The Sergeant understood, and with a swaggering clink of spurs stepped out again. It was as Pedro had said. The recumbent figures upon the ground were dummies of grass and cloth; the stacked guns were rough wooden counterfeits. They climbed the bamboo ladder into the house. More of the grotesque shapes were there, legs divergent and back-jointed; two leaned at the window, their hollow bellies bent at right angles over the sill, in solemn, peering attitudes. In the breeze their loose white camisas moved softly in undulating shivers; their big straw hats flapped like wings of bats. Hanging from the central rafter was a lamp, smouldering in yellow spark and sooty smoke; and against the harsh downpour of clear sunlight outside this little, soiled flame gave to the whole crew of contorted bodies an aspect of death, of carnage, of decay. The Sergeant caught himself sniffing the air. "Let's get out of this," he said. They climbed down the rude stairs again, and instinct, more than Pedro's guidance, took the Sergeant to the right, some fifty yards into the bush--and there it was, the trench:--parallel to the trail, broad, deep, and all littered with signs of recent occupancy. The Sergeant stood still, looking at the hut, at the trench, at the trail. He twirled his moustache pensively; muttered exclamations came to his lips. It was a pretty arrangement. A detachment, coming along the trail behind the guides and bursting out into this clearing, with its lure of men recumbent upon the ground, of stacked arms, of vague forms at the windows, shadowed forth by the lamplight behind, would immediately charge in attempted surprise. Then from the brush to the right, the trench's enfilading murder--it was pretty indeed. Again the Sergeant took in all the details, his head turning from point to point, from the hut to the trail, from the trail to the trench, then back again, assuring himself of the perfection of the plan. And Pedro looked at the Sergeant; as if hypnotised he stepped closer, in long, feline strides, coming suddenly at far intervals, his whole lithe body a-quiver. For there, in the eyes of the Sergeant, the caybigan, growing stronger, clearer, more certain every moment, there it shone, his Desire, the form and shape at last of his obscure torturing desire. It was that--that which shone in the eyes of the Sergeant as he contemplated the perfection of the plot--it was that he longed for, thirsted for, that which he must have himself, absolutely, to guard and treasure and cherish. It was there, the torturing want of his entrails, there, but not his, not his yet. Back in his hut that night, after hours of obscure battling, he named it at last. "Magtaca," he said, with heavy finality; "magtaca--admiration." And then instantly he leaped to the next step. "For the enemy, magtaca; for the caybigan, alipusta." He hissed out the last word like an expectoration.