In a
moment more he was himself slain.
At the close of the attack, of all the Spaniards in the fort only the
women and children remained alive--spared, no doubt, by order of the chief.
These consisted of the hapless Miranda, the innocent cause of this bloody
catastrophe, four other women, and as many children. The weeping captives
were bound and brought before Siripa, the brother of Mangora, and his
successor as cacique of the tribe.
No sooner had the new chief gazed on the woman whom his brother had loved,
her beauty heightened in his eyes by her grief and woe, than a like
passion was born in his savage soul, and he at once ordered his men to
remove her bonds. He then told her that she must not consider herself a
captive, and solicited her favor with the gentleness and address that love
can implant in the breast of the savage as well as of the son of
civilization. Her husband, he told her, was a forlorn fugitive in the
forests of a hostile country; he was the chief of a powerful nation and
could surround her with luxuries and wealth. Could she hesitate to accept
his love in preference to that of a man who was lost to her.
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