with astonishment to this unexpected declaration.
The man whose fearful intrepidity he had just witnessed to be thinking
only of the risk he ran of getting a cold!

"Who are you?" he mechanically inquired.

"I?" said Costal. "Well, I am an Indian, as you see--a Zapoteque--
formerly the _tigrero_ of Don Matias de la Zanca; at present in the
service of Don Mariano de Silva--to-morrow, who knows?"

"Don Matias de la Zanca!" echoed the student, interrupting him; "why,
that is my uncle!"

"Oh!" said Costal, "your uncle! Well, Senor student, if you wish to go
to his house I am sorry I cannot take you there, since it lies up among
the hills, and could not be reached in a canoe. But perhaps you have a
horse?"

"I had one; but the flood has carried him off, I suppose. No matter. I
have good reasons for not regretting his loss."

"Well," rejoined Costal, "your best way will be to go with us to the
Hacienda las Palmas. There you will get a steed that will carry you to
the house of your uncle. But first," added he, turning his eyes towards
the tamarinds, "I must look after my carbine, which has been spilled out
of the canoe. It's too good a gun to be thrown away; and I can say that
it don't miss fire once in ten times. It should be yonder, where the
brute capsized us; and with your permission, Senor student, I'll just go
in search of it. Ho, Clara! paddle us back under the hammock!"

Clara obeyed, though evidently with some reluctance. The hissing of the
serpents still sounded ominously in his ears.

On arriving near the spot where the canoe had turned over, Costal stood
up in the bow; and then raising his hands, and joining them above his
head, he plunged once more under the water.

For a long time the spectators saw nothing of him; but the bubbles here
and there rising to the surface, showed where he was engaged in
searching for his incomparable carbine.

At length his head appeared above water, then his whole body. He held
the gun tightly grasped in one of his hands, and making a few strokes
towards the canoe he once more climbed aboard.

Costal now took hold of the paddle; and turning the head of the canoe in
a westerly direction commenced making way across the turbid waters
towards the Hacienda las Palmas.

Although the fury of the inundation had by this time partially subsided,
still the flood ran onward with a swift current; and what with the
danger from floating trees, and other objects that swell