On pronouncing his last words, the lieutenant drew a pistol from his belt, cocked it, and presented the muzzle at the breast of the arriero, who, motionless as ever, had made no gesture to escape the fate that threatened him.
But the two girls were roused. With the velocity of thought, they both at once threw themselves before him.
Manonga felt her breast pierced by the ball. "Alas!" she cried; "You despise me! What does it matter? I die for you! Clarita, I forgive you!"
Don Pablo bounded over the body of the luckless wretch, whose dying eyes still sought his, and threw himself, knife in hand, on the lieutenant. The latter hurled his heavy pistol at his head; but the arriero avoided the weapon, seized the officer round the body, and a deadly fray began. Clarita, with flaming eyes, eagerly watched the struggle between the two, ready to interfere as soon as an opportunity offered in favour of her beloved.
The bystanders were horrified; the dread inspired by the soldiers was so great, that although many more in number, and all armed, they dared not go to the assistance of their comrade.
In the meantime, the soldiers, more than half-drunk, seeing their officer struggling with a stranger, unsheathed their swords, and struck right and left among the crowd, shouting out their dreaded cry:
"¡A degüello! ¡A degüello! los salvajes unitarios" (Death, death to the savage Unitarians!)
Then ensued a scene of horror in the room, which was crowded with human beings.
The arrieros, pursued by the soldiers, who were pitilessly cutting them down, and calling to each other to slay, thronged towards the door to escape impending death. The disorder was at its height; all wanted to escape at once through the too narrow outlet. Made selfish by fear, and in the blind instinct of self-preservation, they stifled each other against the walls, crushed each other underfoot, and struck blindly with their knives, in order to hew themselves a passage through the human barrier that checked them.
Fear, when self-preservation is uppermost, makes man more cruel and cowardly than the wild beasts. That hideous egotism, which lurks at the bottom of the human heart, starts up when its bonds are suddenly broken. Man has then neither parents nor friends; he is deaf to every prayer; and, shutting his eyes, plunges forward with the blind and stupid ferocity of the maddened bull.