As I afterwards ascertained, the two launches, upon reaching La Unión, had started to disembark the soldiers and employees--probably with the intention of playing the same game as they had played on Serrano a month or so previously--when Ordoñez ordered them off his premises. At the same time, Prieto unfurled the Colombian flag and the unequal conflict began. There were less than twenty Colombians against about a hundred and forty Peruvians--employees of the criminal syndicate and soldiers and sailors with a machine gun. The Colombians resisted bravely for about half an hour, when, their ammunition giving out, they were compelled to take to the woods, leaving Duarte and two _peons_ dead and Prieto and another _peon_ severely wounded. The latter two were then dispatched most cruelly by some of the "civilising company's" missionaries. Then the thousand arrobas of rubber were carefully stowed away on the _Liberal_, the houses were sacked and burned, and several Colombian women, found hiding in the forest, were dragged aboard the two launches as legitimate prey for the "victors." While in my enforced state of imprisonment on the _Iquitos_, I witnessed the cowardly and brutal violation of one of these poor women. Pilar Gutierrez, the woman of Rafael Cano, one of the _racionales_ at La Unión, was one of the females found in the bushes after the "battle," and this poor victim, already in an advanced state of pregnancy, was allotted to Captain ---- ----.[94] This human monster, intent only on slaking his animal thirst of lasciviousness, and regardless of the grave state of the unhappy woman's health, dragged her to a place of privacy and, in spite of the cries of agony of the unfortunate creature, violated her without compunction. A few hours later we reached Argelia, where both launches stopped for the night side by side. Here we were transferred to the _Liberal_, where, to my astonishment, I found Perkins and the youth Gabriel Valderrama, one of Serrano's employees. Perkins then informed me of the horrors committed at La Unión and of his own capture, which had been effected upon the return of these latter-day pirates from that sanguinary scene, when they had stopped at La Reserva, broken into and burglarised the house--for Serrano and his men, excepting Valderrama and Perkins, had fled to the forest--embarked the hundred and seventy arrobas of rubber on the _Liberal_, and destroyed everything they could not steal. [Illustration: RUBBER-COLLECTING RIVER LAUNCH. [To face p. 176.] That night the four of us, Perkins, Sánchez, Valderrama, and myself, slept--or rather feigned to sleep--on the deck of the _Liberal_, plunged in the most gloomy reflections and expecting to be shot or stabbed any moment, for our captors were drunk and in a most bloodthirsty mood. However, we passed the long night without being molested to any appreciable extent.