“Get your weapons ready!” shouted he.
“It is useless, master,” rejoined the old vaquero, whose experience among jaguars gave a certain authority to his words, “the best thing to be done, is to keep the fire ablaze.”
And saying this, he flung an armful of fagots upon it, which, being as dry as tinder, at once caught flame—so as to illumine a large circle around the camp.
“If they are not choking with thirst,” said Benito, “these demons of darkness will not dare come within the circle of the fire. But, indeed, they are often choking with thirst, and then—”
“Then!” interrupted one of the domestics, in a tone of anxiety.
“Then,” continued the herdsman, “then they don’t regard either light or fire; and if we are not determined to defend the water against their approach, we had better get out of their way altogether. These animals are always more thirsty than hungry.”
“How when they have drunk?” asked Baraja, whose countenance, under the light of the fire, betrayed considerable uneasiness.
“Why, then they seek to appease their hunger.”
At this moment a second cry from the jaguar was heard, but farther off than the first. This was some relief to the auditory of Benito, who, relying upon his theory, was satisfied that the animal was not yet at the extreme point of suffering from thirst. All of them preserved silence—the only sounds heard being the crackling of the dry sticks with which Baraja kept the fire profusely supplied.
“Gently there, Baraja! gently!” called out the vaquero, “if you consume our stock of firewood in that fashion, you will soon make an end of it, and, por Dios! amigo, you will have to go to the woods for a fresh supply.”