At her words my heart stood still and a palpable mist gathered before my eyes.  When it cleared away my brain seemed to awake to an abnormal activity, as though the knowledge that unless it was used to good effect now it would never be used again were spurring it to action.  Rapidly I reviewed the situation and considered every possible method of escape.  At first I could think of none; then suddenly I remembered that the driver and his companion, who no doubt knew every inch of the road, had leaped from the coach, apparently over the edge of the precipice.  This I felt sure they would not have done had they been going to certain death, since they would have preferred to take their chance of mercy at the hands of the brigands.  Moreover, these gentry themselves had driven the mules into the abyss whither those wise animals would never have gone unless there was some foothold for them.

I looked behind me but could discover nothing, for, as is common in Mexico at the hour of dawn, the gulf was absolutely filled with dense vapours.  Then I made up my mind that I would risk it and began to shuffle slowly backwards.  Already I was near the edge when I remembered Emma Becker and paused to reflect.  If I took her with me it would considerably lessen my chances of escape, and at any rate her life was not threatened.  But I had not given her the pistol, and at that moment even in my panic there rose before me a vision of her face as I had seen it in the lamplight when she looked up at the glory shining on the crest of Orizaba.

Had it not been for this vision I think it possible that I might have left her.  I wish to gloze over nothing; I did not make my own nature, and in these pages I describe it as it was and is without palliation or excuse.  I know that this is not the fashion in autobiographies; no one has done it since the time of Pepys, who did not write for publication, and for that very reason my record has its value.  I am physically and, perhaps morally also, timid—­that is, although I have faced it boldly enough upon occasion, as the reader will learn in the course of my history, I fear the thought of death, and especially of cruel and violent death, such as was near to me at that moment.  So much did I fear it then that the mere fact that an acquaintance was in danger and distress would scarcely have sufficed to cause me to sacrifice, or at least to greatly complicate, my own chances of escape in order to promote hers simply because that acquaintance was of the other sex.  But Emma had touched a new chord in my nature, and I felt, whether I liked it or not, that whatever I could do for myself I must do for her also.  So I shuffled forward again.

“Listen,” I whispered, “I have been to look and I do not believe that the cliff is very steep just here.  Will you try it with me?”

“Of course,” she answered; “I had as soon die of a broken neck as in any other way.”

“We must watch our chance then, or they will see us run and shoot.  Wait till I give you the signal.”