"Thank you, señor," he said; "thanks to you, I am saved; but there are other unhappy ones."
"I know it, caballero," interrupted the young man. "A numerous troop of travellers are at this moment still exposed to terrible danger; with the aid of God, we shall save them."
"You believe so?" joyously cried the partisan.
"I hope so, at all events, señor: for several hours already my companions and myself have been working. Come; your aid will not be useless."
He gave utterance to a cry of joy, on perceiving the bridge which the painter bad succeeded in throwing from one side to the other of the gulf.
The work was nearly finished; the plank alone remained to establish. This was the affair of half an hour.
"Do you think, now," asked the young man, "that your companions will risk themselves on this bridge?"
"Oh, that will be only play to them," responded the partisan.
"Cross the bridge, then; clear a passage through the ruins left by the avalanche. Then, arrived on the other side, you will only have to open in the earth heaped up on the rock a trench enough for a passage of a horse."
"What's the good? Better that you should go alone. Our sudden presence would cause great surprise among your friends."
"That's reasonable; in the fainting state in which they are, perhaps that would cause serious consequences. Au revoir, then, and to our speedy meeting."
The young man took the hand of the Frenchman a last time, and set out on the bridge, which he traversed in a minute.
Meanwhile the Pincheyras, who had had a moment's hope when they had seen Don Zeno Cabral, with such skill and such cool bravery, launch himself into the precipice to attempt to find a passage, suddenly felt that hope extinguished in their hearts, when all of a sudden the tree on which the adventurous young man was holding rolled into the abyss.
In vain Don Pablo, whose indomitable courage had not been cast down by this terrible blow, attempted at several times, now in chiding, then in exciting them, to galvanise his companions, and to awaken in them a spark of bravery. All was useless; the instinct of self-preservation, the last sentiment which stands in the human heart, and which supports it in the most horrible crises, was extinct in their hearts.