollen into a raging, foaming, irresistible torrent, against the
impetuous fury of which no man could stand for an instant. To do the
Indians no more than the barest justice, they were to the last degree
solicitous to spare their prisoner the least fatigue, and repeatedly
assured him that there was not the slightest necessity for him to walk a
single step of the way, while whenever there was the barest possibility
of danger there was always a sufficient number of them within arm's
reach to render him every required assistance, and to ensure that no
harm should possibly befall him. But although continuous travelling
hour after hour over such very difficult ground became at last most
horribly fatiguing. Harry set his teeth and plodded grimly on. He was
not going to let "those copper-coloured chaps" suppose that they could
tire an Englishman out, not he! Besides, he wished to become accustomed
to the work against the time