Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 2.djvu/143

Rh becomes dyed with his blood. Presently the smaller of the two looses his hold; the current carries him away and he is drowned.

Only one of his assailants a large she-wolf, remains to be dealt with now. He struggles desperately, but in vain, to free himself from her grasp, yet he perceives a kind of fixedness in her movements that he had not observed before. Stretching out his arm once more, he places his hand upon her head and mouth; and finds that she is dead. Still her weight draws him downwards: almost immediately, he feels a faintness creep over him; he loses his consciousness; and, with the gripe of the dead wolf still fixed firmly upon him, he sinks below the surface of the water. But in the act of sinking, the bodies of the hunter and his enemy cleaving the stream violently, the hold of the beast became relaxed. The man rose to the surface, and his head coming in contact with a sharp projecting rock, his consciousness returned. He opened his eyes forthwith struggled, to the bank, and, in great weakness and exhaustion, succeeded in climbing upon it. As the first rays of the quiet morning light broke in the distance, the full particulars of his past peril flashed