"My God! my God! grant me strength to live, that I may avenge myself and my country!"
Then, with incredible courage, this man, too weak from the blood he had lost, and was still losing, to stand, or to escape by walking away, began to crawl along upon his hands and knees, leaving behind him a long wet track, and directing his course towards the cathedral. At every yard he stopped to take breath, and to place his hands upon his wounds, which motion rendered more painful. Scarce had he left the centre of the Plaza and its horrid sacrifice fifty paces behind him, and that with immense difficulty, when, from a street which opened just before him, issued two men, who advanced with hasty steps towards him.
"Oh!" the unhappy man cried, in utter despair, "I am lost! I am lost! Heaven is not just!"—And he fainted.
The two men, on coming up to him, stopped with great surprise; they leant over him, and examined him with care and in an anxious manner.
"Well?" said one of them, at the end of a minute or two.
"He is alive!" the other replied, in a tone of conviction.
Without uttering another word, they rolled up the wounded man in a poncho, lifted him on their shoulders, and disappeared in the gloomy depths of the street by which they had come, and which led to the Canadilla suburb.