“This hero, he is not dead!” he cried in a sort of whispered ecstasy. “When I rub the nose of him—Caramba!—he try to breathe! And he cough and say some words in Spanish!”
It was fortunate that the darkness was deep enough to hide Miranda from observation, else his dancing figure and the gestures of delight with which he accompanied this announcement would have brought upon him more attention from the enemy than might have been to his liking. Another fact in his favor, besides the darkness, was that the fighting had drifted away from this corner of the cave, leaving the explorers quite alone, in an obscurity that shrouded them from danger, but that still revealed to them enough of the outlines of the cave in the distance to show them where they were and how they might best steer their way in safety through the Condor Gate, as Miranda had at first proposed. And now all were eager to corroborate the extraordinary news that Herran was still alive.
True to his professional instincts, Miranda plumped down on his knees at the General’s side, and commenced a series of probings, pummelings and rubbings in his search for wounds, mortal or otherwise. He worked with his usual feverish haste, and it was not long before his activities drew from Herran protests that became more and more distinct and emphatic. Then Miranda remembered that he had seen the caveman’s club descend upon the General’s head, so that if there were any wounds to be attended to they would be in that part of his anatomy and nowhere else. And there, sure enough, under Herran’s battered hat and his smashed miner’s lamp, was a massive lump that testified to the magnitude of the blow that had crumpled him up. Indeed, had it not been for the hat and the lamp, serving in this case as a buffer, even Herran’s iron skull must have yielded under the weight of the caveman’s attack.
At first Miranda thought that the skull surely was fractured, and thereupon investigated the lump on top of it. This he did with so much earnestness and nicety of detail that he was soon rewarded by a series of such vigorous oaths and threats as to leave no doubt in his mind of his victim’s ability to look out for himself.
“He’s all right, this General of Panama!” he exclaimed gleefully. “His brains is not smashed. But perhaps he have a headache. Soon he fight again. And now we go to the queen.”
The subject of these optimistic assurances sat up with a groan, blinking his eyes savagely at his companions, who were now crowded around him, and wiping disgustedly from his face some of the kerosene oil that had trickled down from the mangled miner’s lamp, and that Miranda had first taken for Herran’s blood.
“Now, we go—we fly!” urged Miranda, his mind completely absorbed again in the problem of extricating himself and his companions from the dangers of the battlefield. “They not see us. We save our life and go to this queen. You are all right, General—is it not so?” he added impatiently.
The other looked at him venomously and groaned. Then, shaking himself, like a dog who has been temporarily worsted in a rough-and-tumble fight, he got to his feet and staggered along for a few paces.
“Yes, Caramba! I am all right,” he said in Spanish, with painful sarcasm. “It is a headache, as you say, that is all! Let us go!”
“That is good! Come!” grunted Miranda approvingly.