“With Fabian, I cannot decide to do it, or I should be now on the bank opposite, where you know as well as I do they still are breathing their infernal vengeance.”
The Spaniard shrugged his shoulders with stoical resignation.
“Doubtless,” said he, “but we must decide either to fly or to stay.”
“Carramba!” continued he, “if we two were alone we would gain the opposite bank in a minute; the seven who are left would catch us no doubt, but we should come out of it, as we have out of more difficult situations.”
“It would be better than to stay here like foxes in their hole.”
“I agree: but Fabian! and the unlucky scalped man, whom we cannot abandon thus to the mercy of the wretches who have already treated him so cruelly. Let us wait at least until the moon has set, and darkness comes on.”
And the old man hung his head with an air of discouragement—which made a painful impression on the Spaniard—raising it only to glance anxiously at the sky; where the moon held on her ordinary course over the starry blue.
“So be it,” said Pepé; “but, stay! we killed first five Indians, then three, that makes eight; there should have been twelve left; why did we only count ten in the water? Depend upon it, the Blackbird has sent the two others to seek for reinforcements.”
“It is possible: to remain here or to fly are both terrible.”
For some time the hunters thus continued to deliberate; meanwhile the moonbeams began to fall more obliquely, and already a part of the tops of the trees were in shadow. More than an hour had elapsed since the attempt of the Indians, and Pepé, less absorbed than Bois-Rose, was watching anxiously.