“Senores, we mounted with difficulty. Our horses getting up plunged madly, held by the soldiers who had come running from all sides. Nobody thought of catching Gaspar Ruiz then. The eyes of men and animals shone with wild fear. My general approached Gaspar Ruiz, who stood motionless as a statue above the girl. He let himself be shaken by the shoulder without detaching his eyes from her face.
“‘Que guape!’ shouted the General in his ear. ‘You are the bravest man living. You have saved my life. I am General Robles. Come to my quarters to-morrow if God gives us the grace to see another day.’
“He never stirred—as if deaf, without feeling, insensible.
“We rode away for the town, full of our relations, of our friends, of whose fate we hardly dared to think. The soldiers ran by the side of our horses. Everything was forgotten in the immensity of the catastrophe overtaking a whole country.”
. . . . . . .
Gaspar Ruiz saw the girl open her eyes. The raising of her eyelids seemed to recall him from a trance. They were alone; the cries of terror and distress from homeless people filled the plains of the coast remote and immense, coming like a whisper into their loneliness.
She rose swiftly to her feet, darting fearful glances on all sides. “What is it?” she cried out low, and peering into his face. “Where am I?”
He bowed his head sadly, without a word.
“. . . Who are you?”
He knelt down slowly before her, and touched the hem of her coarse black baize skirt. “Your slave,” he said.