ivers heard close upon five hundred years ago, when he came with his
English archers to help conquer the wild place. El Gran Capitan, too, had
come here, a lonely exile, after all his splendid services to an
ungrateful king. He, too, had heard the singing of Loja's springs, not in
triumph, but in sorrow.

Down in the valley beyond, the river cried a warning to us; but we did not
heed, even when the road surface changed again to gluey mud; squelching
on, mile after mile, at the best pace we could, and saying always that
soon we should be on the Vega. So the dawn stole up and quivered on the
snows of the Sierra Nevada.

The moon was gone, and it must still be long before the sun would shine
over the mountains, when a black shadow like a great coffin deserted on
the road, gave me pause. I pulled up in haste, only just in time, and
could hardly believe I saw aright. But there was no illusion. We were on
the highway from the port of Malaga to Granada, yet here was a broken
bridge, a noble structure which should have outworn centuries, tumbling
into ruin.

The fall of the great central arch was no new thing, for moss and lichen
enamelled its jagged edges with green and gold. Some branches loosely
strewn across the road were the only signposts indicating this tragedy,
though perhaps it was a story as old as the great earthquake of
two-and-twenty years ago.

A yard or so more and we should have been over; but San Cristobal had not
forgotten us; and the next thing was, how to cross the river without a
bridge. I turned and went back, discovering wheel-tracks which showed an
obscure bye-path dipping over the edge of the embankment. I followed, and
beheld the ford, a little farther on in a baby forest, where a broad
stream lay in flood between low banks.

"We'll have to get through," I said, and drove the Gloria into the water.
If there should be mud--but there were stones instead; and with tiny waves
swishing among the spokes of her wheels she set out to rumble over.

"I believe she'll do it--" I had begun, when she gave a great hiss, as when
a blacksmith plunges a red-hot horseshoe into water; and a cloud of steam
gushed up. Still I forced her on, expecting each instant to hear some
fatal crash, while we plunged deeper into the stream. Now the little waves
splashed coldly across my feet. Would they mount to the carburetor, spoil
the ignition, or, still worse, would they crack the cylinders?

Neither of us spoke, and the ca