While Phil and O’Neil were being tortured by Espinosa, Lopez had kept watch from his station, guarding the trail leading up the precipitous mountain from the valley below. His eyes fascinatedly held upon the scene in front of him had nevertheless guardedly turned backward, scanning anxiously the wooded foothills below him and the vista of the river as it entered the cañon. As yet no signs of the rescuers were visible. He trembled when he saw that Espinosa had determined to give the midshipman the water torture. But few white men had survived its harshness. Lopez’s face wore an increasingly anxious look as the minutes dragged into hours. The sun had passed the meridian and was dipping slowly in the western sky. His own men had not left their posts; each understood his duty; Rodriguez’s faithful followers alone had been selected to guard this southern bastion of the stronghold. The faithful native could see a handful of Espinosa’s men at the howitzer mounted to command the approach by water and farther along the edge of the precipice small knots of men squatting under shelters of bamboo. These latter he knew were to dislodge great boulders, which had been delicately balanced ready to be thrown downward, five hundred or more feet, into the racing river. Those who dared to enter the treacherous waters of the cañon must run the gauntlet of these huge rocks, but Lopez knew that the Americans would take any risk to reach the trail leading away from the stronghold and further into the mountain fastness, over which the trapped insurgents would endeavor to escape. Several hundred natives, their weapons in hand, had gathered about their cruel leader. Every eye was turned in rapt enjoyment toward the delighting spectacle of the torture of a despised American. None save Lopez and his faithful guards had observed the glint of steel far down in the valley below. None save he discerned two small white poles creeping along above the high trees on the river bank. He glanced uneasily toward the torture. Phil was on his back securely bound, while Colonel Salas held above his head a long bamboo cane filled with water. Lopez whispered an order to a native sergeant and the latter noiselessly edged his way in the direction of the sailor, now apparently senseless, deserted by those who had been torturing him, now that they were being indulged in a more interesting spectacle.