It was then
that the hope of escape dawned upon him for the first time. He remained
lying stretched out with rigid limbs under the weight of two bodies
collapsed crosswise upon his back.
By the time the soldiers had fired a third volley into the slightly
stirring heaps of the slain, the sun had gone out of sight, and almost
immediately with the darkening of the ocean dusk fell upon the coasts of
the young Republic. Above the gloom of the lowlands the snowy peaks
of the Cordilleras remained luminous and crimson for a long time. The
soldiers before marching back to the fort sat down to smoke.
The sergeant with a naked sword in his hand strolled away by himself
along the heap of the dead. He was a humane man, and watched for any
stir or twitch of limb in the merciful idea of plunging the point of his
blade into any body giving the slightest sign of life. But none of the
bodies afforded him an opportunity for the display of this charitable
intention. Not a muscle twitched amongst them, not even the powerful
muscles of Gaspar Ruiz, who, deluged with the blood of his neighbours
and shamming death, strove to appear more lifeless than the others.
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