"Viva Pedro! Por la Patria! Por la Patria! Baja los puercos!" shouted first one and then another in answer to his orders given with all the assurance of royalty. "Compadres!" he addressed them, switching his cumbersome box of blacking to one side with oratorical cunning; "we will lead the way! We will march to the palace! We will offer ourselves to the President! We will march to the coast, and then we will sweep out the Yankees!" "Si! Si!" they shrilled in eager response. "Por la Patria! Por la Patria! Mata los Yankees puercos!" A quizzical spectator, a true Bogotano, robust and red-cheeked, swathed in an ample ruana, echoed the enthusiasm. "It is an army of emboladores!" he shouted sonorously. "Let the Yankee bull beware!" Now, "embolador," although it is a word familiarly used in Bogota to designate a bootblack, has for its first meaning "one who puts balls on the tips of a bull's horns," a thing not easy to accomplish, requiring, as it does, the conquest of a traditionally warlike animal. Applied to this Falstaffian army of bootblacks, the irony of the term was broad enough to delight the bystanders, at the same time that it flattered the vanity of those for whom it was intended. Distances meant little to the emboladores. No matter how far they had to travel, they vowed they would keep going until they met "los Yankees." And, when they did meet them, they had no doubt of what would happen. Confident in their own ability to put the "usurpers" to flight, they had the sympathy of the peons surrounding them.