"Did you not know that people cannot invade the sacred territory of the Guaycurus with impunity?"
"It is true," murmured the marquis, appearing, rather to reply to his own thoughts than to the words of the Montonero.
"Give me your word of honour not to try and escape," said Zeno Cabral, "and you will be free in a moment from all constraint."
"I give it you," answered the marquis, despondingly.
His bonds immediately fell, like those of Don Sebastiao Vianna, who had also given his word.
General Don Eusebio, since he had been in the power of the Montoneros, had maintained a sullen silence; the only answer that they obtained from him, when they proposed to him to give his word, was confined to these words, "Go to the devil!"
They were obliged to carry him away, and to tie him as well as they could on horseback.
Meanwhile time pressed; it was necessary to hasten away; the air became more and more rarefied; a suffocating heat was felt; thick volumes of smoke rolled over the glade; showers of sparks were rained upon the trees; the shrubbery began to burn; there was not a moment to lose.
Zeno Cabral placed himself at the head of his troop, having at his side Don Roque and Don Sebastiao, and having cried "Advance!" in a thundering voice, he rode at full speed across the glade.
The entire plain, for a distance of more than ten leagues, became an immense lake of flame, in the midst of which the Indians, half naked, looked like so many demons, leaping and brandishing their arms, and uttering cries like wild beasts.
The Brazilian troops--entrenched on the hill where they had established their camp, circled by an impenetrable wall of fire, kept up a continual and well-sustained fire on the Indians, not in the hope of conquering them, but so that they might die bravely, and make their wild and implacable enemies pay dearly for their victory.
Zeno Cabral gave the order to halt, to allow their horses to regain their wind.
They stopped. The Brazilians still fought, or at least they continued to fire, for they had no longer any enemy; the Indians were flying in all directions, in their turn pursued by the fire which they had themselves lighted.
Suddenly a frightful explosion was heard; an immense cloud of dust, fragments of rock, and broken trees, rose in the air to a prodigious height, and fell with a crash.