Cristoval pushed forward through the half-dark, straining eyes and ears. Little could be seen but dim walls looming on either side, with a flying drift of smoke above, racing before the wind and weirdly lighted, curling over roofs, and sucked down in ghostly swirls into the street before them. Now, it happened that, deceived by the apparent length of time during which they had struggled down the course of the Tullamayu, Cristoval fancied himself in the lower part of the city. But the street they were following was the one in all Cuzco which should have been avoided. It was the highway leading from the Antisuyu road directly to the great square. It was deserted now, however, and Cristoval pressed rapidly on, passing cavernous doorways of palaces, many of them standing broad open as they had been left by their Spanish occupants when the starting conflagration had hastened them to the open plaza. Cristoval passed them cautiously, peering into the dark courts to make sure there were no lingerers. But all seemed vacant, and save for the murmur of fountains caught occasionally, all were silent. At a broad street crossing he halted, half disposed to make farther toward lower Cuzco, suspecting from the nearness of the fire, now only a few hundred yards to the north, that he was closer to the square than was prudent. But the brighter illumination of the intersecting street decided him to continue his way. He was about to advance when Rimachi seized his arm. The keener ears of the Indio had caught a sound. The cavalier listened with concentration. From somewhere in the obscurity came the ordered tramp of soldiers and the murmur of voices, but in the confusion of sounds from the fire he was unable to determine the direction. Anxious, above all things, to avoid the mishap of an encounter that would be most certain, whatever the result, to abort his plans, he turned to motion the Antis back into the shadow of the street from which they had emerged, when an abrupt challenge from the darkness ahead left no doubt of the source of the sounds. Standing in the half-light of the crossing, he and the group about him were more plainly visible than he had thought. Before he could effect a retirement, he received a second challenge, and a party advanced from the darkness at a run. It was too late to retreat. A score of pikes and halberds charged into the light. With a shout to his men Cristoval drew and attacked. The Antis, excited by the conflagration, and maddened by burns, needed but the word. They rushed with a yell that startled even Cristoval by its ferocity, and drove into the Spanish patrol with a savage impetus which would have shaken a regiment. The fight was terribly brief. Cristoval had hardly flashed his blade in the first collision before the party was swept away from him by the charge of the Antis. The Spaniards recovered, resisted sharply for an instant, then broke for the square with the Antis in hot pursuit.