usketry
of his own men had covered the attack, but now at a sign from him a
trumpet sounded the 'Cease fire.' Together we looked in silence at the
hopeless rout of the savages.

"'It must be a siege, then,' he muttered. And I detected him wringing
his hands stealthily.

"But what sort of siege could it be? Without any need for me to repeat
my friend Pajol's message, he dared not cut the water off from the
besieged. They had plenty of meat. And, indeed, if they had been short
he would have been too anxious to send food into the stockade had he
been able. But, as a matter of fact, it was we on the plain who were
beginning to feel the pinch of hunger.

"Peneleo, the Indian chief, sat by our fire folded in his ample mantle
of guanaco skins. He was an athletic savage, with an enormous square
shock head of hair resembling a straw beehive in shape and size,
and with grave, surly, much-lined features. In his broken Spanish he
repeated, growling like a bad-tempered wild beast, that if an opening
ever so small were made in the stockade his men would march in and get
the senora--not otherwise.

"Gaspar Ruiz, sitting opposite him, kept his eyes fixed on the fort
night and day as it were, in awful silence and immobility. Meantime, by
runners from the lowlands that arrived nearly every day, we heard of the
defeat of one of his lieutenants in the Maipu valley. Scouts sent afar
brought news of a column of infantry advancing through distant passes to
the relief of the fort. They were slow, but we could trace their toilful
progress up the lower valleys. I wondered why Ruiz did not march to
attack and destroy this threatening force, in some wild gorge fit for an
ambuscade, in accordance with his genius for guerilla warfare. But his
genius seemed to have abandoned him to his despair.

"It was obvious to me that he could not tear himself away from the sight
of the fort. I protest to you, senores, that I was moved almost to
pity by the sight of this powerless strong man sitting on the ridge,
indifferent to sun, to rain, to cold, to wind; with his hands
clasped round his legs and his chin resting on his knees,
gazing--gazing--gazing.

"And the fort he kept his eyes fastened on was as still and silent as
himself. The garrison gave no sign of life. They did not even answer the
desultory fire directed at the loopholes.

"One night, as I strolled past him, he, without changing his attitude,
spoke to me unexpectedly. 'I have sent for a gu