"Oh yes! Chanito," rejoined the Indian, "when we form our bivouac, I shall make plenty of coffee, and if you sip it, in a quarter of an hour your thirst will be quenched."
"Then I hope we shall soon reach our bivouac," said Lucien, mournfully.
If I had consulted my own feelings, I should now have given the word to halt; but reason and experience enabled me to resist the desire. It would really be better for Lucien to suffer for a short time than for us to lose several hours, especially if we failed to find the stream we were seeking. It was necessary to cross without delay the inhospitable forest which we had entered, instead of waiting until hunger and thirst imperiously cried—Onward! when perhaps we might be too exhausted to move.
The ground became undulating, and I hastened forward, thinking to meet with what we wished for, when a glade, which enabled us to catch a glimpse of the sun, enlivened us a little. Here there was some grass, and a few shrubs and creepers. I called Lucien to show him what to us was a new plant, the Bromelia pinguin of botanists.
Its ripe pink fruit was symmetrically placed in a circle of green leaves. Lucien, kneeling down, tried to pluck them.
"Pull one from the middle, Chanito," cried l'Encuerado; "that's the only way to get them."
The boy seized the centre berry, which came out, and, like the stones of an arch when the key-stone is taken out, all the cones fell. Under their thick husk there was a white, acid, melting pulp, well adapted to quench the thirst; but I recommended Lucien not to eat more than two or three of them. A second clump, a little farther on, enabled us to gather a good stock of them. Providence could not have placed in our path a more valuable plant, for the hundreds of cones which we had gathered would enable us to brave the necessities of thirst for two or three days. We now walked on at a quicker pace, and Lucien, a little refreshed, kept his place courageously by my side.
"Well!" said I, "you must confess now that virgin forests may have something good in them. How do you like the timbirichis?"
"They are excellent; what family do they belong to?"
"They are akin to the pine-apples, and therefore belong to the bromelaceæ."