"Scarcely an hour."
The face of the unknown lighted up. He remained silent for a moment, during which the bystanders anxiously bent towards him, awaiting with impatience the opinion he would probably pronounce.
"Scarcely an hour?" said he at last. "Then she may be saved."
The stranger uttered a sigh of joy.
"You will answer for it?" he cried.
"I?" returned the unknown, shrugging; his shoulders; "I will answer for nothing, except that I will attempt impossibilities for the chance of restoring her to you."
"Oh, save her, save her!" eagerly exclaimed the father; "And, whoever you may be, I will bless you."
"It matters not to me what you may do. I do not try to save this girl for your sake; and, whatever may be the motives inducing me, I exempt you from all feelings of gratitude."
"You may possibly harbour such thoughts; but for myself – "
"Enough," rudely broke in the unknown; "we have already lost too much time in idle words; let us make haste, if we would not be too late."
All were silent.
The unknown looked around.
We have already said that the strangers had halted at the edge of the forest; over their heads the last trees of the covert expanded their mighty branches.
Approaching the trees, the unknown examined them carefully, apparently in search of something he could not find.
All of a sudden, he uttered a cry of joy; and, unsheathing the long knife fastened to his right knee, he cut a branch from a creeper, and returned to the strangers, who were anxiously watching his proceedings.
"Here," said he to one of the party, who looked like a peon (a serf), "strip all the leaves from this branch, and pound them. Be quick; every second is worth a century to her whom we wish to save."
The peon set himself actively to the allotted task.
Then the unknown turned to the father:
"In what part of the body has this child been bitten?"
"A little below the left ankle."
"Has she much courage?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Answer! Time presses."
"The poor child is quite worn out; she is very weak."
"Then we must hesitate no longer; the operation must be performed."
"An operation!" cried the stranger, affrighted.
"Would you rather she should die?"
"Is this operation indispensable?"
"It is: we have already lost too much time."
"Then perform it. God grant you may succeed!"
The girl's leg was horribly swollen; the part round the serpent's bite, terribly tumefied, was already taking a greenish hue.
"Alas," muttered the unknown, "there is not a moment to spare. Hold the child so that she cannot stir while I perform the operation."
In these last words the voice of the unknown had assumed such an accent of command, that the strangers obeyed without hesitation.
The former seated himself on the ground, took the limb of the girl upon his knee, and made his preparations. Luckily the moon shone at this moment so clearly, that her vivid rays flooded the landscape, and everything was almost as visible as in broad daylight.
When the girl had first felt the bite, she had immediately, and happily for herself, torn off her silk stocking. The unknown grasped the blade of his knife an inch from the point, and, lowering his brow with terrible determination, buried the point in the wound, and made a cruciform incision about six lines deep, and more than an inch long.
The poor child must have felt terrible anguish; for she gave utterance to a dreadful scream, and twisted herself about nervously.
"Hold her tight, cuerpo de Cristo!" shouted the unknown in a voice of thunder, while with admirable coolness and skill he pressed the lips of the wound, so as to force out the black and decomposing blood it contained; "And now the leaves – the leaves!"
The peon ran up.
The unknown took the leaves, parted asunder the lips of the wound, and gently, carefully expressed their juice on the palpitating flesh. Making a kind of plaster of the same leaves, he applied it to the wound, tied it down firmly with a bandage, placed the foot carefully on the ground, and rose.
As soon as a certain quantity of the sap of the creeper had fallen upon the wound, the girl had seemed to experience a sensation of great relief; the nervous spasms began to abate; she closed her eyes; and finally she leaned back without attempting to struggle any longer with the persons who held her in their arms.
"You may leave her now," whispered the unknown; "she is asleep."
In fact, the regular though feeble breathing of the patient proved her to be plunged in a profound slumber.
"God be praised!" exclaimed the poor father, clasping his hands in ecstasy; "Then she is really saved?"
"She is," answered the unknown leisurely; "bating unforeseen accidents, she has nothing more to fear."
"But what is the extraordinary remedy you have employed to obtain such a happy result?"
The unknown smiled with disdain, and did not seem willing to reply; however, after a short hesitation, yielding perhaps to that secret vanity which induces us all to make a parade of our wisdom, he decided upon giving the information demanded.
"The pettiest things astonish you fellows who dwell in cities," said he ironically; "the man who has passed his whole life in the wilderness knows many things of which the inhabitants of your brilliant towns are ignorant, although, with the sole aim of humiliating, they take pleasure in parading their false science before us poor savages. Nature hides not the secret of her mysterious harmonics from him who ceaselessly pries into the darkness of night and the brightness of day, with a patience beyond proof, without suffering himself to be discouraged by failure. The sublime Architect, when he had created this immense universe, did not let it fall from his omnipotent hands until it had been made perfect, nor till the amount of good should counterbalance everywhere the amount of evil – placing, so to say, the antidote side by side with the poison."
The stranger listened with increasing surprise to the words of this man, whose real character was an enigma to him, and who at every moment showed himself in lights diametrically opposed, and under forms entirely distinct.
"But," continued the unknown, "pride and presumption make man blind. Accustomed to make all things bear upon himself, imagining that all existence has been specially created for his convenience, he takes no pains to study the secrets of nature further than they seem to have a direct influence on his personal welfare, not caring to make inquiry into her simplest actions. So, for instance, the region in which we now are, being low and marshy, is naturally infested with reptiles, which are so much the more dangerous and to be dreaded, because they are half-calcined and rendered furious by the rays of a torrid sun. Therefore provident nature has produced in abundance throughout these same regions a creeper called mikania– the one I have just used – which is an infallible remedy for the bites of serpents."
"I cannot doubt it, after having witnessed its efficacy; but how were the virtues of this creeper discovered?" said the stranger, involuntarily interested in the highest degree.
"A hunter of the woods," continued the unknown, with a certain self-complacency, "observed that the black falcon, better known as the guaco, a bird which feeds chiefly upon reptiles, takes special delight in exterminating serpents. This hunter had also observed that if, during the struggle, the serpent contrived to wound the guaco, the latter immediately retired from the combat, and flying to the mikania, tore off a few leaves, which it bruised in its beak. It afterwards returned to the fight more resolute than ever, until it had vanquished its redoubtable enemy. The hunter