A loud acclamation welcomed these words of the hunter. The pirates consulted among themselves for an instant with a look, then, with one spontaneous movement, they made the sign of the cross, and cried with one voice-- "We accept your offer!" The crowd, an instant before, so tumultuous and violent, became silent and attentive, awed by the expectation of the terrible tragedy which was about to be played before them. "Unbind the prisoners," Loyal Heart commanded. This order was immediately executed. "Your dagger!" said Frank. The hunter gave it to him. "Thank you, and farewell!" said the pirate, in a firm voice; and, opening his vestments, he deliberately, and with a smile, as if he enjoyed death, buried the dagger up to the hilt in his heart. A livid pallor gradually invaded his countenance, his eyes rolled in their orbits, and casting round wild and aimless glances, he staggered like a drunken man, and rolled upon the ground. He was dead. "My turn!" cried the pirate next him, and plucking the still reeking dagger from the wound, he plunged it into his heart. He fell upon the body of the first victim. After him came the turn of another, then another, and so on; not one hesitated, not one displayed weakness,--all fell smiling, and thanking Loyal Heart for the death they owed to him. The spectators were awestruck by this terrible execution; but, fascinated by the frightful spectacle,--drunk, so to say, with the odour of blood, they stood with haggard eyes and heaving breasts, without having the power to turn away their looks. There soon remained but one pirate. This man contemplated for a moment the heap of bodies which lay before him; then, drawing the dagger from the breast of him who had preceded him, he said with a smile,-- "A fellow is lucky to die in such good company; but where the devil do we go to after death? Bah! what a fool I am! I shall soon know!" And with a gesture quick as thought he stabbed himself. He fell instantly quite dead. This frightful slaughter did not last more than a quarter of an hour.[1] Not one of the pirates had struck twice; all were killed by the first blow. "The dagger is mine!" said Eagle Head, drawing it smoking from the still palpitating body of the last bandit. "It is a good weapon for a warrior;" and he placed it coolly in his belt, after having wiped it upon the grass. The bodies of the pirates were scalped, and borne out of the camp. They were abandoned to the vultures and the urubus, for whom they would furnish an ample feast, and who, attracted by the odour of blood, were already hovering over them, uttering lugubrious cries of joy. The formidable troop of Captain Waktehno was thus annihilated. Unfortunately there were other pirates in the prairies. After the execution, the Indians re-entered their huts carelessly; for them it had only been one of those spectacles to which they had been for a long time accustomed, and which have no effect upon their nerves.