We will rally to the banner of our fathers,In the land that we lo—o—o—ove so well;We will rally to the banner of our fathers,In the land where our lo—o—oved ones dwell.Red the blood that we shed for our faith,Red the flag that we cherish to the death,Red our hope for our enemies’ confusionIn the land that we lo—o—ove so well.
We will rally to the banner of our fathers,In the land that we lo—o—o—ove so well;We will rally to the banner of our fathers,In the land where our lo—o—oved ones dwell.Red the blood that we shed for our faith,Red the flag that we cherish to the death,Red our hope for our enemies’ confusionIn the land that we lo—o—ove so well.
We will rally to the banner of our fathers,In the land that we lo—o—o—ove so well;We will rally to the banner of our fathers,In the land where our lo—o—oved ones dwell.Red the blood that we shed for our faith,Red the flag that we cherish to the death,Red our hope for our enemies’ confusionIn the land that we lo—o—ove so well.
We will rally to the banner of our fathers,
In the land that we lo—o—o—ove so well;
We will rally to the banner of our fathers,
In the land where our lo—o—oved ones dwell.
Red the blood that we shed for our faith,
Red the flag that we cherish to the death,
Red our hope for our enemies’ confusion
In the land that we lo—o—ove so well.
“Perro de Rojo,” the old woman screamed. “Abajo, perro de Rojo,” she leaped up to a kneeling posture and spat in the American’s face.
“Now, now, momma,” he said, “That don’t go. You didn’t ought to spit at people, even when you’ve bit ’em and hate the taste.”
She snarled at him like a wild beast; then, seeing foot soldiers marching by in the dust stirred up by the Pitubas’ horses, she wrestled her way to the tail-board of the waggon, from which she cursed them for being Red.
“Come back into the waggon, mother,” the American said. “Gee, kid, catch a holt of mommer. These Reds will shoot her if she don’t let up.” An officer who was passing struck her with the flat of his sword in the face: “Keep in,” he said. “And you, driver, get on with you into the city.”
The waggon moved on slowly after that. Troops were passing, horse, foot and a few guns, with waggons and gear. They were in the suburbs by this time, among houses, in a stream of people who were setting into the city, carrying whatever they could from their homes in the threat of war. At the gate, there was delay and confusion; the waggon was jammed in the crowd, waiting its turn to pass. When they came through the gate, a big mulatto, with a bright green ostrich plume in his hat, looked under the tilt at them, and said, “Suspecteds. Take all Suspecteds to the Church of the Sanctity of Lopez, once called by the slaves of superstition Trinity.”
They had not far to go to this church. They passed a public square used as a camp for refugees, then they entered what seemed like a city of the dead, where none stirred out from the shuttered houses. As the guards herded them into the church once called the Trinity, Hi heard the distant fire of rifles, popping more constantly from the region through which he had passed.
“Skirmishers’ independent fire,” the American said. “If it comes nearer, it’s a sign the Whites have whipped; if it dies down, it’s a sign the Whites are whipped. Say,” he continued, to one of the Red officers at the church-door, “we here are American and English citizens. Don’t you think to gaol us, but send us to our Consuls.” He repeated this pointedly in Spanish. “We’re not going to stand for being gaoled,” he said.
“This is no gaol,” the officer explained, “but a shelter till affairs are resolved. Whom do you wish to see?”
“The American Consul.”
“And you?”
“The English Consul,” the Englishman said.
“And you?”
“I want to go to my hotel, the Santiago,” Hi said.
“It is closed.”
“Then to the English Club.”
“That, too, is closed.”
“Then the English Consul.”
The officer made notes in pencil upon a piece of paper. “Word will be sent at once to your Consuls,” he said. “Now enter.”
“I’ll be darned if I enter,” the American said.
Half a dozen troopers flung him violently into the church; Hi and the Englishman were flung in on top of him, and the doors were closed and locked upon them. Two English-speaking guards in the pulpit called out to them to be quiet.
“But we insist on seeing our Consuls.”
“Consuls sent for,” the men said. “Hold your rows.”
“I’ll bet the Consuls aren’t sent for,” the American said. “I know my darned Barbarians by this time.”
