steps without daring to approach, we would leave eighty men to guard them enough to beat four times as many Spaniards.
At nightfall we set out, leaving our eighty men, with orders to the sentinels to fire and beat the retreat and the diane at the usual times, to make the three hundred Spaniards who lurked near us think that we had not left the camp. If we were successful we would send back messengers with the good news, but if, an hour after the firing ended, none of us returned, they were to escape how they could.
All being arranged, we prayed in a low voice, not to be heard by the Spaniards, and set out by the moonlight, two hundred men of us, through this country of rocks, woods, and frightful precipices, where we went leaping and climbing, our feet seeming to be much less use to us than our hands and knees.
On the 14th, at the break of day, when we had already gained a great height, and were climbing on in profound silence, with the Spanish intrenchments to our left, we saw a sentry party, which, thanks to the fog—always thick in. this country till ten o'clock in the morning—did not discover us. When it had passed we went straight to the place where we had seen it, and we found that there was really a road there. This, when we had halted half an hour to take breath, we followed, guided by the voices of the Spaniards, who were at matins. But we had only gone a few steps when we found two sentinels, very far advanced, all whom we were forced to fire, which warned the Spaniards, who dreamed of nothing less than our coming upon them from above, since they only expected us from below. So those who guarded the intrenchment—about five hundred men—being taken at a disadvantage when they thought they had all the advantage on their side, were so terribly frightened that, when we fell upon them all at once, they vanished from the place in an instant, and escaped into the thick fog.
This unexpected assault so utterly upset their plans that the men in the second intrenchinent all passed into the lowest one, where they prepared to defend themselves. We fought them a whole hour, under cover of the first intrenchment, which we had taken, and which commanded them, being higher up the mountain side. But as they would not yield we fancied our shots must have missed, since the fog hindered us from seeing our foes distinctly, so, resolved to waste no more powder, we went down, and fell right on the spot whence they had been firing. Then we assailed them furiously, and at sight of our weapons close upon them—which
