"No," replied she, kindly; but she shortly added with sadness, whilst a shade of melancholy clouded her features, "now that I have lost him who was to me as a father, I come to ask your protection, Caballero."
"It is yours, madam," he replied with warmth. "And as to your uncle, oh! depend upon me; I will restore him to you, if the enterprise costs me my life. You know," he added, "that before today I have proved my devotion to you and him."
The first emotion over, it became a question how the young girl had succeeded in escaping the researches of the pirates.
Doña Luz gave as simple an account as possible of what had passed.
The young lady had thrown herself, with all her clothes on, upon the bed; but anxiety kept her awake, a secret presentiment warned her to be on her guard.
At the cry uttered by the pirates, she started from her bed in terror and amazement, and at once perceived that flight was impossible.
Whilst casting a terrified look around her, she perceived some clothes thrown in a disorderly manner into a hammock, and hanging over the sides of it.
An idea, which appeared to come to her from Heaven, shot across her brain like a luminous flash.
She glided under these clothes, and curling herself up into as little space as possible, she crouched at the bottom of the hammock, without altering the disordered state of the things.
God had ordained it that the chief of the bandits, while searching, as he thought, everywhere, never dreamt of plunging his hand into what seemed an empty hammock.