Diego, grinning and showing shark teeth, stood at the mouth of this bay, lashed by the swinging vines and lianas, eyeing the sky and listening attentively to all sounds, quiet as a statue.
After that waterspout, the tempest fled with haste, sweeping away all the gloomy clouds.
Out of the sky of deep blue suddenly sparkled a myriad of stars. The moon, too, presented a pale face in a watery vapour, which gave an effect of mirage as if it had a misty partner and the two were slowly dancing.
The atmosphere became of singular limpidity, and the smallest leaves and the flower cups so tiny that only the hummingbirds' bills could pierce their hollow, were discernible at a distance. Thousands of gnats and mosquitoes swarmed out of their retreats and played in the moonlight like motes in the solar beams. The earth began to smoke with vapour, and the flowers exhaled oppressive wealth of perfumes.
The captain, galvanised by the fresh morning breeze, for it must have been about three o'clock, was about to call his men for a consultation, when on each side of him he felt a figure rise, and in each of his leather cheeks was pressed the muzzle of a pistol. At the same time, his arms were grasped and pressed down by his sides. Another pair of hands seized each leg, real and fictitious, and lifting him up, he was held in the air like a puppet, whilst the traitorous Diego drew the horse out from under him. Then his unknown seizers lowered him to the ground, in the softness of which his stump was deeply embedded, and a low but firm voice muttered in his ear:
"No nonsense, or you are a dead man before being justly hanged!"
Some stifled oaths and cries, at the same time as a scuffle, betokened that his followers were being mastered in the like manner. Only the horrid grating of a knife along a bone, and a deep groan or two proved that Zagal or another had offered such a manful resistance as their captain well heeded not to attempt.
Two men took the salteador between them, bending like a sack of grain, and carried him, heels first, in that ignominious attitude, through the maze, which was no puzzle to them, into the house over the porch and in at a window from the verandah. The room into which he was transported was that where Mr. Gladsden had been entertained. Don Benito, his son, and another gentleman, chiefs of the defensive operations, were there seated. Two lamps, burning low, were quickly turned up on the arrival of the prisoner, evidently expected. His carriers were two Mexicans of strong build, armed to the teeth, who set him in an armchair, confronting their master, and stood, one each side of him, pistols still in hand.
For a moment don Benito and his captive looked at one another. Hatred and anguish at having been thus placed before his old enemy gave the former don Aníbal the impudence not to quail.
"My so-called captain," said the hacendero, "you are my prisoner."