"Ride 'em down; use your whips, but for goodness' sake don't fire a shot while we're on this side of the boundary," said the senior officer hurriedly. "Bravo, Spencer; over with him"; for a subaltern had seized the rifle of one of the half-breeds and was wrenching it out of his hands. "Thank you, Mr. Stephens." The last remark was occasioned by the American's felling with his pistol-stock an Indian who was taking aim at the Major. Then the white men began to hit out, shoulder to shoulder. The Indians were quickly overpowered, for they were more than half afraid of the guns they held, and, on these being wrested from them, fled to the nearest ravine. But the Mestizos were more of a handful. There had been five of them to begin with; the subaltern had disarmed one, and he had fled; Major Walrond had just knocked another down with his fist, and he lay unconscious; but the other three, artful enough to reflect that even if their opponents decided to fire on them, their guns were only charged with bird-shot, harmless at any appreciable distance, were running away with the evident intention of using their own ball-cartridges from some point of vantage. Stephens' matter-of-fact Yankee way of looking at things now became a valuable asset. "_We're_ no British subjects," he said hurriedly, "and you'll not be to blame if we fire on these chaps"; and, pistol in hand, he spurred after one fugitive while Catherwood pursued a second. The third fired at Catherwood, the bullet carrying away his hat, but one of the subalterns was on him before he could load again, wrenched the rifle out of his hands, and gave him a complimentary tap on the head with the butt thereof. The other two, seeing that the horsemen at least would have no scruple about using firearms, stopped when called upon to do so, and sullenly gave up their guns. But that mile back to British territory seemed a most amazingly long one. The Carib fugitives had alarmed the neighbourhood, and knots of Indians were gathering, armed with bows and arrows, which they seemed desirous of using on the white men, for the two or three venomous lies circulated all in a moment by the Mestizos had soon swelled to two or three dozen; and to the Caribs, the opportune arrival of the two men on horseback was part of a deep-laid plot against their liberties. "Shall we ride in and disperse them?" suggested Catherwood. "Better not; it'll only make matters worse," said one of the Englishmen gloomily. "They'll let go with their bows if you do. I think we look fools enough as it is, sneaking along like this; better not make it any worse." "No; we can't afford to have Guatemala declaring war against Great Britain," laughed Walrond. "If they attempt to shoot we must let them have it; but it mustn't be said that we fired first."