XIX
Itwas about half-past one in the afternoon when the church doors closed: the sound of the rifle fire continued, in an irregular popping as though the people some miles away were letting off fire crackers.
“That’s not fighting,” the American said, “that’s still only skirmishing. These darned people can neither make war nor keep peace.”
The church was of a Renaissance model, with rounded windows high up in the walls, and a ceiling painted with simpering ladies in clothes like rolls of blue smoke. All the sacred symbols had been wrenched or cut away from the decorations. A big coloured print of Don Lopez stood in a gilt frame over the altar. It represented him in evening dress with a red sash across his shirt. It had a dreadful likeness to a pig whose throat had been cut. Under him in gilt letters was the legend:
Liberty from Superstition.
There were about a hundred men, women and children of the suspected imprisoned there: most of them were stunned, some were terrified: one or two, like the young girl, hysterical. What shocked Hi was the atmosphere of suspicion: all there were afraid that the next person was a spy. They looked at each other, but hardly spoke, hardly even whispered. They watched the shot man die and the fevered man shake, without interest and without help: I was I, he was he; self was become terribly important, and sympathy a dangerous thing.
“They’ve been through the mill, these people,” the American said.
“How do you know the Whites will be here this afternoon?” Hi asked him.
“Cut it right out, son,” the American said. “I’ve been through one of these picnics once before here. This place is plum full of spies. You’d best not talk.”
“But do you know if the Reds have killed anyone here?”
“Killed? I dunno. I guess they won’t kill till they see which way the weasel pops. If they whip, they’ll rip around. But you stay quiet.”
The advice was good, for even as they talked a man edged a little nearer to them, with the look of the eavesdropper. When he found that the two fell silent, he sidled up to Hi, indicated the portrait over the altar, and said: “Look at that. I call that a dam’ outrage: don’t you?” Something in the look of the man reminded Hi of the brothel-touts who had beset him at the landing stairs before ’Zeke drove them away: it flashed into his mind that this man might be a spy: so he answered, “No, I call it ‘Liberty from Superstition.’ ” The man was puzzled by the answer, but seemed to consider Hi’s youth, and then moved away.
Soon after this, an armed guard appeared at the door, under an officer, who explained that the married couples as well as all women and children there in prison were to be moved “in the interests of morality” to another church, where they would be alone. As some of them expected to be murdered outside the doors, this caused a piteous scene, of screaming and begging for mercy, but by persuasion and force the removal was made. Among those removed, to Hi’s great relief, was the Englishman with the Spanish wife, the pride of the Pinamentes, and their three children.
While the doors were open, some sweepers from the barracks brought in a cask of water and a basket of army bread for the use of the prisoners for which those with any appetites left were glad and thankful.
The American tried to find out from these sweepers what was happening outside. They would not answer him except by shaking their heads: when the guards noticed the questioning they ordered the prisoners not to speak to the sweepers on pain of being shot. “These Red Runts are plum scared,” the American said. “They wouldn’t bring us food unless they were afraid of being whipped. They’re keeping both sides the fence.”
Hi was cheered by this, as by nothing else. After three minutes in the church, he had felt that he knew and loathed every detail of it. He tried walking up and down the aisles; but the sense, that he was a prisoner, took all the interest out of walking. He tried lying down to sleep, but the sense that he was a prisoner, the knowledge that he had failed, and the excitement of the coming battle, kept him awake. He tried to pray that the Whites would rout the Reds; but the excitement and anxiety were too great, he could not put the prayer into words. Time seemed to stand still, all reality seemed to have ceased; he lay in a horrible nothing, anxious unspeakably. Everybody there in the church was in the same state. When Hi listened, he felt that everybody in the city was in the same state. One of the strange things of that afternoon was the silence in the town about them; it seemed like a town of the dead, save for the pacing of the guards outside the doors, and the occasional passing of patrols. At about half-past three, the distant firing, which had hardly varied in volume for two hours, increased and changed. Plainly some much heavier metal had come into action.
“Two batteries of four guns,” the American said, after listening. “Number three gun in one of ’em is slow in getting off. They’ve only four batteries in their whole army: and one of them’s in pawn, for the Dictator’s new state coach.”
