A desperate conflict ensued, in which one of the felons was shot dead; another, having discharged the last barrel of his revolver, jumped into the sea and was drowned; the remaining three were at length disarmed and secured. Of the citizens several were wounded, and one—the father of a beloved family—lay a corpse! The next morning, as there was no alcalde in the vicinity, the three prisoners were brought before a temporary court organized for the purpose, wherein twelve good and lawful men took oath to render judgment according to conscience. Each person when brought to the bar told his own story, inextricably involving his associates in the guilt of deliberate murder, and who, in their turn, wove the same terrible web about him. Of their guilt, though convicted without the testimony of an impartial witness, no doubt remained to disturb the convictions of the court. They were sentenced to death, and before the sun went down were in their graves! The whole five were buried among the stern rocks which frown on the sea, and which seem as if there to stay the tide of crime, as well as the storms of ocean. What a tragedy of depravity and despair! Thirteen innocent persons—men, women, and children—swept in an unsuspecting moment from life; and the five perpetrators of the crime, crushed into a hurried grave, under the avenging arm of justice! There is a spirit in California that will rightly dispose of the murderer; it may at times be hasty, and too little observant of the forms of law, but it reaches its object; it leaves the guilty no escape through the defects of an indictment, the ingenuity of counsel, or the clemency of the executive. It plants itself on the ground that the first duty society owes itself, is to protect its members; and to secure this object, it throws around the sanctity of life, the defenses found in the terrors of death. The grave is the prison which God has sunk in the path of the murderer. Let not man attempt to bridge it. WHO SHOULD STAY AND WHO COME.