While some were piling up the bales, and others unsaddling the horses and draught animals, several adventurers, selected by the leader, entered the forest, in order to seek for dry wood necessary to keep up the watch fires.
The duties were thus allotted, in order that they might be completed as speedily as possible, when suddenly a terrible yell was heard, and a band of Indians burst forth from the forest, and rushed at the travellers with brandished weapons.
There was a moment of disorder which it is impossible to describe. The travellers, so suddenly surprised, and for the most part unarmed, offered but a feeble resistance to their assailants; but, speedily obeying the voice of Wilhelm, and excited by the shouts of General Soto-Mayor, and of Don Pedro Sallazar, they collected round the tent in which the three ladies had sought shelter, and arming themselves with any weapon they came across, they bravely resisted the Indians; not hoping, it is true, to emerge as victors from the contest they were sustaining, but resolved to sell their lives dearly, and only yield to death.
The combat then assumed gigantic proportions; the white men knew that they had no quarter to expect from their ferocious enemies, while the latter, whose great number heightened their boldness, and who counted on an easy victory, exasperated by the resistance offered them, redoubled their efforts to finish with the white men, whom they execrated.
The fight became with each instant more terrible; Chilians and Indians were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight, rending each other like wild beasts, and howling like tigers when a combatant fell on either side.
The issue of this frightful butchery was impossible to foresee, when suddenly several shots were fired, and a band of horsemen rushed desperately into the thickest of the fight. They were Leon, and his adventurers, who, after a futile search, when returning to join their friends, heard the sound of the battle, and hurried up to take their part in the danger, and claim the right of dying with their comrades.
It was time that this succour arrived, for the Chilians who, crushed by numbers, did not feel their courage give way, but the moment approaching when they would fall not to rise again in front of the tent which they had undertaken to defend with the last drop of their blood. Hence the unforeseen and almost providential arrival of the captain changed the aspect of the fight.