when Pomponio's escape was
discovered. The soldiers, on going past the place on their morning
rounds, saw the bloody tracks of the prisoner's descent on the wall
under the window. An instant investigation was made, and the truth
of the awful manner in which Pomponio had accomplished his evasion
disclosed. Stupefied, the commandant and his men gazed at, the traces of
the deed, the pools of half-dried dark blood and the two pieces of bone,
eloquent of the fortitude he must have possessed, the desperation he was
in, to perpetrate such an act.

Might not it be thought that so astonishing a hardihood would have
awakened a feeling of admiration and pity for the unfortunate being?
So heroic a deed would have elicited praise to rend the skies from the
peoples of antiquity(2), and the story of Pomponio would have passed
down from generation to generation as that of one of their brave men.
But, alas! in the breasts of the men with whom Pomponio had to deal, no
such sentiment of ruth was raised. On the contrary, they were roused
to an even greater violence of hatred and anger toward the poor savage.
Wild with rage that his prisoner, whom he had hunted for so long, should
have escaped when securely bound, the commandant sent out his men in
squads of four and five to scour the woods and find their prey. "He must
and shall be found," he said.

The search was instituted forthwith. For days, weeks and months, they
hunted for Pomponio, but not a trace of him was found. Gradually, as
time went on, the search was given up, for the intense excitement roused
by his flight died out from want of fresh fuel to feed upon, and, in
addition, the soldiers were required for other more immediate needs;
so that, before a year was past after his escape, all interest in the
subject ceased, and Pomponio was seldom thought of, or his name spoken,
except among those of the Indians to whom he and his deed were ever an
impulse toward insubordination.

And what was Pomponio doing? At first from necessity, on account of his
wounded feet, and afterward so long as the soldiers kept up a vigorous
search for him, he made the cave, in which he had taken refuge, his
home. All that day, following the night of his escape, he lay in the
cave, more dead than alive, caring for nothing, wishing, even, he might
die, now he was out of the grasp of his enemies. But the next morning
the pangs of hunger awakened him to life and its realities. Nearly two
days were passed s