The Linda saw nothing, thought of nothing, for she had her daughter to look at. In vain Valentine racked his brains to discover some means of overcoming this apparently insuperable difficulty. A bark from Cæsar made him raise his head. Louis had found the means which Valentine had despaired of finding. Collecting the lassos which Chilian horsemen always have suspended from their saddles, he had fastened them tightly together and had formed two ropes, which he let down the precipice.
Valentine uttered a cry of joy. Rosario was saved! As soon as the lassos were within his reach he seized them and quickly constructed a chair; but here a new difficulty presented itself; how was it possible to get the insensible girl from amidst the tangled growth?
"Wait a minute!" exclaimed Linda, and bounding like a panther, she sprang into the centre of the tangled mass, which bent under her feet, took her daughter in her arms, and with a spring as sure and as rapid as the first, regained the edge of the precipice.
The young man then tied Doña Rosario in the chair, and then made a signal for hoisting it. The Aucas warriors, directed by Louis, drew the lassos gently and firmly upwards, whilst Valentine and the Linda, clinging as well as they could to points of rocks and bushes, kept the young lady steady, and secured her from collision with the sharp stones that might have wounded her.
As soon as Don Tadeo perceived his daughter, he rushed towards her with a hoarse articulate cry, and pressing her to his panting breast he sobbed aloud, shedding a flood of tears.
"Oh!" cried the girl, clinging with childish terror to her father, and clasping her arms round his neck, "father! father! I thought I must have died!"
"My child," said Don Tadeo, "your mother was the first to fly to your assistance."
The Linda's face glowed with happiness, and she held out her arms to her daughter, with a supplicating look. Rosario looked at her with a mixture of fear and tenderness, and made a motion as if to throw herself into the arms that were open to her; but she suddenly checked herself.
"Oh I cannot! I cannot!"
The Linda heaved a heavy sigh, wiped the tears which inundated her cheeks, and retired on one side.