The soldiers enjoyed their frugal meal, and lay down on their zarapés to sleep.
Ere long, the individuals composing the caravan were slumbering, with the exception of two, the Captain and the guide.
Probably each of them was troubled by thoughts sufficiently serious to drive away sleep, and keep them awake, when all wanted to repose.
A few paces from the clearing, some monstrous iguanas were lying in the sun, wallowing in the grayish mud of a stream whose water ran with a slight murmur through the obstacles of every description that impeded its course. Myriads of insects filled the air with the continued buzzing of their wings; squirrels leaped gaily from branch to branch; the birds, hidden beneath the foliage, were singing cheerily, and here and there above the tall grass might be seen the elegant head and startled eyes of a deer or an ashata, which suddenly rushed beneath the covert with a low of terror.
But the two men were too much occupied with their thoughts to notice what was going on around them.
The Captain raised his head at the very moment when the guide had fixed on him a glance of strange meaning: confused at being thus taken unawares, he tried to deceive the officer by speaking to him—old-fashioned tactics, however, by which the latter was not duped.
"It is a hot day, Excellency," he said, with a nonchalant air.
"Yes," the Captain answered, laconically.
"Do you not feel any inclination for sleep?"
"No."