Guahiba, meantime, while strength remained to break her way through the tangled wilderness, continued her flight; but soon exhausted and breathless, with the violence of her exertions, she was obliged to relax in her efforts, and at length sunk down at the foot of a huge laurel tree, where she concealed herself, as well as she might, among the long, interwoven grass. There, crouching and trembling in her lair, she heard the voices of her persecutors hallooing to each other through the thicket. She would probably have escaped but for a large mastiff which the Indians had with them, and which scented her out in her hiding place. The moment she heard the dreaded animal snuffing in the air, and tearing his way through the grass, she knew she was lost. The Indians came up. She attempted no vain resistance; but, with a sullen passiveness, suffered herself to be seized and dragged to the shore.
When the merciless priest beheld her, he determined to inflict on her such discipline as he thought would banish her children from her memory, and cure her forever of her passion for escaping. He ordered her to be stretched upon that granite rock where she had landed from the canoe, on the summit of which she had stood, as if exulting in her flight,--THE ROCK OF THE MOTHER, as it has ever since been denominated--and there flogged till she could scarcely move or speak. She was then bound more securely, placed in the canoe, and carried to Javita, the seat of a mission far up the river.
It was near sunset when they arrived at this village, and the inhabitants were preparing to go to rest. Guahiba was deposited for the night in a large barn-like building, which served as a place of worship, a public magazine, and, occasionally, as a barrack. Father Gomez ordered two or three Indians of Javita to keep guard over her alternately, relieving each other through the night; and then went to repose himself after the fatigues of his voyage. As the wretched captive neither resisted nor complained, Father Gomez flattered himself that she was now reduced to submission. Little could he fathom the bosom of this fond mother! He mistook for stupor, or resignation, the calmness of a fixed resolve. In absence, in bonds, and in torture, her heart throbbed with but one feeling; one thought alone possessed her whole soul:--her children--her children--and still her children!