you tell me about your plan?"

"In a moment, at our return!--Oh, do not fear, Itchoua, I will tell
you!"

At this moment when his chest is heaving and his muscles are in action,
all his faculties doubled and exasperated by his trade, he does not
hesitate, Ramuntcho; in the present exaltation of his strength and of
his combativeness he knows no moral obstacles nor scruples. The idea
which came to his accomplice to associate himself with Itchoua frightens
him no longer. So much the worse! He will surrender to the advice of
that man of stratagem and of violence, even if he must go to the extreme
of kidnapping and housebreaking. He is, to-night, the rebel from whom
has been taken the companion of his life, the adored one, the one who
may not be replaced; he wants her, at the risk of everything.--And while
he thinks of her, in the progressive languor of that halt, he desires
her suddenly with his senses, in a young, savage outbreak, in a manner
unexpected and sovereign--

The immobility is prolonged, the respirations are calmer. And, while the
men shake their dripping caps, pass their hands on their foreheads to
wipe out drops of rain and perspiration that veil the eyes, the first
sensation of cold comes to them, of a damp and profound cold; their wet
clothes chill them, their thoughts weaken; little by little a sort of
torpor benumbs them in the thick darkness, under the incessant winter
rain.

They are accustomed to this, trained to cold and to dampness, they are
hardened prowlers who go to places where, and at hours when, other men
never appear, they are inaccessible to vague frights of the darkness,
they are capable of sleeping without shelter anywhere in the blackest of
rainy nights, in dangerous marshes or hidden ravines--

Now the rest has lasted long enough. This is the decisive instant when
the frontier is to be crossed. All muscles stiffen, ears stretch, eyes
dilate.

First, the skirmishers; then, one after another, the bundle carriers,
the box carriers, each one loaded with a weight of forty kilos, on the
shoulders or on the head. Slipping here and there among the round rocks,
stumbling in the water, everybody crosses, lands on the other shore.
Here they are on the soil of Spain! They have to cross, without gunshots
or bad meetings, a distance of two hundred metres to reach an isolated
farm which is the receiving shop of the chief of the Spanish smugglers,
and once more the game will have been played!

N