Immediately after reveille the first troops had quietly reënforced the company already on duty at the railroad station. This was done without incident, and then on three sides of the city the forces began their advance. The rebel troops, knowing that their leaders, Generals Rivas and Osorio, had fled, had spent the night in drinking and debauchery. As the main column debauched into the principal street and the excited, inflamed wearers of the red cockades saw the stars and stripes of the United States flaunting in the breeze, they resorted to their usual street fighting tactics. Street by street the marines advanced. Every inch of the way was disputed and the bullets whizzed and cracked, sang and stung; taking their tally of wounded and dead. "Dick, me lad, I’d give me old pipe, I would, to be able to be on ahead with the advance instead of here with the colors, much as I love ’em," announced Dorlan as he stood in the shelter of an overhanging roof and watched the windows of a pretentious building on his right. Reaching a street corner or alley a little later it was found that the natives had resorted to their brutal, inhuman tactics in dealing even with civilized troops. A sailor, stripped of his clothing and mutilated, was lying in the roadway. Perhaps he had lost his section and wandering here trying to locate it, was set upon by the cruel natives. "Ah! a sight like that makes the very blood in me bile," said Mike, shaking his fist in the direction of the dodging opponents far up the street; "if I knew the feller what did that to the poor flatfoot,[#] I’d be a brute meself and tear him to pieces with me bare hands." [#] "Flatfoot"--Marine Corps slang for a sailor. "Look out, Dorlan," yelled Dick, and falling flat on the rough cobble stones in the middle of the street he emptied a clip of cartridges into a doorway which that moment was flung open, and from which a half dozen rifle barrels were pointing from behind a rough barricade. But he did not stop the volley of shots which followed, and the heavy leaden slugs splashed, pattered, and flattened all about the little color guard. They rained against the walls of the buildings on either hand, gouging out great chunks of mortar and plaster to a depth of several inches, and one bullet, partly spent, struck Dick in the shoulder, penetrated to the bone and lodged there. "I guess I’m hit, old pal," he said weakly to Mike, after they had silenced the fighters behind the barricade and had gone on for a couple of blocks. "I thought it was only a scratch, but the blood’s running down my back, and----" but just then it seemed as though a great thunder-storm was descending upon the city; the sky grew black and the darkness came so swiftly that he could not see where to step, and with a sob he fell into the arms of his faithful friend.