So far as you are concerned, my advice to you is that you leave this place at once, and either accompany me or fly to some place of safety, whichever you please. But in either case you cannot do better, I think, than turn all your negroes over to me, with such arms as you can spare." "Come in and take some breakfast with us," said Don Hermoso. "This is serious news indeed, and what it is best to do, under the circumstances, is a matter that is not to be decided in a moment; it needs careful consideration, and therefore I will talk it over after breakfast with you--if you can spare me an hour or two--my son, and the young Englishman, who, although only a lad, seems to have a man's head on his shoulders. My present inclination is to remain where I am, and let Weyler do his worst. I believe that, with the dispositions which we have made since Echague's attack upon us, we can hold the estate against all comers." And when, after an hour's earnest conference a little later on in the day, and a tour of the estate in the company of Don Hermoso, Carlos, and Jack, Antonio Maceo took his leave, in order to return to his men among the mountains, he expressed the opinion that, given an ample supply of ammunition, and a sufficient store of provisions, it was just possible that Don Hermoso might be able to hold even Weyler and his sixty thousand men at bay. Whereupon it was decided that the attempt should be made. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. A GALLANT DEFENCE. It is not to be supposed that so momentous a decision as that mentioned at the close of the last chapter could be arrived at without bringing the occupants of the hacienda face to face with many anxieties, one of the most serious of which was, undoubtedly, the question whether the ammunition for which they had sent would arrive ere the appearance upon the scene of General Valeriano y Nicolan Weyler, with his devastating army of sixty thousand men. If it did, all might possibly be well; but if it did not--well, in that case disaster was practically certain. For nearly a week they hung painfully upon the tenterhooks of suspense, waiting for news; and the only news which reached them was to the effect that the new Capitan-General, with characteristic vigour, had issued the most rigorous instructions for a vigilant patrol of the entire coast line of the island to be maintained, with the express object of preventing any further landing of munitions of war of any description whatsoever, the obvious conclusion at which he had arrived being that if such supplies could be effectually stopped the rebellion must eventually be starved out of existence for want of them. But, after a long week of keenest anxiety, intelligence arrived that Milsom had succeeded in eluding the _guardacostas_, and had landed his cargo in a small cove under the lee of San Domingo Point, on the south coast; and that the moiety of that cargo asked for by Don Hermoso was even then well on its way to the estate.