"Then perform it. God grant you may succeed!"
The girl's leg was horribly swollen; the part round the serpent's bite, terribly tumefied, was already taking a greenish hue.
"Alas," muttered the unknown, "there is not a moment to spare. Hold the child so that she cannot stir while I perform the operation."
In these last words the voice of the unknown had assumed such an accent of command, that the strangers obeyed without hesitation.
The former seated himself on the ground, took the limb of the girl upon his knee, and made his preparations. Luckily the moon shone at this moment so clearly, that her vivid rays flooded the landscape, and everything was almost as visible as in broad daylight.
When the girl had first felt the bite, she had immediately, and happily for herself, torn off her silk stocking. The unknown grasped the blade of his knife an inch from the point, and, lowering his brow with terrible determination, buried the point in the wound, and made a cruciform incision about six lines deep, and more than an inch long.
The poor child must have felt terrible anguish; for she gave utterance to a dreadful scream, and twisted herself about nervously.
"Hold her tight, cuerpo de Cristo!" shouted the unknown in a voice of thunder, while with admirable coolness and skill he pressed the lips of the wound, so as to force out the black and decomposing blood it contained; "And now the leaves—the leaves!"
The peon ran up.
The unknown took the leaves, parted asunder the lips of the wound, and gently, carefully expressed their juice on the palpitating flesh. Making a kind of plaster of the same leaves, he applied it to the wound, tied it down firmly with a bandage, placed the foot carefully on the ground, and rose.