Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 1.djvu/183

Rh into which Sambo would attempt to convey the maiden; his betrothed he longed to call her; but did he dare thus to think of Don Vegal's daughter?

One thought, one aim, occupied alike the Indian and the Spaniard, as they penetrated the gorges of the Cordilleras, darkened by the plantations of pines and cocoa-trees. They had left behind the cedars, the cotton-trees, and the aloes ; they had passed beyond the fields planted with luzerne and maize. To traverse the mountains at this season was a perilous undertaking. The melting of the snow beneath the rays of the summer sun had swollen the streams to cataracts, and continually immense masses came rolling down from the peaks above into the chasms below.

But neither by day nor night did the father and the lover permit themselves to rest. They had reached the point, the very highest in the chain, and, worn out with fatigue, seemed ready to fall into that condition of despair which deprives men of all power to act. It required almost a superhuman effort to go on; but turning to the eastern declivity of the mountain-range, they fell upon traces of the fugitives, and with rekindled energy began the descent.

Reaching the almost boundless virgin forests that cover the regions between Brazil and Peru, they made their way through woods that might have proved inextricable had not the practiced sagacity of Martin stood them in good stead. Nothing escaped his observation ; and the ashes of an extinguished fire, some vestiges of footsteps, some twigs broken off from the branches, and the character of certain fragments in the path all attracted his experienced eye.

Don Vegal feared that his ill-fated daughter had been conveyed on foot over the crags and through the thickets, but the Indian pointed out to him some indications in the stony ground which were undoubtedly the impressions of an animal's feet ; and, above all, the branches had been broken back in the same direction, and that at a height which could only be reached by a person that was mounted. The marquis too gladly yielded his conviction, and rejoiced to think that for Martin Paz there was no obstacle insurmountable, and no peril that he could not overcome.

At length one evening, postively worn out by fatigue, they made a halt. They had just come to the banks of a river. It was the upper stream of the Madeira, which