He was expecting death, and had calmly prepared himself to meet his fate; but such a terrible apparition as this he was unprepared for, and as the hound's fangs sank into his quivering flesh he shrieked in agony of pain and terror. It was with difficulty that the enraged animal was induced to release his hold, and suffered repeated blows from the mailed fists of his attendants before he would do so. Then the mangled savage was conducted before Colmenares, who had cleared a space in the centre of the camp and there held an impromptu court-martial upon the leaders of the insurrection. The instigator of the rebellion, Zemaco, had escaped, but four of the sub-caciques, including the captain of the band, were captured, owing to the swift and secret movements of the Spaniards. With Colmenares acting in the capacity of judge, the proceedings of the "court" were confined to the identification of the victims as leaders and men of influence among the Indians. Their guilt was assumed from the positions they held, and as soon as their identity was established they were promptly sentenced: the captain to be shot to death with arrows by his own followers, and the caciques to be hanged. The sentence was carried out at break of dawn next morning. Scarcely had the sun gilded with his first rays the topmost branches of the forest trees, before the caciques were led out to meet their doom. A broad-based ceiba-tree, or silk-cotton, reared its huge bulk near the centre of the clearing, and up its buttressed trunk a pair of soldiers swarmed to its lower-most limb, over which they swung ropes made of grass, with nooses at their ends. These nooses were then slipped over the heads of the caciques, and soon they were suspended in the air, gasping their lives away, until they were naught but contorted corpses, upon which their former subjects gazed in speechless horror. The extent to which the Indians had been terrorized by the Spaniards was more fully shown by what followed when the captain was brought to execution. He was placed with his back against the ceiba-tree, his arms and legs tightly pinioned, and compelled to face his slayers, who were archers selected from his body-guard. He faced them dauntlessly, and, calling upon the most skilful archer by name, directed him to shoot at his heart and end his misery without unnecessary delay.