"Sergeant, I'll be ready in ten minutes--you will go with me to Ledesma's plantation--have the ponies saddled. Double every patrol along the coast. Send the launch out at once to scour the gulf for information about a fifty-foot lorcha--add four soldiers to the regular crew: if they sight or learn of this lorcha they are to return at once and report the facts--they are not to engage. Retain in the post twenty of your very best men, under full field equipment ready to move instantly. Issue extra ammunition. Understand?" "Yes, sir!" He about-faced and hurried on his mission, eager, joyful. This was the life! Terry ran upstairs, turned up the light, ripped off his white clothes and slipped into riding clothes and flannel shirt. As he buckled on his belt and hooked in canteen and holster, he heard the Sergeant galloping down the street with his led horse. A swift inspection of the mechanism of his big automatic, four extra clips added to the belt, and he ran downstairs as the Macabebe drew up. Reaching the beach they turned south, riding fast through the chill darkness, Mercado keeping his pony a length behind Terry's nervous gray. They had covered several miles before the sun rose from behind Samal, gray-pinked sky and sea for a brief bewitching moment, then swept the low hanging mists from gulf and mountain, and smote, full-powered, upon the sandy shore down which they rode. The tireless ponies--crooked of leg but splendid of head and eye in true indications of their heritage of coarse Chinese and fine Arabian bloods--toiled steadily over the high-tide beach, sinking coronet deep in the soaked sand, their footprints disappearing almost as they lifted hoofs. Courageous, the little animals scrambled over the coral formations that blocked their path, picked their way, delicately, through sour mangrove swamps: once, unsaddled, they swam a wide tide-deepened creek that the riders crossed, bridle reins in hand, in a small dugout which they found on the bank. Their sharp shadows had shortened a third when they swung up from the beach and trotted down the unkempt street of Sabaga. A chorus of howls, set up by bony, slinking curs of the type that infest all native villages, announced their presence but there was no sign of life in any of the shambling bamboo houses. The village seemed deserted. They pulled up, the Sergeant pointing significantly at the carabaos tied up under the high perched huts. Terry understood: fear of the ladrones had paralyzed the natives. As he studied the closed windows and doors, sensed the terror of these defenseless, harmless people, a cold hatred of the spoilers narrowed his steel-gray eyes. They were about to press on when the quiet of the town was suddenly broken by a cry sounded from a house behind them: "_El Soltario! El Constabulario!_"