This sentence caused a momentary stupor among the company; but soon a tiger-like yell burst from all their panting chests, and it was with a tremor of ferocious joy that these men prepared to carry out the atrocious sentence pronounced by their Chief. The prisoner struggled in vain to burst the bonds that held him. In vain he demanded death with loud cries. As the Jaguar had said, the lion's paw was on him; the conspirators were inexorable, and the sentence was carried, out in all its rigour. An hour later, Don Lopez Hidalgo d'Avila, bleeding and mutilated, was deposited at the door of the Governor's palace. On his chest was fastened a large placard, on which were written in blood the two words: COBARDE! TRAIDOR! After this fearful execution, the conspirators continued their meeting as if nothing extraordinary had interrupted them. But the Jaguar's revenge was foiled--at least partially; for when the unhappy victim was picked up at daybreak he was dead. Don Lopez had found the strength and courage to dash out his brains against the wall of the house near which he had been thrown as an unclean animal. CHAPTER XVIII THE PULQUERIA. The same day on which we resume our narrative, on the firing of the cannon from the fort that commands the entrance to the port of Galveston, to announce the setting of the sun, whose glowing disk had just disappeared in the sea, colouring the horizon with a ruddy hue for a long distance, the town, which had, during the day, been plunged into a mournful torpor owing to the heat, woke up all at once with lengthened and joyous clamour. The streets, hitherto solitary, were peopled as if by enchantment by an immense crowd, which emerged in disorder from all the houses, so eager were they to breathe the fresh air of evening which the sea breeze brought up on its humid wing; the shops were opened, and lit up with an infinite number of coloured paper lamps. Ere long there was in this town, where, scarce an hour earlier, such silence and solitude prevailed, a medley of individuals of all classes and countries--English, Spaniards, Americans, Mexicans, French, Russians, Chinese--all dressed in their national costume: women, coquettishly wrapped in their rebozos, darting to the right and left provocative glances; perambulating tradesmen vaunting their merchandise, and serenos, armed to the teeth, trying to maintain good order. And all this crowd came and went, and stopped,--pushing and elbowing and laughing, singing, shouting, and quarrelling, making the dogs bark and the children cry.