"You had assaulted the barracks?" Robert Jordan asked.
"Pablo had surrounded it in the dark, cut the telephone wires, placed dynamite under one wall and called on the _guardia civil_ to surrender.
They would not.
And at daylight he blew the wall open.
There was fighting.
Two _civiles_ were killed. Four were wounded and four surrendered.
"We all lay on roofs and on the ground and at the edge of walls and of buildings in the early morning light and the dust cloud of the explosion had not yet settled, for it rose high in the air and there was no wind to carry it, and all of us were firing into the broken side of the building, loading and firing into the smoke, and from within there was still the flashing of rifles and then there was a shout from in the smoke not to fire more, and out came the four _civiles_ with their hands up.
A big part of the roof had fallen in and the wall was gone and they came out to surrender.
"'Are there more inside?' Pablo shouted.
"'There are wounded.'
"'Guard these,' Pablo said to four who had come up from where we were firing.
'Stand there.
Against the wall,' he told the _civiles_.
The four _civiles_ stood against the wall, dirty, dusty, smoke-grimed, with the four who were guarding them pointing their guns at them and Pablo and the others went in to finish the wounded.
"After they had done this and there was no longer any noise of the wounded, neither groaning, nor crying out, nor the noise of shooting in the barracks, Pablo and the others came out and Pablo had his shotgun over his back and was carrying in his hand a Mauser pistol.
"'Look, Pilar,' he said.
'This was in the hand of the officer who killed himself.
Never have I fired a pistol.
You,' he said to one of the guards, 'show me how it works.
No. Don't show me. Tell me.'
"The four _civiles_ had stood against the wall, sweating and saying nothing while the shooting had gone on inside the barracks.
They were all tall men with the faces of _guardias civiles_, which is the same model of face as mine is.
Except that their faces were covered with the small stubble of this their last morning of not yet being shaved and they stood there against the wall and said nothing.
"'You,' said Pablo to the one who stood nearest him.
'Tell me how it works.'
"'Pull the small lever down,' the man said in a very dry voice.
'Pull the receiver back and let it snap forward.'
"'What is the receiver?' asked Pablo, and he looked at the four _civiles_.
'What is the receiver?'
"'The block on top of the action.'
"Pablo pulled it back, but it stuck.
'What now?' he said.
'It is jammed.
You have lied to me.'
"'Pull it farther back and let it snap lightly forward,' the _civil_ said, and I have never heard such a tone of voice.
It was grayer than a morning without sunrise.
"Pablo pulled and let go as the man had told him and the block snapped forward into place and the pistol was cocked with the hammer back.
It is an ugly pistol, small in the round handle, large and flat in the barrel, and unwieldy.
All this time the _civiles_ had been watching him and they had said nothing.
"'What are you going to do with us?' one asked him.
"'Shoot thee,' Pablo said.
"'When?' the man asked in the same gray voice.
"'Now,' said Pablo.
"'Where?' asked the man.
"'Here,' said Pablo.
'Here.
Now.
Here and now.
Have you anything to say?'
"'_Nada_,' said the _civil_.