"Hum!" the major muttered, biting his moustache; "if Buenos Aires does not send succour, we are lost."
"Yes, my friend, we shall leave our skins here."
"How many are they, colonel?—twenty thousand; thirty thousand?"
"And those who are still coming up, and who blacken the distant plains?—But what means the sound of that bugle?"
Four Ulmens, preceded by an Indian, who carried a white flag, had halted within half gunshot of the first barriers of Población del Sur.
"They seem," the colonel said, "to be desiring a parley. Do they fancy me fool enough to venture into that trap? Major, just fire a round of canister into that group to teach them not to treat us as fools."
"We should be wrong, colonel; let us learn what they want."
"But where shall we find a man fool enough to risk his carcase among those pagans, who have neither faith nor law?"
"I will go, with your permission," the major said simply.
"You?" Don Antonio exclaimed in amazement.