My eye fell upon the water-fowl again. It seemed disquieted, and swam quickly to and fro, making a soft quackle, and jerking its little head, as its kind do when listening. The bay of the dog was heard again—it seemed to have come nearer—and, directly, the water-bird, half swimming and half flying, beating the surface with its wings as it went, took refuge in the thickest of the sedges and disappeared. This little incident roused me. I started up and hearkened. Again, the deep hollow echo of the hound’s bay struck my ears. It was very different from the yelping of a woodman’s cur; and the dogs of the Indians do not bark. Immediately a thought flashed upon me—a ghastly—appalling thought: the Spaniards were upon my track with bloodhounds! Almost instinctively I started up and fled, stumbling as I went. I had a horror of these fiends of dogs, trained to hunt men; and, as I flew along, I thought every moment that I heard the savage creatures panting close behind me. After about ten minutes’ quick running, I stopped, quite spent, to breathe, and, listening for a moment, a faint sound of hallooing, and a burst of baying, loud and long, came floating on the wind. I turned and fled again, straining every nerve mechanically, although I knew but too well that, fleet as was my foot, every time it touched the ground it left the mark which guided the avengers. I, therefore, tried to leap and double, and even got up into a tree and swung myself along by means of the interlacing branches. But this was slow work, I dropped to the ground, and ran again. All this time the voice of the dog was sounding nearer and nearer behind me, and I wondered how my pursuers could keep up with him, at the rate he was evidently running. Nevertheless, I loosened the knife in my girdle and prepared for the struggle. As I did so, I thought of my blunderbuss. Heaven! I had left it behind in my first alarm at the well. The token would have told the Spaniards that their four-footed guide was as sure as it appeared swift. The baying of the accursed hound came close and closer. Oh! how I envied the birds as they rose with a rustle and a scream from the foliage, and soared away in the air, which leaves no track to tell of who has left it. Covered with sweat and dust, and reeling with fatigue, I ran almost at random. Twice I disturbed glistening snakes, which coiled their spiral folds and flashed their black eyes at me, and then glided away like slimy painted ropes pulled by some unseen hand amongst the herbage. But at that instant the bite of the labarri, or the hollow tooth of the rattlesnake, had hardly more horror for me than the gripe of the crunching jaws which were fast following on my track. By this time, the thunder of the hound’s voice was so close that I involuntarily turned at every step to see him make his appearance. The final moment came at last. Crashing with a great rustle through a bed of yielding bushes, sprang a huge, tawny dog, black and foaming at the muzzle.