As we leave the valley, through a pass no wider than a gateway, the cacique gives me a word of warning.

“The part we are coming to is the most dangerous of all,” he said.  “But it is, fortunately, not long.  Two hours will bring us to a sheltered valley.  And now leave everything to your mule.  If you feel nervous shut your eyes, but as you value your life neither tighten your reins nor try to guide him.”

I repeat this caution to Gahra, and ask how he feels.

“Much better, senor; the sunshine has given me new life.  I feel equal to anything.”

And now we have to travel once more in single file, for the path runs along a mountain spur almost as perpendicular as a wall; we are between two precipices, down which even the boldest cannot look without a shudder.  The incline, moreover, is rapid, and from time to time we come to places where the ridge is so broken and insecure that we have to dismount, let our mules go first, and creep after them on our hands.

At the head of the file is an Indian who rides the madrina (a mare) and acts as guide, next come Gondocori, myself and Gahra, followed by the other mounted Indians, three or four baggage-mules, and two men on foot.

We have been going thus nearly an hour, when a sudden and portentous change sets in.  Murky clouds gather round the higher summits and shut out the sun, a thick mist settles down on the ridge, and in a few minutes we are folded in a gloom hardly less dense than midnight darkness.

“Halt!” shouts the guide.

“What shall we do?” I ask the cacique, whom, though he is but two yards from me, I cannot see.

“Nothing.  We can only wait here till the mist clears away,” he shouts in a muffled voice.

“And how soon may that be?”

“Quien Sabe? Perhaps a few minutes, perhaps hours.”

Hours!  To stand for hours, even for one hour, immovable in that mist on that ridge would be death.  Since the sun disappeared the cold had become keener than ever.  The blood seems to be freezing in my veins, my beard is a block of ice, icicles are forming on my eyelids.

If this goes on—­a gleam of light!  Thank Heaven, the mist is lifting, just enough to enable me to see Gondocori and the guide.  They are quite white.  It is snowing, yet so softly as not to be felt, and as the fog melts the flakes fall faster.

“Let us go on,” says Gondocori.  “Better roll down the precipice than be frozen to death.  And if we stop here much longer, and the snow continues, the pass beyond will be blocked, and then we must die of hunger and cold, for there is no going back.”

So we move on, slowly and noiselessly, amid the fast-falling snow, like a company of ghosts, every man conscious that his life depends on the sagacity and sure-footedness of his mule.  And it is wonderful how wary the creatures are.  They literally feel their way, never putting one foot forward until the other is firmly planted.  But the snow confuses them.  More than once my mule slips dangerously, and I am debating within myself whether I should not be safer on foot, when I hear a cry in front.