“The firing is nearer than it was,” Hi said.
“There’s more of it,” the American said.
There was more of it for half an hour: then suddenly it increased to a rolling, rattling racket much nearer at hand. This went on with the utmost fury for twenty minutes, during which all the windows in Santa Barbara rattled and trembled. Hi could hear shouting in the noise of the firing: then the shouting ceased and the firing dwindled away to a popping till it almost ceased, too. He looked to the American for an explanation. “That was an attack,” he said. “But I guess they’ve grown tired of it.”
It seemed as though that were the case, that they were tired of it. The light began to move from the floor up the wall as the sun went down the sky. The day of battle and suspense seemed coming to an end. Then suddenly, within a quarter of a mile of them, seemingly somewhere on the sea-front of the city, there came a clattering of horse-hoofs and shouting.
After this, there was silence, while everybody waited in suspense for a quarter of an hour, when a sudden shattering volley from close at hand sent the hearts into the throats. Ricochetting bullets struck the near-by roofs, there were falls of plaster and of tiles and the cries of women, while the space down by the sea-front began to roar with firing: hot and hot, so near at hand that presently the stink of the powder drifted into the church.
The firing went on for nearly an hour, dwindling as the light dwindled, till by the time the church was dark, save for the moonlight, it ceased altogether.
“The Whites must have entered the town and won,” Hi said to the American. “That firing was in the town.”
“It was in the town all right,” the American said.
Hi rose from his seat and began to pace up and down in his excitement. The thought of Carlotta being set free was more than he could bear. The guards lit a couple of candles in a side chapel, peered to see who was walking, and called to Hi to keep still. The town outside was deathly still for some time after the firing had ceased: then all the streets began to ring with the trotting of horses, coming into the city from the direction of the Medinas Gate. They came in at a fast trot on at least three roads, so that the clatter and clink filled the air.
“Here the conquering heroes come,” the Americans said.
“The Whites?”
“It’s the side that’s won anyway, or they wouldn’t come in in order.”
“All the White army is cavalry.”
“Our darned Consuls might get a wiggle on without slopping over into speed.”
“I don’t suppose they know we’re here.”
“It’s their job to know we’re not here.”
The cavalry, whoever they were, went to their stations or bivouacs and ceased to clatter. The town lapsed again into silence. Presently, in the quiet, within a hundred yards of the church, a sentry challenged someone, waited for two seconds, and fired. Someone cried out and fell, while the sentry jerked out the shell, which tinkled on the stones, reloaded and snapped-to the breech.
“The sentry’s night to howl,” the American said.
Soon after this, when the town was silent save for the pacing of the feet of sentries here and there, and the occasional slow passing of horse patrols, some volley-firings, of three or four rifles together, began in the direction of the cathedral. These volleys were repeated at short intervals for twenty minutes.
“What is that sort of firing?” Hi asked.
“It can only be executions,” the American said. “They’re shooting people.”
“Deserters?”
“Yes; or prisoners.”
“Prisoners of war? Surely not?”
“Any gol-darned prisoner’s good enough to shoot in this gol-darned Republic.”
“Then it means that the Whites have won?”
“Well, it would seem so.”
“I hope to God they have.”
“Well, kid, don’t hope it publicly till you know it’s a fact.”
“Don’t you think that the Whites have won?” Hi asked in a whisper.
“We’ll know soon enough.”
* * * * * * *
At about ten o’clock, when most of those in the church had begun to think that nothing more would happen that night, a strong guard marched into the little plaza outside the church and halted there. Hi suddenly saw a great increase in the light outside, for the newcomers had lit flares there. The doors of the church were opened and a strong squad of armed guards entered. A prim-lipped man, with the look of a “spoiled priest,” who seemed to be in charge of the guard, gave orders that the altar should be brought from a side chapel, and placed as a table near the door. When the altar had been placed, and its candles lighted, he seated himself upon a chair there, asked for the register of the prisoners, and began to read it through. From time to time he looked into the body of the church, where he could see hardly anything, but a few white faces, the twinkle of the two candles in the nave and the glistening of some of the gilding. Hi heard two or three of the prisoners near him praying beneath their breath with the intensity of terror. He watched the prim-lipped man just as his rabbit had watched the snake. The man seemed to be waiting for some one who did not come. Beyond him, Hi could see the dip at the church steps, a market-flare burning, and moving shadows. The prim-lipped man marked his register with a pencil.
