He scratched his head and frowned, but ere long his forehead became unwrinkled, and he proceeded gaily to the fort; After a conference with Major Bloomfield, who had succeeded Don Antonio Valverde in command of the town, Pedrito doffed his clothes, and disguised himself as an Aucas. He set out, slipped into the Indian camp, and shortly before sunrise was back again in the town.
"Well?" his sister said to him.
"All goes well," the bombero answered, "¡Viva Dios! Nocobotha, I fancy, will pay dearly for carrying off Don Sylvio. Oh, women are demons!"
"Am I to go and join her?"
"No; it is unnecessary."
And, without entering into any details, Pedrito, who was worn out with fatigue, selected a place to sleep in, snored away, not troubling himself about the Indians.
Several days elapsed ere the besiegers renewed their attack on the town, which, however, they invested more closely. The Spaniards, strictly blockaded, and having no communication with the exterior, found their provisions running short, and hideous famine would soon pounce on its victims. Fortunately, the indefatigable Pedrito had an idea which he communicated to Major Bloomfield. He had a hundred and fifty loaves worked up with arsenic, water, and vitriol mingled with twenty barrels of spirits; the whole loaded on mules, was placed under the escort of Pedrito and his two brothers. The bomberos approached the Patagonian earthworks with this frugal stock of provisions. The Indians, who are passionately fond of firewater, rushed to meet the caravan, and seize the barrels. Pedrito and his brothers left their burden lying on the sand, and returned to the town at a gallop with the mules, which were intended to support the besieged, if the Patagonians did not make the assault.
There was a high holiday in the camp. The loaves were cut up; the heads of the barrels stove in, and nothing was left. This orgy cost the Indians six thousand men, who died in atrocious tortures. The others, struck with horror, began disbanding in all directions. The chiefs were no longer respected. Nocobotha himself saw his authority wavering before the superstition of the savages, who believed in a celestial punishment. The prisoners, men, women, and children, were massacred with horrible refinements of barbarity. Doña Concha, though protected by the great chief, only owed her escape to chance or to God, who preserved her as the instrument of His will.
The rage of the Indians, having no one left to vent itself on, gradually calmed down. Nocobotha went about constantly to restore courage. He felt that it was time to come to an end, and he gave Lucaney orders to assemble all the chiefs in his toldo.
"Great chiefs of the great nations," Nocobotha said to them, so soon as they were all collected round the council fire, "tomorrow, at daybreak, Carmen will be attacked on all sides at once. So soon as the town is taken the campaign will be over. Those who recoil are not men, but slaves. Remember that we are fighting for the liberty of our race."