Though fully convinced of this, the miners remain calm, with that confidence due to danger seeming still distant. They know they are safe for the time, unassailable, the gambusino having given them assurance of it. But they now see it for themselves, and any apprehensions they have are less for the present than the future. Sure are they that a siege is before them, how long they cannot guess, nor in which way it will terminate. And there may be chances of relief or escape they have not thought of. Hope is hard to kill, and the least hopeful of them has not yet yielded to despair. Time enough for that when starvation stares them in the face, for hunger—famine—is the foe they have most to fear.
But they think not of things so far ahead. They must first see the enemy of which their guide has given such awe-inspiring account; and, with glances sent abroad and over that portion of the plain visible to them, they await his appearance on it.
Nearly another hour elapses without any enemy seen. The horses and mules have got over their late excitement, and are again tranquilly depasturing, some having waded into the lake to cool their hoofs, still hot after their long jornada. But none wander away from the proximity of the camp; the only animals out on the plain being prong-horn antelopes, a herd of which, on their way to the water too, has been deterred approaching it by the presence of huge monsters unknown to them—the wagons. But these have not hindered the approach of the black-winged birds; instead, attracted them, and a large flock is now around the abandoned camp, some wheeling above, others at rest on the ground or perched upon the rock-boulders which bestrew it. A crowd, collected on the spot where the ox had been butchered for breakfast, contest possession of its offal.
All of a sudden, and simultaneously, a movement is perceptible among the animals, birds as quadrupeds, the wild as the tame. The prong-horns with a snort raise their heads aloft as if they saw or scented some new danger, then lope off at lightning speed. The vultures take wing, but only rise a little way into the air, to soar round in circles; while the horses, mules, and horned cattle, as if seized by a frenzy of madness, rush excitedly about, wildly neighing and bellowing, at each instant threatening to break away in stampede.
“They smell redskin,” knowingly observes the gambusino, who is among the rest watching their movements. “Yes; and we’ll soon see the ugly thing itself. Chingara! yonder it is.”
He has no need to point out either the thing or the place. The eyes of all are now on it; the head of a dusky cohort just appearing round the eastern projection of the Cerro, becoming elongated as file after file unfolds itself. They are still afar off—at least a league—nor is their line of march directed towards the mountain, but westward, as though they intended turning it.
No such manoeuvre is meant, however, as the miners, forewarned by their guide, are already aware. His words are made good by their seeing soon after another dark line developing itself on the llano, at a like distance off, but coming from the opposite direction.
“The party that went west about,” says the gambusino, half in soliloquy; “cunning in them to make a complete surround of us. I suppose they thought we were but horsemen, and might get away from them. If they’d seen our wagons, it would have saved them some trouble. Well, they see everything now.”
No one makes rejoinder, all intently gazing at the two marching bands, now with eyes on one, then quickly transferred to the other. The portion of the plain visible is sextant-shaped—the view on either side cut off by the flanking ridges of the ravine—and from each side the string of savage horsemen is continuously lengthening out. Not rapidly, but in slow leisurely crawl, as if confident they had already secured the enfiladement of the camp. With a thicker concentration near the head of each, and a metallic sparkle all along their line—the sheen of their armour under the rays of the meridian sun—they appear as two huge serpents of antediluvian age, deliberately drawing towards one another either for friendship or combat.