If you don't--d--n you----" "Fire!" shouted a strong English voice from without.

A withering volley crashed through the open windows.

Full twenty of the assailants fell, Dom Miguel de Barraca among them.

There was an instant of terrible silence, as between the shocks of an earthquake.
[Illustration: A withering volley crashed through the window] "Now, come on!" shouted the same voice, and Philip Hozier rushed into the ballroom, followed by his scouts and a horde of Brazilian regulars.

No one not actually an eye-witness of that thrilling spectacle would believe that a fight waged with such determined malevolence could stop so suddenly as did that fray in Las Flores.