She nodded her head and we waited.

At length, while the fourth and last merchant, who stood next to me, was being dealt with, just as in our despair we were about to throw ourselves into the gulf before them all, fortune gave us our opportunity.  This unhappy man, having probably some inkling of the doom which awaited him, broke suddenly from the hands of his captors, and ran at full speed down the road.  After him they went pell-mell, every thief of them except one who remained—­fortunately for us upon its farther side—­on guard by the door of the diligence in which four people, three merchants and a priest, were now imprisoned.  With laughs and shouts they hunted their wretched quarry, firing shots as they ran, till at length one of them overtook the man and cut him down with his machete.

“Don’t look, but come,” I whispered to my companion.

In another instant we were at the edge of the cliff, and a foot or so below us was spread the dense, impenetrable blanket of mist.  I stopped and hesitated, for the next step might be my last.

“We can’t be worse off, so God help us,” said Emma, and without waiting for me to lead her she swung herself over the edge.

To my intense relief I heard her alight within a few feet, and followed immediately.  Now I was at her side, and now we were scrambling and slipping down the precipitous and rocky slope as swiftly as the dense wet fog would let us.  I believe that our escape was quite unnoticed.  The guard was watching the murder of the merchant, or, if he saw us, he did not venture to leave the carriage door, and the priest who had accepted some offer which was made to him, probably that his life would be spared if he consented to give absolution to the murderers, was kneeling on the ground, his face hidden in his hands.

As we went the mist grew thinner, and we could see that we were travelling down a steep spur of the precipice, which to our left was quite sheer, and that at the foot of it was a wide plain thickly but not densely covered with trees.  In ten minutes we were at the bottom, and as we could neither see nor hear any sign of pursuers we paused for an instant to rest.

Not five yards from us the cliff was broken away, and so straight that a cat could not have climbed it.

“We chose our place well,” I said pointing upwards.

“No,” Emma answered, “we did not choose; it was chosen for us.”

As she spoke a muffled and terrifying sound of agony reached us from above, and then, in the layers of vapour that still stretched between us and the sky, we perceived something huge rushing swiftly down.  It appeared; it drew near; it struck, and fell to pieces like a shattered glass.  We ran to look, and there before us were the fragments of the diligence, and among them the mangled corpses of five of our fellow-travellers.

This was the fate that we had escaped.

“Oh! for God’s sake come away,” moaned Emma, and sick with horror we turned and ran, or rather reeled, into the shelter of the trees upon the plain.