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When at last we reached them the wicked glister of their purple flanks seemed like a volcanic upheaval of the plain. For some time we had watched the clouds gathering over them, and as we got to the top of the defile rain was falling from a fringe of thunder to the south. Then the vapours lifted, and we saw below us another red plain with an island of palms in its centre.
Whereafter he threw a glance across the river, and added venomously: "Those devils THERE don't cross themselves, the accursed Serbs!" Vasili looked at him, twisted a left-hand moustache, smoothed it again, regarded for a moment the sky and the defile, and sank his head.
This is known as the village of Koragh, and immediately after, the river runs between the cliffs, which draw together and make the mouth of the defile. The path which follows the left bank crosses the débris fallen from the cliffs above and then runs along the edge of the river at the foot of another and smaller cliff, or in summer, when the river is full, the path runs over this smaller cliff.
"The world has long cried out against you," replied Federigo in a solemn voice. "He can acquire through you a glory such as others cannot give Him. How must He love you, Who has bid and enabled me to regard you with a charity that consumes me!" So saying, he extended his hand. "No!" cried the penitent. "Defile not your hand! You know not all that the one you would grasp has committed."
Their banners appeared emerging from the defile, and two hundred well-armed men joined his ranks. Though the Peruvians were astonished at this accession to the number of their foes, they still came bravely forward to the battle. It was another scene of slaughter for the poor Peruvians. They inflicted but little harm upon the Spaniards, while hundreds of their slain soon strewed the ground.
Again the cheek snuggled the stock of his rifle. "This is goin' to be some shot if I make it!" he told himself just before he fired. "There ain't nothin' to shoot at but one of his ears, looks like." But at the report of the rifle, the weapon that had been so rigid and motionless slipped from behind the rock and clattered downward. It caught halfway between the rock and the bottom of the defile.
A few minutes later I saw the defile of the Shilka. Between the streams the mountains narrowed and came to a point a mile above the meeting of the waters. It is on the Argoon side of the delta and contains but a few houses. I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled in the cold atmosphere that the inhabitants were endeavoring to make themselves comfortable.
Seen from any of the lower elevations which projected from the bases of the mountains at the head of this defile, Thessaly lay spread out before the eye as one vast valley level, verdant, fertile, and bounded by distant groups and ranges of mountains, which formed a blue and beautiful horizon on every side.
"I will not be better than you!" cried the boy. "Besides, the paraschites is dead, and Uarda's father is a respectable soldier, who can defile no one. I kept a long way from the old woman. To-morrow I am going again. I promised her." "Promised who?" asked his sister. "Who but Uarda? She loves flowers, and since the rose which you gave her she has not seen one.
From wing to wing, quite across the defile, the woods appeared as if all on fire; while the incessant crash of small arms tortured the ear like claps of sharpest thunder. The muskets of the British, like their native bull-dogs, kept up a dreadful roar, but scarcely did more than bark the trees, or cut off the branches above the heads of the Indians.
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