"General," he said rapidly, "messengers have just arrived from Janjalla. The city is in the hands of the Junta, and our troops, to the number of two thousand, are pushing forward by forced marches."
"Janjalla in our hands?" cried Benito, joyfully. "Then Xuarez has no refuge on which to fall back."
The army shouted on hearing this cheering news, and looked upon the destruction of the rebels as a foregone conclusion, as indeed it was. Xuarez heard the shouting, and, becoming aware of the cause by the frequent cries of "Janjalla," ground his teeth with rage, as he saw how fortune was against him.
"Señores," he said to his officers, "we are condemned to stay here. There is now no hope of falling back on the seaport. We can but face the enemy, and fight bravely. I should have heard of this fall before, as my scouts are all over the country to Janjalla."
Nevertheless, in spite of this discouraging news, he urged his men to fight bravely, hoping that the night would come, and force the loyalists to withdraw for some hours. In that time his army could rest and eat, while he himself might think of some plan by which to circumvent the tactics of General Benito. He was quite ignorant that two thousand men were marching from Janjalla to attack him in the rear.
The last glimmer of the sunset had long since died out of the sky, and it was now comparatively dark. As yet, the reinforcements from Janjalla had not arrived and Benito was almost on the point of ceasing the fight till dawn, when the moon arose in the west. Her appearance was welcomed by him with joy, for her light was quite brilliant enough to enable the assaulting party to continue fighting; and incessantly pressing on the wearied troops of Xuarez seemed the only chance of beating him from the sandhills and scattering his army. Don Hypolito cursed the moon audibly, for he saw that his last chance of escaping in the darkness was gone. Nothing remained for him but to fight on doggedly.
Then his scouts arrived, and he learned that in an hour two thousand men would attack him in the rear. With a cry of rage, he hurled his field-glass down the hill.
"Fortune is against me," he muttered, biting his lip with wrath; "my star goes down in blood. Attacked front and rear, I cannot hold out much longer."
Yet he was too brave to give in, and, seeing that the town of Centeotl was left defenceless, as its garrison had joined Benito, he hoped to make a detour, and throw himself with his remaining troops into the city. One thousand men he could leave to defend the battery and draw off the attention of the loyalists, and with his remaining two thousand march silently away to the south, then make a detour for the city. Then the reinforcements would come up in vain, for he and his men would have slipped away like an eel from between the two armies. He never thought of the fate of the thousand men he was leaving behind. But at that moment he would have given anything to gain time to reconstruct his plans, and would have sacrificed a million lives so that his campaign should not end in disaster.
This mad scheme to occupy Centeotl in the teeth of the enemy was destined to fail for lack of time. Before he could move a single column towards the city, the sound of distant firing was heard, and the reinforcements came up in the rear at a quick trot. The whole force of Xuarez was disposed along the front of the battery, protecting it from the assaults of Benito's army. Undefended in the rear, save for two hundred cavalry guarding the river, it offered itself freely to the reinforcements for storming. Don Hypolito brought round troops rapidly from the front to oppose this new danger. The cavalry dashed recklessly between the battery and the advancing infantry from Janjalla. Three guns, with depressed muzzles, rained down shot on the masses of infantry. It was all in vain. The fresh troops, elated by the fall of Janjalla, and the crossing of the river by General Benito, passed clean over the thin line of cavalry drawn up to beat them back. A mass of men obliterating man and horse, rolled upward towards the hastily formed lines of weary soldiers, brought round from the front to protect the rear. These succumbed in a few minutes, and the guns no longer being able to do damage by reason of the enemy being directly under their muzzles, the reinforcements swarmed up the slanting slope of the sandhills with cries of victory.