The unequal fight had been in progress for nearly two hours, during which Singleton's party had experienced less than a dozen casualties, while the enemy, exposed in the open, had suffered very severely, when another body of men suddenly made their appearance in the rear of the Spanish forces, and, with howls and yells of vengeful delight, rushed forward to the attack. A small flag of Cuba Libre which was borne in their midst proclaimed them to be a body of revolutionaries, and the Spanish troops were hastily called off from the attack on the estate and formed up in square to receive them. But the Spaniards might as well have attempted to stop the wind as to stem the onrush of those fierce and determined men, who were, moreover, in overwhelming numbers; they had time only to pour in a couple of hasty, ill-directed volleys, and then the Cubans--armed, some with rifles, and others with swords, cane- knives, machetes, scythe blades, pikes, hatchets, ay, and even crowbars and smiths' hammers--swept down upon and overwhelmed them. For the space of perhaps three minutes there was a hideous melee, a confused mass of men struggling, yelling, shrieking; a popping of pistol shots, a whirling and flashing of blades in the sun; and then out from the midst of the confusion there emerged a bare half-dozen of panic-stricken horsemen, who set spurs to their frantic steeds and galloped for their lives off that fatal field. Another Spanish force had been wiped out by the insurgents! Half an hour later, when the dead had been stripped of their weapons and ammunition, Antonio Maceo and a little body of his subordinate officers, using the scaling ladders left on the field by the Spaniards, crossed the gap in the wrecked bridge, and made their way up to the house for the purpose of thanking Don Hermoso for the letter of warning which he had dispatched to them, and with a request for the loan of all the spades and other tools which he could spare to enable the insurgents to bury the dead: and by sunset that night a long, low mound of fresh- turned earth, showing red amid the vivid green of the grass-grown plain, was all that was left as evidence of the tragedy; while Maceo and his four thousand patriots were wearily wending their way back to their mountain fastness, the richer by two six-pounder field guns, a thousand stand of arms, with a considerable quantity of ammunition, and the entire spoils of the Spanish camp.