The Indian did not hesitate; removing his horse's bit, which was troublesome to it, he dived and swam vigorously toward the islet. The animal, freed from its rider's weight, seemed to regain its old strength, and, impelled by instinct, also proceeded in the same direction. A quarter of an hour after, man and horse walked together up the sandy bank of the island. They were saved! CHAPTER XXXIII. MOONSHINE. It was about four in the morning; the night storm had completely swept the sky, which was of a deep azure; day would speedily appear. General Cárdenas, leaning sadly over the battlements of the town wall, was reflecting, while his eye wandered over the plain and the camp of the Mexicans, whose bivouac fires were beginning to die out. A little distance behind him, aides-de-camp and orderly officers carelessly leaning on their sabres were waiting with ill-disguised impatience till their chief thought proper to leave the ramparts and return to the cabildo. The general, we said, was reflecting. His thoughts were sad and gloomy. Provisions and ammunition, squandered by the officers ordered to serve them out, were running short; the garrison, tired of being shut up within the walls, were beginning to mutter, and would ere long complain loudly. Coahuila had been so completely invested by the Mexican army that, from the day the siege began, no one had been able to enter or leave the town. The general, consequently, was as much deprived of news as if he were five hundred leagues away from Mexico. The soldiers, accustomed since the beginning of the insurrection to live at the expense of the country people, plunder, and ill-treat them, did not like the confined diet to which they were constrained. Unpleasant rumours circulated among them, although it was impossible to trace them to their source. The officers themselves were discouraged, and desired the end of this state of things, which every day that passed rendered worse. The general, therefore, saw with terror the moment at hand when all would fail him at once, and he would be forced to throw himself on the mercy of enemies whom he had supposed so contemptible, and whom he had taken a delight in exasperating by unlooked-for and objectless cruelty. Hurled thus from his high estate into a bottomless abyss, the general was suffering from one of those cold and concentrated attacks of fury which are the more terrible because they can find no outlet.