“Say, sport,” the American said, stepping up to him, “we ain’t your nationals. We demand our release or our Consuls.”
All the other English-speaking people there, eight in all, joined in, in this appeal. The prim-lipped man listened to them all with courtesy, then he said, in English, with an Irish accent:
“In the very unsettled state of the city, you are safer here than you could be elsewhere.”
“That may be or may not be, but I guess our countries are pretty well able to protect us. We are unlawfully detained here. We’ve been here pretty well all day. We’ve protested, and demanded our Consuls. What are you going to do about it?”
The prim-lipped man listened again. “You will understand,” he said at last, “that I am not responsible in any way for anything that may have happened to you in these disorders, nor for your being here now. I am sincerely sorry that you should have been inconvenienced. I must ask you to blame the time, and those guilty for the time, not the Republic. In a few minutes, the commandant of this ward will be here, when I promise you that your cases shall be heard. In the meantime, let me see each one of you, who claim not to be of our nation.”
The eight came forward to the table in a body, and explained in turn who and what they were. The prim-lipped man accepted each claim. “You will understand,” he said, “that in these disorders we have to use every care to protect those domiciled among us. As the disorders are now over, I do not think that you will be inconvenienced beyond to-day.”
“Will you tell us, sir,” Hi asked, “what exactly has happened here?” The American’s hand pressed Hi’s arm.
“Happened?” the prim-lipped man said. “Order has been restored, or is fast being restored. The Republic has been saved.” He looked at the papers, to see what Hi was charged with, then dismissed the eight to one side.
“Is this man a White?” Hi wondered. “Are those guards White? They wear no white upon their uniforms, but neither do they wear any red. Supposing Don Manuel were suddenly to appear with the commandant: oh, that would be joy.”
Almost immediately after this a carriage drove to the steps of the church and halted there. Hi heard the guards called to attention and ordered to salute. The prim-lipped man turned to them.
“This is the commandant,” he said.
Some footsteps sounded upon the church steps, one of the feet clinked with spurs. Hi craned forward to see who entered, feeling sure that Don Manuel would be among the party: something within him told him that he was there, coming victorious to set his servants free. “Oh, Don Manuel,” he thought, “if it is only you, I don’t think I’ll care what happens to me for ever after.”
Three people entered together into the light of the altar candles. The truth came upon Hi with a stunning of heart and head: these people were Reds, the Reds had won.
The three who entered were:—a big, flashy, free moving, swaggering type of cavalryman, wearing a scarlet sash across his uniform: the big negro with the green feather, whom Hi had seen taking the Piranhas’ horses; and a woman, who also wore a scarlet sash across her shoulder.
“Gee, kid, there’s the were-wolf,” the American whispered to Hi. “Now there’ll be blood.”
“Who is she?”
“Anna, the were-wolf: an anti-cleric: been fighting the church all her life. She’s a Red from Medinas.”
“Then the Reds have won?”
“You bet your sweet life.”
The woman and the soldier seated themselves at the table with the prim-lipped man; the cavalryman asked some questions, the prim-lipped man seemed to be explaining about the foreigners. The woman looked through the registers: Green Feather, with a drawn sword, stood at the door. As the woman, Anna, sat nearest to Hi, in a good light, he had occasion to notice her very particularly.
She was perhaps seventy years old. She had a face without any mark whatsoever of kindness, or mirth, or hope, or charity. Her eyes were grey, hard and stony: her mouth was a slit, drooped at the ends: her ears were enormous: her hair, which was of a dirty grey, fell untidily about her brow; she kept thrusting it back with a fat red hand, the thick fingers of which were black at the end. She had ploughed and sowed against her enemies for fifty-three years of hatred: now she had her hour.
