"Drunk! drunk!" Billy breathed, at last. "Nature gone on a jag. Drunken mountains loose in a crazy world. The whole earth is turned on edge. Hold me, Bob, before I fall in. How deep do you call this bit of a hole?"
"About five thousand feet down to the floor. It falls off a thousand and more in a few miles to the coast. You see, we are still in touch with the old Pacific. Can't be more than thirty miles or so down to the sea."
"The dear old pond. Isn't that pine on the other side?"
"Sure. An American company is taking out millions of feet, a hundred or so miles farther up. That's a great old tree, and quite particular about the company it keeps. Look how sharply it draws the line along the slope, lifting its skirts from the contamination of the tropics. That spark of green in the far distance is sugar cane--two thousand acres of it on the General's hacienda of San Nicolas. And you see the gash over there, all yellow and green, about three thousand feet down from the top--that is us, señor, the _mina_ Santa Gertrudis. And that reminds me--we'll have to be moving if we are to make the inn before midnight. _Vaminos_, Carlos."
But the muleteer shook his head. "After you, señor, for if these devils should take to running again, not in six months should we fish your baggage out of the cañons."
Leading down the trail, which zigzagged along the faces of a V-shaped wall, Seyd perceived, as he thought, the soundness of the argument, for at the first turn a stone from his mule's foot dropped five hundred feet plumb before rebounding into greater depths, and at no place did the width of the path allow an unnecessary inch for the swing of the packs. Deceived by the succession of stairways through which the trail dropped down to the thin thread that marked its course along the bottoms, Billy objected:
"Three hours, you say? Looks to me as though we could make it in one."
"Less than that--if your mule should happen to slip and take it sideways. Let me see--allowing a thousand feet to a bump, about fourteen seconds ought to distribute you nicely among the bottom trees. But if you elect to follow me around the eight or nine miles of trail you cannot see, it will take the full three hours."