As they emerged from the deeper glades of the wood, a volume of smoke rose above the trees; and upon gaining the open ground, the whole extent of their danger was revealed to the Caribs. There lay their canoes, a burning mass; while the foreground was occupied by another band of Englishmen, ready prepared for battle. Hemmed in on all sides, the Caribs fought with the fury of uncaged beasts, and sold their lives dearly. Many of the English were stretched upon the ground, a flattened mass, from the blows of their heavy clubs; while others, wounded by their poisoned arrows, only lived to endure further torments. Still Cuanaboa remained unhurt; and standing upon a gentle knoll, brandished his club, and dealt destruction upon the foremost of his enemies. His friends were rapidly falling around him; and as he turned to seek for refuge, Zulmiera approached him unperceived, and with one blow, drove the dirk into his very heart. Without a groan, the Carib chief sank dead upon the earth; and Zulmiera, kneeling by him, plucked the weapon from the wound, and applying her lips, _drank the warm blood as it gurgled forth!_ Unbinding the head of the unfortunate Raphe de Merefield from her waist, where she had carried it throughout the fray, she gazed ardently at it; tenderly parted the still bright hair, imprinted a last kiss upon the cold lips, and then taking up in her hand some of the vital stream, which was still flowing from the wound of Cuanaboa, and forming a pool around him, she bathed the head with it, exclaiming as she did so, “Raphe, thou art avenged! thine enemy lies dead before thee, slain by my hand; and thy bride, faithful in life and death, comes to share thy gory bed.” These actions completed, she looked up. The dying and the dead lay stretched around her,—the conquering English were looking to their captives,—the last gleam of the fire was shooting upwards to the sky,—the moon had gained her zenith,—while, as if in contrast to that bloody field, the waters of the creek rolled on like molten silver, beneath her lovely beams. For one moment the wild but beautiful girl gazed upon the scene; old remembrances sprang up in her mind, and brought the tear into her eye. But dashing them away, she regained her former implacable mood; and as a party of the governor’s servants came forward to arrest her, placing one hand upon her lover’s head, she raised with the other the dirk—its bright steel glittered for a moment in the moonbeam— in the next it was ensheathed in her heart; and she fell a corpse upon that dire chief, to whom she owed all her misery.