Boyga succeeded in inflicting a deep gash on the left side of his neck, with a piece of tin.  The officer’s eyes had been withdrawn from him scarcely a minute, before he was discovered lying on his pallet, with a convulsive motion of his knees, from loss of blood.  Medical aid was at hand, the gash sewed up, but he did not revive.  Two Catholic clergymen attended them on the scaffold, one a Spanish priest.  They were executed in the rear of the jail.  When the procession arrived at the foot of the ladder leading up to the platform of the gallows the Rev. Mr. Varella looking directly at Capt.  Gilbert, said, “Spaniards, ascend to heaven.”  Don Pedro mounted with a quick step, and was followed by his comrades at a more moderate pace, but without the least hesitation.  Boyga, unconscious of his situation and destiny, was carried up in a chair, and seated beneath the rope prepared for him.  Gilbert, Montenegro, Garcia and Castillo all smiled subduedly as they took their stations on the platform.  Soon after Capt.  Gilbert ascended the scaffold, he passed over to where the apparently lifeless Boyga was seated in the chair, and kissed him.  Addressing his followers, he said, “Boys, we are going to die; but let us be firm, for we are innocent.”  To Mr. Peyton, the interpreter, he said, “I die innocent, but I’ll die like a noble Spaniard.  Good bye, brother.”  The Marshal having read the warrant for their execution, and stated that de Soto was respited sixty and Ruiz thirty days, the ropes were adjusted round the necks of the prisoners, and a slight hectic flush spread over the countenance of each; but not an eye quailed, nor a limb trembled, not a muscle quivered.  The fatal cord was now cut, and the platform fell, by which the prisoners were launched into eternity.  After the execution was over, Ruiz, who was confined in his cell, attracted considerable attention, by his maniac shouts and singing.  At one time holding up a piece of blanket, stained with Boyga’s blood, he gave utterance to his ravings in a sort of recitative, the burden of which was—­“This is the red flag my companions died under!”

After the expiration of Ruiz’ second respite, the Marshal got two surgeons of the United States Navy, who understood the Spanish language, to attend him in his cell; they, after a patient examination pronounced his madness a counterfeit, and his insanity a hoax.  Accordingly, on the morning of Sept. 11th, the Marshal, in company with a Catholic priest and interpreter entered his cell, and made him sensible that longer evasion of the sentence of the law was impossible, and that he must surely die.  They informed him that he had but half an hour to live, and retired; when he requested that he might not be disturbed during the brief space that remained to him, and turning his back to the open entrance to his cell, he unrolled some fragments of printed prayers, and commenced reading them to himself.  During this interval he neither spoke, nor heeded those who