"Mother, mother!" she said with a sob that lacerated her throat, "Take your child."
Doña Emilia, aroused by this cry, bounded like a lioness from her hammock, and seized her babe. Rita then fell back, with her breast bleeding, and her features distorted by pain, and writhed in frightful convulsions. Doña Emilia leant over her.
"What is the matter, in Heaven's name?" she asked her in horror.
"The snake, see the snake, mother!" the quadroon exclaimed, as she raised herself with a last, effort and pointed to the reptile which was quietly gliding along the sand; then she uttered a fearful groan, and fell back—dead. Don Aníbal and the priest, attracted by the cries, rushed into the arbour, and at once comprehended the frightful accident which must have occurred. The hacendero ran up to his wife, while Father Sandoval bravely attacked the snake and killed it. The Indian chief had disappeared with the bound of a wild beast, after exchanging with Doña Emilia a glance of awful purport.
The lady, with calm brow and a smile on her lip, nursed her babe, which was now awake, while singing one of those touching American tunes with which these innocent creatures are lulled to sleep. She was mad!
Don Aníbal, crushed by this terrible catastrophe, tottered for a moment like a drunken man, then raising his hands to his face with a cry of despair, he fell unconscious on the ground. His rebellious nature had at last been vanquished by grief.
"It is the finger of God!" the priest murmured, as he raised his tear-laden eyes to heaven.
And kneeling by the body of the poor quadroon he prayed fervently. Doña Emilia was still singing and lulling her child to sleep.
Two days later the hacienda was invested by the Spaniards. Don Aníbal defended himself for a long time with heroic courage, but the Spaniards at last stormed the fortress, and made a horrible massacre of its defenders. Don Aníbal, bearing his wife across his horse's neck, and the priest carrying in his arms the baby and the boy saved a short time previously upon the defeat of the Indians, succeeded in escaping, through the courage of some twenty peons who resolutely collected round them and made a rampart of their bodies.
Hotly pursued by the tamarindos, the fugitives wandered for a long time haphazard in the forests, tracked like wild beasts by their implacable victors; but at last, after extraordinary privations and innumerable dangers, they succeeded in reaching Santa Rosa, where the miners offered them a shelter. The revolt having thus been drowned in blood in this province by the Spaniards, they had a lengthened breathing time; for the patriots were dead or so utterly demoralized that a fresh insurrection need not be apprehended.