Our people, like all mountaineers, have good eyes, and the Gospodar is himself an eagle in this as in other ways.

Three men stood back from the rest.
They stacked their rifles so that they could seize them easily.

Then they drew their scimitars, and stood ready, as though on guard.
These were evidently the appointed murderers.

Well they knew their work; for though they stood in a desert place with none within long distance except the pursuing party, of whose approach they would have good notice, they stood so close to their prisoner that no marksman in the world--now or that ever had been; not William Tell himself--could have harmed any of them without at least endangering her.

Two of them turned the Voivodin round so that her face was towards the precipice--in which position she could not see what was going on--whilst he who was evidently leader of the gang explained, in gesture, that the others were going to spy upon the pursuing party.