Almirena shrieked out as the tiger-like eyes of Velasque gleamed upon her.
The young Mexican immediately assumed a more familiar manner, and declared to the imperturbed outlaw, that he had been convicted of piracy in his own country, and that himself was accompanied by a party of United States officers, who were furnished with a warrant for his arrest from their Government. While they delayed in the woods, he had advanced professedly to reconnoitre, but really to parley.
‘You may escape if’——
‘If!’ thundered out the infuriated father. He checked his words. For a moment the storm of feeling raged within his breast. ‘I die,’ at length he said. ‘But we will pray before we go. Yonder is the image of our Mother.’ He led his daughter into a back room. ‘Now pray for protection.’ He whispered in agony, ‘fly—fly to your boat—you will be safe. I suffer for my guilt.’ The terrified child, the affectionate daughter, would have stayed by her father. But he sternly urged her forward. She sped her way to the lake. Velasque, suspecting an artifice, advanced; and missing his victim, dashed impetuously by Herraras, hurling the old man to the floor as he impotently endeavored to oppose him, and ran down the wood-skirted path to the waters. The resolute girl had pushed her canoe from the shore, and standing erect was vigorously plying her oar. Her pursuer seized her father’s boat; but the wind was up, and the waves mocked his strong-nerved efforts. She seemingly leaped from crest to crest. He called after her. The wind returned upon him his voice; and her flowing locks streamed in wilder witchery to his view. Nearing the shore, she sprang from her boat, and bounded away like a young fawn through the forest, leaving her vexed pursuer far behind.
The outlaw, recovering from his violent fall, hurried for the water. Velasque was far on the lake. The old man hastened along the shore to meet his daughter on the upper extremity of the lake. He found her in a branch-vaulted glen, concealed under an arbor that Clermont had constructed for their stolen interviews; scarcely did he begin to tranquillize his child, now fluttering with fear, and exhausted by her efforts, when Velasque leaped down the side of the glen. They stood face to face—the outlaw and the exasperated lover. ‘Obstinate old man,’ said the latter, ‘thou shalt die, and thy defenseless daughter shall be subdued to my wishes, if thou wilt not now acknowledge her mine.’ The old man replied not. Almirena, deadly pale, staggered forward to her father, and extending up to him her clasped hands, groaned out, ‘Oh my father, let me be honorably his.’ Nature failed her—she fell lifeless at his feet. Velasque stooped forward to raise her. But the maddened old man, with unnatural nerve, ran upon him, and precipitated him down a chasm in the rocks. The officers, who had been on the alert in the woods, now came up.
They bore the unconscious form of Almirena to the lodge, and consigned it to the care of her tender hearted slave. The wounded Velasque was carried away on a litter. The outlaw was manacled. He was supposed to be a bloody-handed, ferocious pirate. And as the girl was thought to be an accomplice in her father’s guilt, the officers had little pity for either. They did not permit the old man to go to his house and take a last look of his child; but conveying him by a nearer way through the valley of the lake, on the next morning they reached the sea-port, and lodged the outlaw in prison, where he was to be confined until Velasque should be sufficiently recovered to take charge of him to Mexico. Herraras was not sorry that his daughter had died. He knew that his own fate was sealed, and that she should live, exposed to the violence of Velasque, would have been worse than death on the rack to himself. He settled down in a calm, sullen submission to his destiny.
But Almirena lived. She had fainted; but awoke in a delirium. Clermont did not come to the lodge till the following morning. She wildly addressed him as he entered, ‘Farewell, Elfred, farewell. I have given myself to Velasque, and he spares my father’s life. You would see me before I go. Farewell. One kiss, one more;’ and she threw her arms about his neck, as he leaned over her, and sobbed like a child. For weeks did her lover watch in patient agony by her side. At length she slowly recovered.
Velasque did die. Foiled in his chief design, his spirits sunk, and he had not sufficient energy to counteract the effects of his wounds, which soon terminated his existence. Velasque being the only witness against the outlaw, and no one appearing to prosecute the case farther, he might have been discharged; but a new suit was instituted by those who had accompanied Velasque, charging him with the murder of the Mexican. He possessed no evidence to countervail the accusation. A stranger in a strange land, a condemned pirate immured in a prison, he had not heard that his daughter was yet alive. The popular feeling was against him. Clermont, who, being busy and remote, and also too fearful of the guilt of Herraras in respect to piracy, had not interested himself to learn what was transpiring, did not arrive at the court, till the evidence on the part of the state had been received. He was admitted to manage the defense. He called only one witness, the lovely daughter of the prisoner. As the hard-visaged outlaw met his child, the living from the dead, and held her in his embrace, his iron soul seemed to melt, and flow out at his eyes; a sight that turned the sympathies of the spectators in his favor. Almirena’s story was simple, and touching, in manifestation of the villainy of Velasque. Clermont conducted the case, to him, and all, now most intensely interesting, by an ingenious and manly argument in point of the prisoner’s having acted in defense of himself, and of the honor of his daughter. The outlaw was acquitted.
Herraras cheerfully yielded his daughter to his noble deliverer, her devoted lover; stipulating only that he might love her yet, for the sake of her mother. In tranquillity, and penitence for early misdeeds, the outlaw passed his days. Clermont, under another name, has arisen to distinction; but yearly does he revisit with his still beautiful Mexican wife, the lake of their romantic loves.