“Oh!” ejaculated the little Leona, “I hope not, brother Leon.”
“On second thoughts,” replied Leon, “I don’t think it is a snake.”
Of course the object was a good distance off, else Leon and Leona would not have talked so coolly about it. But their words had reached the ear of Doña Isidora, and drawn her attention to what they were talking about.
“No; it is not a snake,” said she. “I fancy it is a turtle.”
Guapo up to this had been busy with Don Pablo in getting the balza made fast. The word “turtle,” however, caught his ear at once, and he looked up, and then out on the river in the direction where Leon and Leona were pointing. As soon as his eye rested upon the moving object he replied to the remark of Doña Isidora.
“Yes, my mistress,” said he, “it is a turtle, and a big one too. Please all keep quiet—I think I can get him.”
How Guapo was to get the turtle was a mystery to all. The latter was about thirty paces distant, but it would be difficult, if not impossible, to hit his small snout—the only part above water—with the arrow of the blow-gun. Moreover, they thought that the arrow would not penetrate the hard, bony-substance, so as to stick there and infuse its poison into the wound.
These conjectures were true enough, but his gravatána was not the weapon which Guapo was about to use. He had other weapons as well—a fish-spear or harpoon, and a regular bow and arrows, which he had made during his leisure hours in the valley.
The latter was the weapon with which the tortoise was to be killed.
Taking the bow, and adjusting an arrow to the string, Guapo stepped forward to the water’s edge. All watched him, uttering their hopes of his success. It was still not clear with them how the turtle was to be killed by an arrow shot from a bow any more than by one sent from a blow-gun. Would it not glance from the shell even should he succeed in hitting it under water? Surely it would!