Hundreds of natives were swarming round some wagons, hauling boxes out, forcing them open with their _machetes_ and scattering the contents on the ground; and a dozen of them were fighting over a case of brandy, breaking the necks off the bottles, and cutting their faces and hands in their struggles to drink some of the stuff. Nobody was taking the slightest notice of two field-guns, with their limbers and mule teams, which were standing in the road a few yards further down. The little half-drunken brutes were simply looting as hard as they could, not even troubling to pick up the rifles which lay about in hundreds. I felt sure that Gerald had sent them to take the guns into San Fernando, and, jolly angry, strode down between the two rows of prisoners, who, seeing me, thought I was Gerald, and began singing out a whining ’_Don Geraldio! Don Geraldio!_’ I saw by their uniforms that they belonged to the same regiment as those fellows who had collared me in Santa Cruz, and that didn’t make me love them any more, but their mistaking me for Gerald gave me an idea. Close by, an officer lay drunk as a fiddler, another had broken the neck of a champagne bottle, and was trying to swallow the stuff before it bubbled all away. I seized him by the neck, knocked the bottle out of his hand, and shook him. He turned round, looked at me, and fell on his knees in absolute terror. I jerked him to his feet, singing out, ’San Fernando!’ sweeping my arm round the camp, pointing to the guns, and then along the road towards the barricade. ’San Fernando!’ I roared. He had a revolver in his belt, I pulled it out—it was unloaded, but that did not matter—and ran up to the wagons, kicking and cuffing the miserable wretches. They shrieked out, ’_Don Geraldio!_’ and bolted, but two of them.—rather drunk they were—came for me with their _machetes_, and didn’t stop when I pointed the revolver at them. It was a jolly awkward moment, but I gave the first a blow on the point of his jaw, which knocked him flying, and before the second could get at me, there were shouts of ’_Yuesencia! Yuesencia!_’ and the officer from whom I had taken the champagne bottle cut him down, clean from the top of his skull to his mouth. He did it with a _machete_. More officers—half fuddled—came running up, and whether they thought I was Gerald or not, they were in a hopeless fright, and began to lay about them with the flat of their swords, and soon got their natives into order, although I saw a good many of them stealing away among the trees, laden with spoil. [Illustration: "I GAVE THE FIRST A BLOW ON THE POINT OF HIS JAW"] Ugh! the brutes had evidently killed all the wounded. It was a perfectly sickening sight. I was beside myself with rage.