The prim-lipped man rose from his chair and called:
“Will those English and American subjects come forward?” When they had come forward, he said:
“The commandant of the ward wishes me to say that during these disturbances, in the state of martial law in which we live, foreigners not vouched for by the municipalities in which they sojourn are required to repair on board the ships of the nations to which they belong, or to such other ships as will receive them. Which of you have carnets signed by your municipal authorities?”
None had any such papers.
“None?” the prim-lipped man said. “Very well, then, you will repair on board the ships of your respective nations. A guard will take you from here to the Mole, where boats are now engaged in taking those qualified to go. I will give you here this paper to sign, opposite to your names.”
When all had signed their names, the commandant called an officer, to whom he gave charge to embark the eight at the Mole. The officer called them out to the plaza below the church steps, where troops were halted. Some of the soldiers stood in groups of four facing a blank wall where a flare was burning.
“Firing parties,” someone said. “Some poor devils in the church are for it.”
Hi, looking back, saw the white columns of the portico, with the yellowness of candlelight inside the door, and the blackness of Pluma Verde standing like a death. A squad of troops formed about the eight: the officer gave the order to march. One of the eight began to hum a Dead March.
“We are well out of that,” someone said. “They’ll clear most of that bunch up against the wall.”
“These darned foreigners: why can’t they agree? They’re like a lot of children.”
“Children? They’re like a lot of savages.”
“Well, we come out at the thin end of the horn, whatever they are. We’ll not get ashore again till Lord knows.”
“Surely,” Hi said, “they’ll let us go ashore again, when the troubles are over.”
“When will the troubles be over?”
“I suppose in a week.”
“Not in a year, kid.”
The American had been talking in a low voice to one of the squad of soldiers: he now spoke to the company.
“See there, now,” he said, jerking his head to the right, as they came out upon the water-front, “the Whites got into the town here. They got in at the gate there. The man says that they fit like hell along the beach, till all the lot of them was killed.”
“All the lot?”
“Yep.”
“And Don Manuel, too?”
“Yep. Not one man left alive.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“There goes some more of ’em, who weren’t in the battle at all.”
Behind them, from the direction of the church which they had left, there came a sudden volley of three rifles. After a minute there came another volley, presently a third, then many more.
“These darned Reds,” the American said, “it’s their night to howl. Those were the poor devils we were with a few minutes since; give them a prayer, sons.”
They gave them their prayers, as they marched on in the moonlight along the deserted water-front. All the houses there were dead, with blank eyes. The rhythm of their steps echoed from the walls, the sea washed on the shingle beside them. The shootings still went on near that church of liberty from superstition.
“Blast them,” one of the eight said. “Don’t they pardon anyone?”
“It’s their night to howl,” the American said:
They’re all the way from Bitter Creek,And it’s their night to howl.
They’re all the way from Bitter Creek,And it’s their night to howl.
They’re all the way from Bitter Creek,And it’s their night to howl.
They’re all the way from Bitter Creek,
And it’s their night to howl.
“Do you think I could send a message ashore, when we get to the ship?” Hi asked.
“What for?”
“To ask after friends and to get my things.”
“There’ll be darned few messages passing after this.”
“Well, what are we to do, then?”
“What did the cat do?”
“I don’t know. What did he do?”
“He went back, when he couldn’t stay no longer.”
“The Consuls will help us get our things,” a man said.
“The Consuls, hell,” another answered. “We’ll not see a stick nor stitch of anything we had. This land is going to have the bust-up that’s been preparing for years. It will be a year before it’s settled. Perhaps a year after that we may be allowed in again to settle our businesses. Thank God, I saw a little of this coming.”
By this time they were at the Mole, where Hi had landed with such hopes a fortnight before. The water was gleaming over the lower steps. Some men were standing under the Mole light: some soldiers came to attention there as the party drew near.
“Halt, there,” a voice called.
They were called one by one under the light, and sorted out to three boats then lying at the steps, from a French barque, an English ship and an American schooner.
“Will there be any more to-night?” an English sailor asked. “Shall we send the boat in again?”
“We do not know.”
“Well, if any more are to come off, dip your light there and I’ll send the boat in.”
“How?”
“Dip your light. Lower and hoist your light, to let me know you want the boat.”
“It is good.”
