"Ah! holy father," cried the Indian, "why did you not discover yourself sooner? Taking every thing into consideration, one can be an honest man without knowing the virtues of _matlalquahuitl_."
Fray Serapio need not have answered the terrified Indian. He condescended to confess that, under this disguise and with this escort, he was traveling to execute a mission of religious interest; and the alcalde, who crossed himself devoutly at every word of the monk, took good care not to press him with imprudent questions. An instant after, we marched majestically out of the cabin into which our entrance had been so humble and crestfallen. The Indians returned us our arms and horses. They pressed us in vain to return to the hostelry where we had been so scurvily welcomed. We were very ill pleased at the reception they had given us; and, in spite of the thunder, which had again begun to growl, we galloped out of the village without lending an ear to their entreaties.
[15] A red cloth shaken before the bull for the purpose of exciting him.
Already the Indian village lay a league behind us. The route we were pursuing was through a ravine, the road through which could with difficulty be believed to have been made by the hand of man. We soon entered a pine forest which ran along a chain of precipitous hills. The darkness, which was rendered thicker by the interlaced branches of the trees overhead, was so profound that our horses could literally advance only by the gleam of the vivid flashes of lightning. Soon the storm increased; the trunks of the pines cracked and swayed to and fro in the wind, and the hollows in the mountains resounded with the multiplied echoes of terrific thunder-claps. The flashes now became less and less frequent, and at last, the intermittent gleams, which had hitherto lightened our advance, failed us entirely. A deafening thunder-clap was followed by a torrent of rain. It had now become impossible for us either to advance or to regain the road. Forced to remain immovable like equestrian statues, we were obliged to shout to one another to find out our respective positions. I then discovered that I was very near Fray Serapio. The voices of our three companions reached us like a distant echo borne along amid the whistling of the squall. We at last found ourselves separated from one another, without any probable hope of joining each other during the whole night, each of us being forced to stay where the darkness had overtaken him, exposed to all the dangers of the forest.