“The heart of a bull!” said Paganel. “Ah, this magnificent Patagonian language. You understand him, my friends, he means a courageous man.”
“My father!” exclaimed Robert Grant, and, turning to Paganel, he asked what the Spanish was for, “Is it my father.”
“Es mio padre,” replied the geographer.
Immediately taking Thalcave’s hands in his own, the boy said, in a soft tone:
“Es mio padre.”
“Suo padre,” replied the Patagonian, his face lighting up.
He took the child in his arms, lifted him up on his horse, and gazed at him with peculiar sympathy. His intelligent face was full of quiet feeling.
But Paganel had not completed his interrogations. “This prisoner, who was he? What was he doing? When had Thalcave heard of him?” All these questions poured upon him at once.
He had not long to wait for an answer, and learned that the European was a slave in one of the tribes that roamed the country between the Colorado and the Rio Negro.
“But where was the last place he was in?”