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Pablo, indeed, was so lost in wonder at finding the broken idol, and the dead body of the Priest Captain, and a door open in the solid wall, that what little remained of his wits disappeared entirely; so that we had almost to carry him while El Sabio most intelligently followed him into the treasure-chamber, and there we left the two together while we returned for Rayburn.
But what I'm after right now is my supper." Pablo already had started a fire, having first unpacked El Sabio, that he might refresh himself by rolling on the soft, green grass and by eating his fill of it, and Young presently had some ham fried and some coffee boiled.
And this hope was destined to be immediately and most joyfully realized, for as we rose to our feet again I saw the lad standing, with El Sabio beside him, not a dozen feet away from me; and a little beyond them was the monk, his face all lighted up with a bright look of happiness and love.
Furthermore, El Sabio manifested what had the appearance of being a most diabolical ingenuity yet that, no doubt, was no more than chance in delivering flying kicks against the legs of these dangling creatures; wherefrom such keen pain resulted that they instantly let loose their hold, and came tumbling to the ground.
"In that case it took the combined arguments of an ass and an angel to convince Balaam that he was off about his location, and was running his lines all wrong; but, unless we count in Pablo, El Sabio is playing a lone hand; and I'm sure that the Colonel's not fooling us about this prophecy business, either.
While Pablo played, Dennis would stand by with his head cocked on one side, and with an air of attention as closely critical as that which El Sabio himself exhibited; and when Pablo went wrong, as he invariably did in his attempted bravura passages, Dennis would stop him with a wave of his hand, and an "Aisy now, me darlint!
It will be just the opposite, however, if a man is deficient in these formal qualities, but has an amount of knowledge which lends value to what he says. This value will then depend entirely upon the matter of his conversation; for, as the Spanish proverb has it, mas sabe el necio en su casa, que el sabio en la agena a fool knows more of his own business than a wise man does of others.
There was at least solid comfort in knowing, as we went on downward with the kegs all filled, that, whatever other death might come to us, at least we could not die of thirst. At the bottom of the pyramid we left Fray Antonio and Pablo, with El Sabio and the packs, and the three of us set out to explore the three sides of the mountain-top that were unknown to us in search of a downward path.
It is a puzzle to me to this day how El Sabio managed to shrink himself so that we got him through that narrow hole; but he certainly did manage it and then went down the stone stair-way backward, as though he had been trained to be a trick donkey from his youth up.
And so he came back towards us again, and then out once more towards Rayburn; and so swung slowly and yet more slowly until at last he hung motionless over the very middle of the gulf, with nothing between him and the rocks below but a thousand feet of air. And then El Sabio began to kick with a vigor that set to rattling every link in the chain!
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