arm and his joint stool by
the leg, and stepping back a pace or two not to be taken in the flank,
he swings his stool ready to dash the brains out of the first that nears
him. And I do likewise, making the same show of valour with my stool,
but cutting a poor figure beside Dawson's mighty presence.

Seeing their fellow laid out for dead on the floor, with his hook nose
smashed most horridly into his face, the others had no stomach to meet
the same fate, but with their Spanish cunning began to spread out that
so they might attack us on all sides; and surely this had done our
business but that Don Lopez, flinging himself before us with his knife
raised high, cries out at the top of his voice, "Rekbah!"--a word of
their own language, I am told, taken from the Moorish, and signifying
that whosoever shall outrage the laws of hospitality under his roof
shall be his enemy to the death. And at this word every man stood still
as if by inchantment, and let fall his weapon. Then in the same high
voice he gives them an harangue, showing them that Dawson was in the
right to avenge an insult offered his daughter, and the other justly
served for his offence to us. "For his offence to me as the host of
these strangers," adds he, "Jose shall answer to me hereafter if he
live; if he be dead, his body shall be flung to the vultures of the
gorge, and his name be never uttered again beneath this roof."

"I bear no grudges, not I," says Dawson, when Don Sanchez gave him the
English of this. "If he live, let his nose be set; and if dead, let him
be buried decently in a churchyard. But hark ye, Senor, lest we fall out
again and come out worse the next bout, do pray ask his worship if we
may not be accommodated with a guide to take us on our way at once. We
have yet two hours of daylight before us, there's not a cloud in the
sky, and with such a moon as we had the night before last, we may get on
well enough."

Poor Moll, who was all of a shake with the terror of another
catastrophe, added her prayers to Dawson's, and Don Sanchez with a
profusion of civilities laid the proposal before Don Lopez, who, though
professing the utmost regret to lose us so soon, consented to gratify
our wish, adding that his mules were so well accustomed to the road that
they could make the journey as well in the dark as in broad day.

"Well, then," says Dawson, when this was told us, "let us settle the
business at once, and be off."

And now, when Don Sanchez pr