There was something in the man's countenance, as well as in the murderous attempt, to confirm the idea; for Camarga's agitation was singular and extreme, and he seemed unable to answer a word.
"Who art thou?" continued Juan angrily, impressed with the certainty that he had seen the face of the assailant before, yet without knowing when or where. "Confess thyself straight, or I will have thee to the Alguazil, and see the friar's frock scourged from thy base body!"
However eager and foreboding the young man's curiosity, it was doomed to be disappointed by a new interruption. While he yet spoke, he was alarmed by a sudden discharge of firearms, followed by shrieks and cries, at the bottom of the garden; and presently the whole solitude was transformed into a scene of tumult and uproar. Lights were seen flashing among the trees, and men were heard running confusedly to and fro, calling to one another.
The last word had hardly parted from his lips, before the boughs crashed on the opposite side of the pool, and a new actor was suddenly added to the scene.
CHAPTER XII.
As the bushes parted, a tall figure sprang into the path, and running round the pool, would instantly have been at the side of the two Castilians, who were yet unobserved, had it not been that Befo, his ferocity greatly whetted by his former encounter, darted forward as at first, with a sudden roar, with equal violence, and with similar success. As the stranger fell to the earth under an attack so impetuous and unexpected, he uttered an exclamation in which Juan recognized the language of Mexico. He ran forwards, guided by the growls of the beast and the stifled cries of the man, (for the spot on which the two contended was covered with impenetrable gloom,) and, by accident, caught the stranger's arm, and felt that it wielded a heavy macana, now uplifted against the animal. As his other hand was stretched forward, again to remove the victorious Befo from a fallen antagonist, it fell upon the naked breast of a barbarian.—In a moment more, he had torn the dog away, and dragged the savage into the moonshine, where he had left Camarga standing, but where Camarga stood no longer. He had fled away in the confusion, unobserved, and now almost forgotten.
Here Juan released the captive from his powerful grasp, for his rapier was in his hand, and the macana of the Mexican he had already cast into the pool; and thus standing, confiding as much in the aid of Befo as in the menacing attitude of his weapon, he began to address his prisoner.
"What art thou?" he demanded, in the tongue which, as he had boasted, was almost as familiar to him as the language of Spain: "What art thou? and what dost thou here?"
Instead of answering, the Mexican, gazing over his conqueror's shoulder, seemed to survey, with looks of admiration and alarm, some spectacle behind his back. Juan cast his eye in the direction thus indicated, and beheld the visage of Magdalena, recalled by the tumult, gleaming hard by. In an instant more, she had vanished, and he turned again to the captive, who, when the vision, to him so inexplicable, had faded away, now directed his attention to an object equally surprising and much more formidable in his estimation than even the redoubtable Juan. As he rolled his eyes, in mingled wonder, trepidation, and anger, on the huge Befo, who now stood regarding him, writhing his lips and showing his tusks, in the manner with which he was wont so expressively to intimate his readiness to obey any signal of attack, Juan had full leisure to observe that the Indian was a young man not above twenty-three or twenty-four years old, of good and manly stature, and limbs nobly proportioned. His only garments were a tunic and mantle of some dark-coloured stuff, but little ornamented, the former extending from the waist to the knees, the latter, knotted, as usual, about his throat, but so disordered and torn by the teeth of the dog, as to leave the upper part of his body nearly naked. His only defensive armour was a little round buckler of the skin of the danta or tapir, not exceeding fourteen inches in diameter, strapped to his left arm. The loss of the macana had left him without any offensive weapon. As he raised his head at the second salutation of his capturer, he flung back the long masses of black hair from his forehead, and displayed a visage, as well, at least, as it could be seen in the moonlight, not unworthy his manly person.