The Americans were ordered to dismount, and a dozen riflemen quietly surrounded them. Colonel Martinez spurred ahead while the entire band dissolved in the jungle, leaving the trail clear. Scarcely twenty feet from the trail the Americans were roughly seized, their hands secured tightly behind their backs and gags were forced into their mouths. They submitted peaceably. Suddenly, scarcely fifty yards away, a column of khaki-clad soldiers appeared marching down the trail. Phil caught a glimpse through a vista in the dense brush of these men, swinging lightly along, ignorant of the presence, so near them, of over two hundred armed enemies. His pulse beat fast and his heart seemed ready to burst within him. Were these Americans walking innocently into an ambush? He tried to scream a warning, but he emitted no sound save a faint gurgle, which his guards heard, and for his pains struck him down with their knees until he lay with his face pressed close to the prickly earth. He could hear the tramp of shod feet and an occasional snatch of a song. Once he heard a sharp command in English and at another time a jest which called forth local laughter. It seemed an age since he had seen the head of this column appear, and yet the earth trembled under the tread of a multitude of feet. Finally the sounds died away. The soldiers had passed, and no attack had been made. After a long hour of waiting their guards brought out the Americans and unbound their hands, taking out the cruel gags from their mouths. Colonel Martinez appeared, still mounted upon his small gray pony. “I am very sorry,” he said politely, “but I could not run the risk of detection. That was Colonel Bane with two battalions of the Seventy-eighth Infantry. I had been warned that he was in the neighborhood. I was not strong enough to attack him.” Phil could have cried aloud at the utter uselessness of this warfare. Their movements heralded far and wide whenever a column moved, in a country well-nigh impenetrable, how were the Americans ever to put down this ugly rebellion? At sunset the band halted and went into camp. Phil saw that the site selected was a strong one and one that could be easily defended from attack if the attackers came by trail, and there seemed no other way through the impenetrable brush. “We shall remain here until my messenger returns,” Phil overheard Colonel Martinez say to the girl. “Will you wait until your father sends for you, or will you accept an escort from me?” “I shall remain here,” she said; “the morning should bring my own people.” Shortly afterward the girl took her brother’s hand and led him away to the part of the camp that had been set aside for her own use, and Colonel Martinez joined the disconsolate Americans.