“Two of my men will remain here with you, señorita,” he told Maria as she held open the door. “We’ll soon bag this fellow Garcia, if he’s still hanging about.”
O’Neil, followed cautiously by his two men, walked slowly about the great house. As noiselessly as Indians they crept within its shadow, straining their eyes toward the portico and covered porches above their heads. There still remained the light in the room above where the girl and her two protectors were doubtless now guarding her father and his treasure. While O’Neil stood listening eagerly, a shadow crossed the windows; it moved slowly inch by inch. The house was silent. Off to his left O’Neil could hear a babble of excited voices and the rattle of military accoutrements. Inez’s warning had been given and the native soldiers were hastening to their stations to repel an enemy. The shadow slowly crossed and disappeared and then the light was suddenly extinguished. O’Neil was about to seek further when a noise from above arrested his attention. He recognized at once that a sash was being opened slowly. Then as he watched a dark figure appeared and dropped noiselessly to the porch roof a few feet below the window. Quietly it lowered itself to the edge of the roof and then with the agility of an acrobat or a sailor climbed down the post near which the boatswain’s mate and his men were standing. The next moment two powerful arms enfolded it and a cry of fear was promptly stifled.
Then from the dark shadow of the woods to the northward came a volley of musketry, followed by the war-cry of the bolo-man.
Hastily binding their prisoner with their neckerchiefs, the sailors flung him on to the porch and rushed to join the defenders scarcely four hundred yards away. Rodriguez had carefully laid out his plan of defense, and before the attacking enemy could come to a hand to hand fight, over three hundred yards of cleared land must be traversed. As O’Neil and his men reached the trenches where the native soldiers were excitedly firing blindly into the night, he could see a bobbing line of men rapidly running across this open space, firing as they advanced. Hastily surveying his surroundings, he saw that on one flank was the river defended by a company of men and on the flank away from the river was still another company. The excited native officers were shouting orders to their men, the purport of which O’Neil could but guess. The bobbing figures seemed in vast numbers and they advanced rapidly in spite of the fire from the trenches. Suddenly the company from the river bank left its post and came at double time to the middle of the line of defense. O’Neil and his men had seized a rifle each from lifeless hands and were elbow to elbow—vociferously haranguing the men, cautioning them to aim at the constantly moving enemy. Before they could realize its significance, a line of men arose suddenly from the short grass, only a few score of yards in front of the trenches, to which point they had crawled unobserved, while the defenders had been firing at the visible enemy. The next second this avalanche of naked humanity had cleared the intervening yards and were hacking at the surprised defenders with their sharp bolos. Their friends in their rear still kept up a brisk fire and many of the bolo-men suffered by it. O’Neil suddenly found himself occupied by three fanatics bent upon his destruction, while his companions near him were in as perilous a position. Throwing away his empty rifle he drew his revolver and fired unerringly at the nearest native. Then seizing the fallen man’s bolo he rushed upon his other two assailants. So fierce had been the onslaught of the bolo-men that they had surged into and even beyond the rifle-pits, leaving a trail of destruction in their path.
The bolo-men, now at close quarters with those in the trenches, made good use of their keen-bladed knives, but Rodriguez’s men, familiar with the method of attack of these fanatics, appeared to flee, and then turning shot their would-be pursuers down by the score. O’Neil and his companions were in these few exciting minutes many times in peril of their lives but soon the last of the attacking horde lay gasping on the grass behind the intrenchment and the sailors and their dusky allies were again in comparative security awaiting grimly the final attack of the bobbing figures some hundreds of yards in their front, from whose direction a hail of bullets whistled incessantly. O’Neil felt himself all over hardly believing that he had escaped unscathed. The sailor during his many years of service had never seen a fight more desperate. He had frequently heard of the insurgent method of employing bolo-men; using their riflemen as a screen, the practically unarmed horde, who believed that their “Anting-Anting” charms rendered them invulnerable, crawling snake-like, unobserved beyond their firing line until they reached the rifle-pits of their enemy. Now he felt sure the attack on the ranch would fail. Rodriguez’s natives had successfully weathered the bolo rush, which they had learned to fear most. He did not know the numbers of the attackers, but if they could be held off until morning the soldiers who had been promised from Palilo to guard Rodriguez’s treasure would surely be there to turn the tide in their favor. By the fire from the trenches surrounding the ranch house on all sides except that covered by the river, beyond which was an impenetrable swamp, he knew that their line had not been broken. With a lighter heart he counseled the natives near him to be careful of their ammunition, setting them an example by firing deliberately only when a target native exposed himself in the clearing in front of them. So much occupied were those in the trenches that they failed to see several great canoes land near the pier, and their occupants in single file noiselessly steal toward the ranch house.
Again and again the insurgents made their onslaught, but each time were received unflinchingly and driven back in confusion across the cleared ground, many being left dead or dying on the field.
A disheveled, terrified figure came running from the house toward the trenches; it glanced about wildly seeking some one and then threw itself at O’Neil’s feet, clasping his legs tightly, almost upsetting him among the stiffening bodies of the dead on the floor of the trench. In the dim light he recognized the woman Inez who had courageously spread the alarm among the native soldiers and her incoherent words filled the sailor’s heart with dire forebodings.
“Oh, señor, save my master,” she cried; “he is in mortal danger.”
O’Neil bent down and unclasped the woman’s hands and lifted her to her feet, but her body crumpled and the American saw with a sob of horror that Inez had done her last service to the Rodriguez family; a bolo cut on her old body had claimed her among the victims slain in this unnecessary war.
The boatswain’s mate laid the woman’s body aside and with a score of willing men started on a run for the house. Half-way there they stopped precipitously, hardly believing their eyes, a great fear in their hearts, for from the river there came a noiseless band of men, dim shadows under the gloom of the trees. O’Neil counted them as their silhouettes crossed a vista in the trees, and his hopes died within him. Here was a new enemy, striking from the rear. The men in the trenches could not leave their positions; to do so would allow many hundreds of the insurgents to sweep the ranch.