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THE COMBAT BEGINS.—CAMPOS BURIED ALIVE.

trees, and on the other rose lofty hillocks of fine moving sand, which was gradually filling up the lagoon by its ceaseless shifting. We there waited the arrival of Campos and his seconds. Calros strode over the ground, a prey to feverish anxiety, for the Jarocho was not one of those lackadaisical lovers who rush out of life the first check they receive. The ground measured, and the situation chosen, the antagonists stood face to face. The signal was given; and I heard, with a beating heart, the clash of the two swords. I had turned my head away; but, hearing a cry of rage, I was drawn irresistibly to cast a look upon the combatants. A man had run to the top of one of the sand hills; he brandished the stump of a machete, and blood was trickling down his side: this was Campos. His flight had been so sudden and rapid that his adversary was still immovable in his place. One of his seconds approached to hand him a sword in the place of the one that had been broken, but he came too late. Exhausted by the effort he had made in clambering up the hill, Campos staggered and fell upon the sand. For a moment we thought he would have kept himself on the mound, but the movable substance rolled away from beneath him, and the unhappy wretch, after struggling fearfully for a few moments, rolled down into the marsh, and was ingulfed alive in an avalanche of sand.

Nothing now remained but to secure the flight of Calros. We left in all haste the scene of action, and arrived at the boat before the alcalde of the village had detached a single alguazil in pursuit. Aided by the current, the light skiff glided like an arrow down the stream, the trees and rocks seeming to fly behind us. After a two hours' row, we reached the mouth of the river, and landed under the willows which overshadow-