led natives; the buildings were crowded to excess with women and
children; they were to be fed; provisions were becoming scarce; bread
was entirely gone, and naught remained, save a few days' salt meat on
half an allowance. In addition to the want of these necessaries, the
assailants had cut off the access to the stream in rear of the Cuartel,
or at least so enveloped the outlets and approaches to the pools--by
screens of sand and barricades of pickets--as to make it a matter of
almost certain death to seek water, either by day or night. There was no
other course to pursue than the arduous task of digging a well within
the walls. This, by the most untiring exertions, was finally
accomplished, by boring thirty feet through the solid rock.

In such an emergency, surrounded by nearly ten times their numbers, less
undaunted spirits might reasonably have succumbed to the perils of a
siege that was hourly becoming more straitened. But the beleaguered
little garrison, though a small band, were true to themselves. There
were neither murmurs nor thoughts of surrender--they still vigilantly
guarded the defences--with but limited rest or food--while the bullets
and shot of the besiegers flew in by the loop-holes, or plunged through
the walls. Yet there was no flinching--ever on the alert--for hours and
hours they watched the enemy, and wo betide the adventurous guerrilla,
who, becoming rash from fancied security, exposed an inch of flesh! the
leaden messenger from some deadly carbine gave sad warning to his
comrades.

It was evidently the intention of the guerrillas to starve the garrison
into submission, who had already sustained a close siege of more than
four weeks, resisted many determined assaults, and made a number of
successful sorties. Yet their position had become eminently critical,
and without speedy relief, their well-defended flag would have to be
hauled down. It did not hang upon the simple results devolving upon
capture. They felt no greater uneasiness on that score than commonly
falls to the lot of the vanquished in civilized warfare. But the
innocent inhabitants, who had sought refuge under the inducements held
forth by our proclamations, and who trustingly relied upon American arms
to shield them from the inevitable fate to which they were to be devoted
by those whose vindictive hate and malice they had provoked--and whose
_gritos_--cries--resounded from every housetop, singling out by name,
with bitter taunts a