“As soon as my horse felt, for the first time since my rencounter with the colonel, the bit compressing his mouth, I perceived that he trembled beneath me.  I strengthened myself firmly on my stirrups, to make the terrified animal understand that his master no longer trembled.  I held him up with bridle and the hams, as every good horseman does in a dangerous passage, and, with the bridle, the body, and the spur, together, succeeded in backing him a few paces.  His head was already a greater distance from that of the horse of the colonel, who encouraged me all he could with his voice.  This done, I let the poor, trembling brute, who obeyed me in spite of his terror, repose for a few moments, and then recommenced the same manoeuver.  All on a sudden, I felt his hind legs give way under me.  A horrible shudder ran through my whole frame.  I closed my eyes, as if about to roll to the bottom of the abyss, and I gave to my body a violent impulse on the side next to the hacienda, the surface of which offered not a single projection, not a tuft of weeds to check my descent.  This sudden movement joined to the desperate struggles of my horse, was the salvation of my life.  He had sprung up again on his legs, which seemed ready to fall from under him, so desperately did I feel them tremble.”

“I had succeeded in reaching between the brink of the precipice and the wall of the building, a spot some few inches broader.  A few more would have enabled me to turn him round; but to attempt it here would have been fatal, and I dared not venture.  I sought to resume my backward progress, step by step.  Twice the horse threw himself on his hind legs, and fell down upon the same spot.  It was in vain to urge him anew, either with voice, bridle, or spur; the animal obstinately refused to take a single step in the rear.  Nevertheless, I did not feel my courage yet exhausted, for I had no desire to die.  One last, solitary chance of safety, suddenly appeared to me, like a flash of light, and I resolved to employ it.  Through the fastening of my boot, and in reach of my hand, was placed a sharp and keen knife, which I drew forth from its sheath.  With my left hand I began caressing the mane of my horse, all the while letting him hear my voice.  The poor animal replied to my caresses by a plaintive neighing; then, not to alarm him abruptly, my hand followed, by little and little, the curve of his nervous neck, and finally rested upon the spot where the last of the vertebrae unites itself with the cranium.  The horse trembled; but I calmed him with my voice.  When I felt his very life, so to speak, palpitate in his brain beneath my fingers, and leaned over toward the wall, my feet gently slid from the stirrups, and, with one vigorous blow, I buried the pointed blade of my knife in the seat of the vital principle.  The animal fell as if thunderstruck, without a single motion; and, for myself, with my knees almost as high as my chin, I found myself a horseback across a corpse!  I was