guides who conducted him will be only too glad to serve us on their
return the next morning. To this proposition we very readily agree, and
supper being ended, Don Sanchez sends for the guides, two hardy
mountaineers, who very readily agree to take us this way the next
morning, if the weather permits. And so we all, wishing Don Lopez a
good-night, to our several chambers.

I was awoke in the middle of the night, as it seemed to me, by a great
commotion below of Spanish shouting and roaring with much jingling of
bells; and looking out of window I perceived lanterns hanging here and
there in the courtyard, and the muleteers packing their goods to depart,
with a fine clear sky full of stars overhead. And scarce had I turned
into my warm bed again, thanking God I was no muleteer, when in comes
the Don with a candle, to say the guide will have us moving at once if
we would reach Ravellos (our Spanish town) before night. So I to
Dawson's chamber, and he to Moll's, and in a little while we all
shivering down to the great kitchen, where is never a muleteer left, but
only a great stench of garlic, to eat a mess of soup, very hot and
comforting. And after that out into the dark (there being as yet but a
faint flush of green and primrose colour over towards the east), where
four fresh mules (which Don Sanchez overnight had bargained to exchange
against our horses, as being the only kind of cattle fit for this
service) are waiting for us with other two mules, belonging to our
guides, all very curiously trapped out with a network of wool and little
jingling bells. Then when Don Sanchez had solemnly debated whether we
should not awake Don Lopez to say farewell, and we had persuaded him
that it would be kinder to let him sleep on, we mounted into our high,
fantastic saddles, and set out towards the mountains, our guides
leading, and we following close upon their heels as our mules could get,
but by no guidance of ours, though we held the reins, for these