guide is gone. The _madrina_ slipped, and both have rolled down the
precipice."

"Shall we get off and walk?"

"If you like. You will not be any safer, though you may feel so. The mules
are surer footed than we are, and they have four legs to our two. I shall
keep where I am."

Not caring to show myself less courageous than the _cacique_, I also keep
where I am. We get down the ridge somehow without further mishaps, and
after a while find ourselves in a funnel-shaped gully the passage of
which, in ordinary circumstances, would probably present no difficulty.
But just now it is a veritable battle-field of the winds, which seem to
blow from every point of the compass at once. The snow dashes against our
faces like spray from the ocean, and whirls round us in blasts so fierce
that, at times, we can neither see nor hear. The mules, terrified and
exhausted, put down their heads and stand stock-still. We dismount and try
to drag them after us, but even then they refuse to move.

"If they won't come they must die; and unless we hurry on we shall die,
too. Forward!" cried Gondocori, himself setting the example.

Never did I battle so hard for very life as in that gully. The snow nearly
blinded me, the wind took my breath away, forced me backward, and beat me
to the earth again and again. More than once it seemed as if we should
have to succumb, and then there would come a momentary lull and we would
make another rush and gain a little more ground.

Amid all the hurly-burly, though I cannot think consecutively (all the
strength of my body and every faculty of my mind being absorbed in the
struggle), I have one fixed idea--not to lose sight of Gondocori, and,
except once or twice for a few seconds, I never did. Where he goes I go,
and when, after an unusually severe buffeting, he plunges into a
snow-drift at the end of the ravine, I follow him without hesitation.

Side by side we fought our way through, dashing the snow aside with our
hands, pushing against it with our shoulders, beating it down with our
feet, and after a desperate struggle, which though it appeared endless
could have lasted only a few minutes, the victory was ours; we were free.

I can hardly believe my eyes. The sun is visible, the sky clear and blue,
and below us stretches a grassy slope like a Swiss "alp." Save for the
turmoil of wind behind us and our dripping garments I could believe that I
had just wakened from a bad dream, so startling is the chan