For one brief instant he stood and looked from one to the other, and then, just as de Soto ran forward, as he thought, to save his life by making him prisoner, the wary old warrior darted under the cover of the upper wall and then, as the first horse came up to him, he put his buckler over his helmet, took a well-meant sword-stroke harmlessly upon it, and at the same moment brought his mace round with such a savage swing on the horse’s forelegs that the bones snapped under it like twigs, and horse and man rolled over in a helpless heap with the next rider and horse on top of them. Two more swift strokes of the terrible mace drove the steel of their caps into the skulls of the two fallen riders, and then the gallant old warrior, grasping one of a dozen hands held out to him over the upper wall, swung himself up as lightly as a lad of sixteen and disappeared into the darkness. “Santiago! that was well met, Señor,” said Juan Pizarro to Cieza de Leon, who was leading the troop of horse. “Another minute and we should have been over the wall. It is well for us that these heathens have only two good men to lead them, and that only one of them seems to be here. That old Stony-face as they call him fights as if all the devils of Gadara were in him.” “Ay, and by the Saints he nearly sent me down a steeper place than I could ever climb up again. Carrajo! has no one killed the heathen yet? First he tries to hammer what brains I have down my throat, and then he knocks the breath out of me like the wind out of a burst bladder.” “Why, Carvahal,” laughed de Soto, as the old swashbuckler hobbled out from the midst of the fallen horses and men with one hand behind his back and the other rubbing his huge paunch, “art thou not dead yet? I should be loth to believe that thou wert born to be hanged----” “Go hang thyself, babbler!” said Carvahal between a snarl and a gasp. “Is this time to crack jokes on a comrade’s misfortunes? Carrajo, Caballeros, what are we standing here for? Is this a battle or a dancing party, and where has that infernal heathen vanished to again? Ah! that was poor ben-Alcazar, was it? Well, well, it is the fortune of war and the good God will be able to see now whether he was better Christian or Moslem. For myself as a good Christian I have always had my doubts of him.” “Buenos noches, Señores! How goes the battle your way?” said the deep voice of Don Hernando, who now rode up at the head of a second troop of horse. “For our part we have cleared the two lower terraces and driven the heathen, or such as we have left alive, either on the plain, where I have posted a troop to look after them, or up yonder to their citadels---- How now, Juan? What art thou doing here without thy helmet? Art mad, lad, to come into a fight like this bareheaded?”