Surely no company of wanderers was ever in more desperate stress than we at that moment.

It was the merest chance of fate if one among us all lived to see the peaceful setting of the sun, now blazing high overhead.

Yet that simple noonday repast, partaken of beneath the shadow of the overhanging rock, remains in memory as more redundant with merriment of tongue and face than any since we made departure from New Orleans.
Were I not writing truthful narrative, I might hesitate at setting this down, yet there are doubtless others living to bear witness with me that there is often experienced an odd relief in discovering the presence of actual danger; that uncertainty and mystery try most severely the temper of men.
It certainly proved so with us that day, and De Noyan's high spirits found echo even in the grim Puritan, who, being at last convinced that he was not called upon to wrestle with demons from the pit, was as full of manly fight as the best of us.

Eloise added her gentle speech, while even I relaxed my anxiety, though I was careful enough to select a seat from which I could keep watch both up and down the ravine, convinced that our time of trial was not far away.

In consequence of this chosen vantage of position I was the first to note those stealthy nude figures silently stealing from rock to rock, like so many flitting shadows, making their way down toward our position from the north.