wo Maxims, thus bottling
up the Spaniards and compelling them to surrender--or be annihilated.

By the time that Singleton had completely unfolded his plans to Carlos,
the vanguard of the fugitives had reached the entrance to the defile,
where they halted, awaiting further instructions; whereupon Carlos ran
forward and, picking his fifty men, led them through the portal, while
Jack, taking command of the remainder, caused them to carefully drag and
lift the two Maxims into concealment, obliterate all trace of the
passage of the guns into the scrub, and afterwards conceal themselves
therein--the Senora, Don Hermoso, and Senor Calderon remaining with the
party. They had scarcely hidden themselves, and removed all signs of
their presence to Jack's satisfaction, when the storm which had been
threatening for so long a time burst with terrific fury, the air being
continuously a-glimmer with the flickering and quivering of lightning
flashes, while the very ground beneath their feet seemed to quake with
the deafening, soul-shaking crash of the thunder; and the rain, breaking
loose at last, descended in such cataractal volumes that, even partially
sheltered as most of them were by the dense foliage of the scrub amid
which they cowered, every soul of them was wet to the skin in less than
a minute. And in the midst of it all, Jack, peering out from his
hiding-place a few feet from the path, saw the wretched Spanish soldiery
go splashing and squelching past, too wet, and altogether too utterly
tired and miserable apparently, to take any notice of where they were
going, and seemingly anxious only to press forward in the hope of
somewhere finding shelter.

There were about six hundred of them; and by the time that they had all
passed into the defile the storm had nearly spent itself. The rain had
ceased, the lightning flickered only occasionally, and then low down
toward the horizon; the thunder had dwindled to a low, hollow, muffled
rumbling, and the clouds overhead had broken up and were drifting fast
away, revealing a nearly full moon sailing high overhead, in the strong,
silvery light of which the saturated vegetation glittered.

As the last Spaniard disappeared within the portal, Singleton cautiously
emerged from his hiding-place, and, forcing his way through the sodden
herbage, peered round the angle of the rock, watching the movements of
the retiring foe. He waited patiently until the rearmost files had
penetrated a good