“Is it good?” the sailor muttered, as he shepherded his six down the steps to the boat. “You’re about as likely to do it as my Uncle Joe is to have kittens.”
Four ordinary seamen in the boat pulled them clear of the Mole into the harbour, towards the sailing-ship anchorage. The firing-parties were still firing in the town. Away beyond the Farola, a house which had been fired began to burn up brightly. “That’s just about where the Piranhas’ house is,” Hi thought. “They’ve killed the Piranhas, too.”
“What ship are you taking us to?” a man asked.
“Solita, Liverpool,” the mate said. “I guess the lid’s off theTenderlointo-night?”
“They’re playing hell all over.”
“Give way, sons,” the mate said. “Come, put your weights on.”
They pulled on over the sea in the moonlight towards the grove of masts. All were silent now, from weariness and bitterness; there was no sound except the gurgle and wash of the water, the grunt of the oars in the crutches, and sometimes a church-bell, or a volley of shots from the city. The mate who was steering began to croon a hymn as he watched theSolita’sriding-light:
Give me that old time religion,Give me that old time religion,Give me that old time religion,It’s good enough for me.
Give me that old time religion,Give me that old time religion,Give me that old time religion,It’s good enough for me.
Give me that old time religion,Give me that old time religion,Give me that old time religion,It’s good enough for me.
Give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion,
It’s good enough for me.
Singing thus at his hymn, which could be made to last for a day in case of need, he brought his boat to the gangway under the lean iron flank of theSolita. The Captain looked down upon him from the poop rail.
“Is that you, Mister?” he asked.
“Yes, sir: I brought six more.”
“Come on up there, you.”
When the six stood on the deck, the captain spoke to them.
“You are on board a British ship,” he said. “The rules are: no smoking and no matches between decks. Any of you caught striking a light below there will sleep on the fo’c’sle head. Write your names here. Anderson, show them where they belong.”
One of the boat’s crew helped them down a perpendicular iron ladder into the gloom of a ’tweendecks which smelt of decayed malt. A spare starboard sidelight cast a green light on one side of this space, so that Hi could see many bodies lying on sails. On the other side of the space two planks upon casks made a table on which some food was spread, in bread-barges.
“You can get your supper if you’d like,” Anderson said, showing the bread-barges. “Or you can turn in on the sails, if you’d rather rest. Your lot makes it forty-one that we got. We’ll be able to have some fine sing-songs. The steward says we shall probably sail within three days for New York. There’s fresh water in the bucket there and a dipper to drink by. Any matches you’ve got, you’ve got to give to me.”
When Anderson had gone, Hi drew away from the six to a lonely space on the sails, where he dragged a hatch cover over himself, so that he might think alone. He had had his first wrestle with life; he reckoned that he had been an utter failure. The future was dark enough, but it was nothing to the darkness of the present.
“I failed,” he thought. “And I’ve probably killed ’Zeke. And ’Zeke has brought Don Manuel to death; and the Piranhas are probably killed too, burnt out, anyway. And I’ve probably settled Carlotta’s fate as well. They are certain to kill her; all by not avoiding politics, as Winter told me. They might all be alive now, if I’d not stirred.”
The mate, who was walking the deck near the hatch, partly lest the boat should be needed, but mainly to detect any striking of a match among the refugees, sat upon the coamings for a minute, humming his tune of the old-time religion. “Ah, the old-time religion,” Hi thought, with the tears running down his face. “Nothing but religion’s any help to a man in my state. Oh, God, I have made a mess of it.”
And Carlotta?
Ah, Carlotta.
On the fate of Carlotta de Leyva.
On the fate of Carlotta de Leyva.
Carlotta had been killed a week before this.
The day after her arrest, some hours after Hi had started on his journey, Don Lopez ordered Carlotta to pray to him while he sat throned in public on the high altar of the Mission Church of Santa Barbara. On her refusal, he ordered her to be enclosed in a house of common prostitutes.
The mistress of this house, an Englishwoman known as Aunt Jennings, refused to admit her, saying, “That none but a dirty dog would have thought of sending her.”
