The limbs of the cavalier were nerved with the strength of fury; for he thought he heard the screams of Jacinto, ascending with the harsher cries of the gunners; and scarcely did that frightened charger fly more swiftly from the battle, than he himself now back to it.
"Thy duty, knave Lazaro!" he cried. "The boy!—save the boy!"
"Don Amador! oh Amador! Don Amador!" came to his ears, in a voice that rent his heart.
"I come! I come!" shouted the cavalier, redoubling his exertions, but not his speed, for that was at the highest.
"Oh heaven, Amador! Amador!—--"
In his distraction, the neophyte confounded two voices into one; and while he replied to one, his thoughts flew to another.
"I come! Answer me—where art thou? I am here:—where art thou!"
As he uttered these words, he sprang through the artillery, which was without servers,—among bodies which were lifeless,—and stood alone,—for there was no living creature there but himself,—on the borders of the sluice, the beam over which was broken off in the middle, and the further portion, only, left standing in its place.
He cast his amazed and affrighted eye from the water, heaving as before with the struggles of dying men, to the corpse on whose bosom he was standing.—In the grinning countenance, covered with blood, and horribly mutilated by a blow which had pierced through the mouth, jaws, and throat, to the severed spine, he beheld the features of Lazaro, fixed in death; and looked wildly at his side, to discover the body of the page. No corse of Jacinto was there; but, on the ground, where he had stood, on the spot where he had charged him to stand, the novice perceived a jewel, catching a ray from the distant fire, glittering red, as with blood, and held by a golden chain to which it was attached, in the death-grasp of the henchman. He snatched it from the earth and from the hand of the dead and looking on it with a stare of horror, beheld the holy and never to be forgotten cross of rubies.
With that sight, the scales fell from his eyes, and a million of wild thoughts beset his brain. The magical knowledge of the page, coupled with his childish and effeminate youth,—his garments, so fitted to disguise,—his scrupulous modesty,—his tears, his terrors, his affection, and his power over the mind of the cavalier,—the garb of the priestess, so lately acknowledged,—the vision in the house of the Wali, Abdalla,—the cross of jewels, doubtless snatched from the neck of Jacinto, when barbarians were tearing him from the faithful Lazaro,—all these came to the brain of the cavalier with the blaze and the shock of a cannon, suddenly discharged at his ears. He looked again to the corses about him—they were those of the gunners; to the ditch—it writhed no more; and then, uttering the name of Leila, he sunk, in a stupor, to the earth.