"Crush the snake's head and its tail will soon cease wriggling!" these said, and I confess this was a view that in many ways commended itself to us.
But Maqueda would have none of it.
"What!" she exclaimed, "shall I begin a civil war among my people when for aught I know the enemy is at our gates ?" adding aside to us, "also, how can these few hundred men, brave though they be, hope to stand against the thousands under the command of Joshua ?" "What, then, would you do ?" asked Orme.
"Return to the palace with these Mountaineers, O Oliver, and by help of that garrison, hold it against all enemies." "Very well," he replied.

"To those who are quite lost one road is as good as another; they must trust to the stars to guide them." "Quite so," echoed Higgs; "and the sooner we go the better, for my leg hurts, and I want a sleep." So Maqueda gave her commands to the officers, by whom they were conveyed to the regiment, which received them with a shout, and instantly began to strike its camp.
Then it was, coming hot-foot after so much sorrow, loss and doubt, that there followed the happiest event of all my life.

Utterly tired out and very despondent, I was seated on an arrow-chest awaiting the order to march, idly watching Oliver and Maqueda talking with great earnestness at a little distance, and in the intervals trying to prevent poor Higgs at my side from falling asleep.

While I was thus engaged, suddenly I heard a disturbance, and by the bright moonlight caught sight of a man being led into the camp in charge of a guard of Abati soldiers, whom from their dress I knew to belong to a company that just then was employed in watching the lower gates of the pass.
I took no particular heed of the incident, thinking only that they might have captured some spy, till a murmur of astonishment, and the general stir, warned me that something unusual had occurred.

So I rose from my box and strolled towards the man, who now was hidden from me by a group of Mountaineers.