The lieutenant ordered his men to halt and face the foolhardy bandits. He arranged them two deep and spread them out so that they extended right across the road. He himself stood in the centre a little in advance of the rest; the civilians were in the rear.
Presently single shapes were discernible through the approaching cloud of dust. The robbers were galloping along in no regular order with intervals of from ten to twenty yards between each one of them.
More than a thousand yards in front of his comrades galloped Fatia Negra. His splendid English thoroughbred, as if it would outstrip the blast which whirled the dust aloft, flew along with him and seemed to share the blind fury of his master who waved his flashing sword above his horse's head and bellowed at his opponents from afar like a wild beast.
"We'll seize the fellow before his companions come up," said the lieutenant to his men. "Cut him down from his horse and capture him alive."
"Hurrah!" roared the lonely horseman, now only a yard off. "Hurrah!"—the next moment he was in the midst of them.
And now began a contest which, had it been recorded in the chronicles of the Crusades, would have been regarded as an act of heroism that only awaited immortality from a poet great enough to sing it. Fatia Negra, alone and surrounded, fought single-handed in the midst of the hostile band. His light sword flashing in his hand like lightning, never stayed to parry but attacked incessantly. Handless swords and headless shakos flew around him in the air and whithersoever his horse turned its head, an empty space gaped before him, every antagonist retreating before him. So close was the melée that the soldiers stood in each other's way and could not use their firearms for fear of shooting their comrades. The lieutenant was the only man who did not avoid him. Like a true soldier who considers wounds an honour, he did not trouble himself to recollect that his adversary was superior to him both in strength and skill, but strove incessantly to urge his horse towards him. Twice he struck the fellow but he did not seem to feel the blow. Once he dealt him a skilful thrust in the side, but the sword bent nearly double without entering his body. "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Fatia Negra—he must have put on a coat of mail beneath his jacket—and the same instant he countered so savagely that if the lieutenant had not dodged his head, he must have lost it. As it was the sword pierced through his shako and out poured the gold pieces by thousands on to the highroad.
At the sight of the shower of gold pieces, Fatia Negra roared like a demon. What he had done hitherto was a mere joke—now the battle began in grim earnest.
"Down with your heads, down with your headpieces!" he thundered, and with the fury of a lion he flung himself on his opponents, everyone of whom wore on his head the dangerous magnet which irresistibly attracted his flashing sword.
He himself was invulnerable. Neither sword nor lance could penetrate his shirt of mail. And meanwhile his companions were rapidly galloping up. Now another shako flew into the air and the horse's hoofs trampled the falling ducats in the mud.
"Shoot down his horse!" cried the voice of the post-office functionary from the rear, and the same instant three pistol shots resounded. At the third, which struck him full in the chest, the animal reared high in the air. Fatia Negra, perceiving the danger, and before the horse had time to fall and crush him, leaped from the saddle on to the ground.