undred men available, and, in all probability, Dom Corria could not
muster one-sixth of that number. It was a crisis that called for vigor.
The cavalry lance was twenty miles from its base, and there was no
knowing what accident might reunite the scattered Liberationists. One
column, at least, of the Nationalists had failed to keep its rendezvous,
or this last desperate stand at Las Flores would have proved a sheer
impossibility.

So the house must be rushed, no matter what the cost. This was a war of
leaders. Let Dom Corria fall, and his most enthusiastic supporters would
pay Dom Miguel's taxes without further parley. A scheme of concerted
action was hastily arranged. Simultaneously, five detachments swarmed
against the chosen points of assault. One crossed the _pateo_ to the
porch, another made for the stable entrance, a third attacked the garden
door, a fourth assailed the servants' quarters, and the fifth, strongest
of all, and inspired by Dom Miguel's presence, battered in the shutters
and tore away the piled up furniture of the ballroom.

The Nationalist leader's final order was terse.

"Spare the women; shoot every rebel; do not touch the foreigners unless
they resist!"

With yells of "Abajo De Sylva!" "Morto por revoltados!" the assailants
closed in. Neither side owned magazine rifles, so the fight was with
machetes, swords, and bayonets when the first furious hail of lead had
spent itself. No man thought of quarter, nor ceased to stab and thrust
until he fell. Not even then did some of the half-savage combatants
desist, and a many a thigh was gashed and boot-protected leg cut to the
bone by those murderous hatchet knives wielded by hands which would soon
stiffen in death.

When three hundred desperadoes meet fifty of like caliber in a
hand-to-hand conflict--when the three hundred mean to end the business,
and the fifty know that they must die--fighting for choice, but die in
any event--the resultant encounter will surely be both fierce and brief.
And never was fratricidal strife more sanguinary than during the earliest
onset within the walls. Each inch of corridor, each plank of the
ballroom floor, was contested with insane ferocity. This was not
warfare. It savored of the carnage of the jungle. Its sounds were those
of wild beasts. It smelled of the shambles.

By one of those queer chances which sometimes decide the hazard between
life and death, the window nearest that end of the room whe