Finally, the cautious brown heads appeared, and brown bodies flitted among the dead, collecting their spoils. Then Newt cupped both hands at his lips, and let out the mountain yell, a yell which had grown famous in Luzon. At the same instant, as fast as he could work the triggers lying grouped before him, he made the rifles speak from their magazines, as it seemed in unison, and the four reports were magnified by the rocks into a seeming of volley-fire. Instantly and in frenzied consternation, the brown men disappeared, and Newt Spooner worked his way forward, firing as fast as he could until he could peer into the channel. But the white men there would require no attention, and could benefit by none save the impossible courtesy of burial. As for the brown men, they were gone. In one body, however, there was still life, and that happened to be the body of the battalion commander. Newton Spooner strapped as many cartridge-belts about himself as he could carry. Then he pressed his canteen to the lips of Major Falkins, and began a slow and tedious journey back toward a point ten miles to the east, where if all went well and every chance favored him, he might possibly strike the camp of the main detachment to-morrow afternoon. To-morrow afternoon! For once in his life, Newton Spooner laughed. * * * * * That night, Major Falkins did not die, but lay raving with a delirium of fever in the seclusion of the jungle whither the "non-com" had borne him. And, while he lay tossing, a dark figure sat huddled near-by, lethargically slapping at mosquitoes and bringing himself back with heart-breaking effort out of the heavy-lidded temptation of sleep. The man who so sat, grinned from time to time, and there was the queer, distorted quality of madness in the grin. When Henry Falkins at last opened his eyes, he saw about him only the dense tangle of the forest, and heard only the bird-voices in the trees. Slowly a recollection of yesterday came to his mind. He tried to rise on his elbow, and discovered his feet were tight-bound. Evidently he had been captured and was now being carried off by the ingenious Rosario to be filed away for future torture. Then he heard a sound like a strained chuckle, and turned his eyes, to find himself gazing into a grinning, lunatic face, which was the face of Sergeant Newton Spooner. "Where are we, sergeant?" he inquired with forced composure. "Why am I tied up?" The sergeant's reply was a hyena-like laugh, under which his gums were exposed beyond his teeth. "I reckon," he suggested slowly, "ye mout es well drop the sergeant part of hit. Thar's jest the two of us left, and hit won't be long twell thar's jest one." The wounded battalion commander settled back on the ground and said nothing. The demoniacal face of the other was not a face that could be reasoned with. It was the face of a man whose unhinged reason was capable of anything but sanity.