The maiden seized the gourd eagerly, applied it to her lips, and drank a large draught.
"Good!" said the Linda to herself.
"Thank you," Doña Rosario murmured, restoring the gourd almost empty. But ere long her eyes gradually grew heavy, and she sank back, murmuring in a faint voice—
"Good Heaven! what can be the matter with me? I am dying."
One of the mosotones caught her in his arms, and placed her before him on his saddle. All at once she for a moment recovered herself as if by an electric shock, opened her eyes, and cried with a piercing voice, "Help, help!" and relapsed into insensibility.
On hearing this agonised cry, the Linda, in spite of herself, felt her heart fail her, but quickly recovering, she said, with a bitter smile—
"Am I growing foolish?"
She made a sign to the mosotone who carried Doña Rosario to draw nearer, and examined her attentively.
"She is asleep," she muttered, with an expression of satisfied hatred; "when she awakes I shall be avenged."
At this moment Antinahuels position was very critical. Too weak to attempt anything serious against the Chilians, whom he wished to induce to make a peace advantageous for his country, he endeavoured to gain time by moving about on the frontier, so that his enemies, not knowing where to find him, could not force conditions upon him which he ought not to accept. Although the Aucas responded to the appeal of his emissaries, and rose eagerly to come and join his ranks, it was necessary to give the tribes, most of them remote, time to concentrate upon the point he had named.