“Good-by, Sir Pirato!” laughed De Baçan. “I have no time to finish this——” and turning, he made for the opposite side of the clearing.
I shouted at the top of my lungs and made a leap after him, but fell prone to the earth. He made for a hole in the thicket, and I thought must surely go free.
But while I looked, a number of dusky figures sprang up all around him, and I saw them leap upon him like hounds upon a stag. He threw his arms out wildly, and one of the savages who bounded into the air, was skewered upon his sword, while another fell away from him into the bushes as though he had been tossed by an ox. The Spaniard was making a wonderful fight, but the Indians, infuriated by the fall of Olotoraca, went rushing fiercely forward crying that he should not escape. One of them pinioned his left arm to his body, and hung with a death-like clutch around his legs. Before Satouriona reached them, another, more successful than the others, sprang upon the back of De Baçan, and, brushing off his morion, struck again and again upon the bare head with his hatchet. When the hollow dulness of the strokes fell upon my ear, I knew that the end had come. He swayed back and forth a moment, striving to keep his feet, unwilling to relinquish his hold upon life, fighting even when death had come; then, with a groan like that of some hunted animal, turned half around and sank to the ground, dead where he had stood.
When he had fallen the savages fell upon the prostrate body like wolves, tearing at the clothing, and would have beaten him with their war clubs as he lay, had not De Brésac and Satouriona come up. I cried out to them that it was the Commandante of the Fort whom they had killed. De Brésac was among them, striking with the flat of his sword, and crying:
“Stop! you dogs! Away with you! Stop! I say!” He stood over the body with his drawn sword while they glowered at him, and would have struck him down had not Satouriona come between. At last the Paracousi, with a few words, sent them away, their gruesome fancies ungratified.
It was a dog’s death for so valiant a man—pulled down like some wild beast of the forest. When I had been carried to where the body lay, De Brésac and I vowed he should have a decent burial. I hated him, and hate him now. But it was a passion made great by the intensity of it, and I could not bear that the majesty of his prowess should be dimmed by any ignominy at his death. De Brésac, fearing to bury him in the knowledge of the Indians, gave orders to the seamen that he should be taken to Fort San Mateo. When I had bound up my leg, thither we presently repaired, I leaning upon the arms of Job Goddard and Brésac.
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
AND LAST.
And so it was all over. The mission of De Gourgues was ended. However bloody the retribution he had wrought upon his enemies, France was avenged. I was thankful that my flight into the woods had spared me much of the butchery at Fort San Mateo; what we saw in the forest was horrible enough, and though by the time we returned the Fort had been cleared, a dreadful climax to this grim tragedy was being enacted.