But even with this help it was extremely difficult to force our way through the tangled undergrowth, which we had several times to attack, sword in hand, and none of us were sorry when Gahra announced that we had reached the end.

“Por todos los santos! But this is fairyland!” exclaimed Carmen, who was just before me.  “I never saw anything so beautiful.”

He might well say so.  We were on the shore of a mountain-tarn, into whose clear depths the crescent moon, looking calmly down, saw its image reflected as in a silver mirror.  Lilies floated on its waters, ferns and flowering shrubs bent over them, the air was fragrant with sweet smells, and all around uprose giant trees with stems as round and smooth as the granite columns of a great cathedral; and, as it seemed in that dim religious light, high enough to support the dome of heaven.

I was so lost in admiration of this marvellous scene that my companions had unsaddled and were leading their horses down to the water before I thought of dismounting from mine.

Apart from the beauty of the spot, we could have found none more suitable for a bivouac!  We were in safety and our horses in clover, and, tethering them with the lariats, we left them to graze.  Gahra gathered leaves and twigs and kindled a fire, for the air at that height was fresh, and we were lightly clad.  We cooked our tasajo on the embers, and after smoking the calumet of peace, rolled ourselves in our cobijas, laid our heads on our saddles, and slept the sleep of the just.

CHAPTER XIII.

ON THE LLANOS.

Only a moment ago the land had been folded in the mantle of darkness.  Now, a flaming eye rises from the ground at some immeasurable distance, like an outburst of volcanic fire.  It grows apace, chasing away the night and casting a ruddy glow on, as it seems, a vast and waveless sea, as still as the painted ocean of the poem, as silent as death, a sea without ships and without life, mournful and illimitable, and as awe-inspiring and impressive as the Andes or the Alps.

So complete is the illusion that did I not know we were on the verge of the llanos I should be tempted to believe that supernatural agency had transported us while we slept to the coasts of the Caribbean Sea or the yet more distant shores of the Pacific Ocean.

Six days are gone by since we left our bivouac by the mountain-tarn:  three we have wandered in the woods under the guidance of Gahra, three sought Mejia and his guerillas, who, being always on the move, are hard to find.  Last night we reached the range of hills which form, as it were, the northern coast-line of the vast series of savannas which stretch from the tropics to the Straits of Magellan; and it is now a question whether we shall descend to the llanos or continue our search in the sierra.

“It was there I left him,” said Carmen, pointing to a quebrada some ten miles away.