The watchers by the portal had not very long to wait. The enemy were not out of sight much more than ten minutes when a solitary rifle shot cracked out at the head of the defile and came echoing down its rocky sides; then another one; then three or four more; until at length a brisk fusillade was proceeding, accompanied by a good deal of confused shouting. This lasted for the best part of an hour, when there came first a lull in the firing, and then the sound of many approaching feet, following which a disorderly crowd of Spanish soldiers appeared doubling down the defile, in full flight toward the entrance. With the appearance of the first of them Jack sprang up on a boulder, and shouted to them to halt; but so eager were the Spaniards to escape from the punishment that had been inflicted upon them at the other end of the defile that it was not until one of the Maxims opened fire upon them that they could be persuaded to stay their precipitate flight. But the sharp, thudding, hammer-like reports of the machine-gun, and the stream of lead that began to play upon them and thin their ranks, soon brought them to a halt, when, flinging down their arms, they cried for quarter, which of course was at once given them. Then, Carlos' party closing in upon them from the rear, the Spaniards were carefully disarmed, their ammunition taken away from them, and their weapons destroyed by being consumed in a huge bonfire, formed of dry wood collected from the depths of the bush. And while this regrettable but necessary act of destruction was in process of execution, Carlos and Jack went among the prisoners, questioning them as to their number, who was in command, upon what principle they were working, and so on. Unfortunately they were unable to extract very much information, for it appeared that every officer had perished, either in the attack upon the estate, or at the far end of the defile: while the soldiers seemed either too stupid or too ill-informed to be able to give trustworthy replies to any of the questions asked, except that General Weyler had gone back to Havana, and that the operations in the province of Pinar del Rio were being conducted by Generals Bernal and Arolas, who, by strict command of Weyler, were laying the entire country waste, destroying every building of whatsoever description, churches included, on the ground that they afforded possible places of refuge or shelter for revolutionaries; mercilessly shooting down every man, woman, and child found, on the plea that, not having obeyed General Weyler's concentration order, they were contumacious rebels: that, in short, where this host went they found smiling prosperity, and left behind them a blood-stained, fire-blackened waste. The troops were not acting in concert, or as one body, but in independent detachments, to each of which was allotted the duty of covering a strip of country of a certain width, which strip it was their task to ravage from end to end. The