We have said that the plain was deserted: nothing remained but corpses and wild beasts.
"What is to be done?" the Jaguar muttered;
"Whither shall I go? What has become of my brothers? In what direction have they fled? Where shall I find Carmela and Tranquil again?"
And the young man, crushed by the flood of desperate thoughts that rose from his heart to his brain, sank on a block of rock, and, paying no further attention to the wild beasts, whose roars increased at each second, and grew more menacing with the darkness, he buried his head in his hands, and violently pressing his temples as if to retain that reason which was ready to abandon him, he reflected.
Two hours passed thus—two hours, during which he was a prey to a desperation which was the more terrible, as it was silent. This man, who had set all his hopes on an idea, who had for several years fought, without truce or mercy, for the realization of his dream, whose life had been, so to speak, one long self-denial—at the moment when he was about at last to attain that object, pursued with such tenacity, had seen, by a sudden change of fortune, his projects annihilated for ever perhaps, in a few hours; he had lost everything, and found himself alone on a battlefield, seated amid corpses, and surrounded by wild beasts that watched him. For a moment he had thought of finishing with life, plunging his dagger into his heart, and not surviving the downfall of his hopes of love and ambition. But this cowardly thought did not endure longer than a flash of lightning; a sudden reaction took place in the young man's mind, and he rose again, stronger than before, for his soul, purified in the crucible of suffering, had resumed all its audacious energy.
"No," he said, casting a glance of defiance around, "I will not let myself be any longer crushed, God will not permit that a cause so sacred as that to which I have devoted myself should fail; it is a trial He has wished to impose on us, and I will endure it without complaint; though conquered today, tomorrow we will be victors. To work! Liberty is the daughter of Heaven: she is holy, and cannot die."
After uttering these words in a loud voice, with an accent of inspiration, as if desirous of giving those who had fallen a last and supreme consolation, the young man picked up his rifle, which had fallen by his side, and went off with the firm and assured step of a strong man, who has really faith in the cause he defends, and to whom obstacles, however great they may be, are incitements to persevere in the path he has traced. The Jaguar then crossed the battlefield, striding over the corpses, and putting to flight the wild beasts, which eagerly got out of his way.
The young man thus passed alone and in the darkness along the road he had traversed by the dazzling sunlight, in the midst of an enthusiastic army, which marched gaily into action, and believed itself sure of victory. His resolution did not break down for a moment, he no longer allowed the attacks of those sad thoughts which had so nearly crushed him: he had clutched his sorrow, struggled with it and conquered it; now, nothing more could overpower him.
On reaching the end of the plain where the battle had been fought, the Jaguar halted. The moon had risen, and its sickly rays sadly illumined the landscape, to which it imparted a sinister hue. The young man looked around him: in his utter ignorance of the road followed by the fugitives of his party, he hesitated about going along a path where he ran a risk of falling in with a party of Mexican scouts or plunderers, who must at this moment be scouring the plain in every direction, in pursuit of those Texans who had been so lucky as to escape from the battlefield.
It was a long and difficult journey to the Fort of the Point, and in all probability the victors, if they were not already masters of the fortress, would have invested it, so as to intercept all communications of the garrison with their friends outside, and force it to surrender. Nor could he dream of entering Galveston, for that would be delivering himself into the hands of his enemies. The Jaguar's perplexity was great; he remained thus for a long time hesitating as to what road he should follow. By a mechanical movement habitual enough to men when embarrassed, he looked vaguely around him, though not fixing his eyes more on one spot than another, when he gave a sudden start. He had seen, some distance off, a faint, almost imperceptible light gleaming among the trees. The young man tried in vain to determine the direction in which the light was; but at length, he felt certain that it came from the side where was the rancho, which, on the previous evening, had been the headquarters of the staff of the Texan army.