"Pah! He's under a stone like an iguana! If he eludes the rain as cleverly as he does the leaden hail when we attack a caravan, methinks he will turn up in the day as dry as the core of a miser's heart."
Meanwhile, the storm, which had but inadequately manifested its power in the heralding blow and pour, now swept across the plain and buffeted the tower. It began to rock, and the sentries, who set discipline at defiance and had come into the shelter, were half afraid that they had not taken the wiser course. Whatever their terror below, that of Gladsden would have been more justifiable, for the loose stones atop were moved at each gust, and some fell, both within and without. The prospect of the lightning bolt flinging him scathed to the death, amid ruins, upon the knot of robbers, was quite within reasonable surmise.
He wrapped his gun up beside him, so that its steel should not attract the flame that seemed, when it played within his nook, to linger upon him, and expected the worst between the two perils.
All at once, splitting the rolling thunder in its higher key, a frightened voice cried out, "The horses! There is a stampede!"
Notwithstanding the pouring rain, half a dozen of the bandits rushed out. But almost instantly returning, they gladly reported that the agitation among the horses was caused, not so much by their fright at the lightning, as by the mad gambols of Ignacio's mule, which, running into the group tethered on the leeward of the tower, was plying tooth and hoof in order to range himself near the horse to which he had taken one of those devoted fancies not uncommon among the hybrids. Instead of their forming a mass, rounded in shape, their tails outward, to meet the rain, they half encircled the tower, accommodating themselves to the wind, which was shifting to the southeast.
"The old tower holds firm," said Ignacio, his mouth full of beef, as he plied a needle and fine deer's sinew for thread in the reparation of his leggings.
"Only the gale shakes out a tooth of the old hag's head," said his neighbour, on whom sundry fragments of the crumble had fallen.
"Ha!" ejaculated don Matasiete, abruptly, as he clapped his long hand to his head, and then clutched the object which had struck him there, and then rolled into the ashes. He had pulled it forth with amazing alacrity. "Since when has this tower been built with cartridges?"
"What!" was the general cry, as all, like the speaker, looked upward.
"I tell you that this fell on my head. If it rains more of the like we must dash out the fire, or we'll be blown higher than the eagle flies!"