When this was reported to Don Lopez, he ordered that Carlotta and Aunt Jennings should be taken by the hangman to the new town, and that there their throats should be cut. This deed was at once done by Don Lopez’ son, Don José, assisted by the two half-breeds, Zarzas and Livio.
This was the first of the many crimes committed by the Red party in the year of madness, 1887-1888.
* * * * * * *
Carlotta was put to death at about the moment of Hi’s arrest by the Pituba officer, before he was taken to Ribote.
On the fate of Don Manuel and his army, or what happened on the day of the battle.
On the fate of Don Manuel and his army, or what happened on the day of the battle.
When Hi saw the White army near Anselmo, it was moving from its bivouac towards Santa Barbara, expecting to fight that morning. It was delayed in its march by Pituba skirmishers, so that it did not come into position above Santa Clara until after three in the afternoon.
Don Manuel had expected that a part of the Federal army, the San Jacinto Horse, and the battalion of Independents, would declare for him, and either join him or help him. Their officers were known to be Whites and their men were hostile to Lopez. Unfortunately, Colonel Velarte, of the Horse, who was a friend of Hermengildo de Bazan, the White leader, disliked Don Manuel and refused to help him. The Colonel of the Independents felt that the Whites would be ruined if he did not help Don Manuel, but would not help unless he were given the command. While affairs were in this state, the day before the battle, Don Livio disarmed both these battalions and put their officers under arrest, so that the Whites were not helped by any Federal troops.
When the battle began, Don Manuel had with him between six and seven hundred horsemen, armed in various ways, undisciplined, without artillery, and almost without ammunition. The Federal troops opposed to him numbered about four thousand, including the Meruel and Pituba regiments of horse, three battalions of Eastern foot and two batteries of horse artillery.
The battle proper began when Don Manuel’s men came on to the little ridge above Santa Clara church. At that point they came under shell-fire from the batteries, which had been registered upon the ground during the morning. As Don Manuel saw that his only chance was to charge the guns, he charged. His men got into trip wire laid before the guns, and were shot down there by the foot soldiers or routed by the lancers. Some fifty or sixty of the Encinitas men followed Don Manuel to the right of the field, broke through a squad of Meruel horse, made a dash for the city, entered the southern gate, and summoned the fortress to surrender.
Here, through the wit of Don Livio, they were ambushed and driven on to the water-front, where they fought till they were lost. The last of them made a stand about the green boat or lighter which Hi had seen on the morning of his setting out with Rosa. When their last cartridges were gone, they took to the water and were killed in the bay.
Don Manuel, because he took to the water after the others, when the light was worse, contrived to reach the English barqueVenturer, whose Captain (Gary) received him and brought him to safety. Some five weeks after the battle, he landed in the United States.
Of his army, it is thought that about one-half escaped alive from the battle, and that of these perhaps a third were killed in the pursuit or in the proscriptions which followed. The Federal loss is not known, as the returns were falsified. It is thought that the Reds lost many men in the skirmishing, both before and after the battle.
The battlefield, which was then mainly race ground and market gardens, is now covered by the suburb of Santa Clara. It is a couple of miles from Medinas, on the northern road from the city; at a little distance the ridge (now covered with houses) which was the White position, may still be seen.
On the fate of Donna Emilia and her daughter Rosa.
On the fate of Donna Emilia and her daughter Rosa.
Donna Emilia died in misery shortly after the outbreak of the troubles (in May, 1887). Her daughter, Rosa Piranha, though proscribed in the September massacre, was saved from death by the devotion of her old nurse. The house which Hi saw burning, as he walked to the Mole, was not the Piranhas’ home; that was spared though sacked. Rosa returned to it when the troubles were over.
In May, 1888, she entered a community of enclosed nuns, to whom she made over all her earthly possessions. In this sisterhood she has lived ever since.
On the fate of Hi, after he went on board theSolita.
On the fate of Hi, after he went on board theSolita.
As the aliens in the ships were not allowed to land again in Santa Barbara during the troubles, Hi, with his fellow refugees, went in theSolitato New York, where he landed.
As his parents felt that he had better stay there, he remained in the United States, where he underwent the adventures and hardships usual to youth. After some months there, it happened, that he met Don Manuel.
As he felt that his life was linked to Don Manuel by ties not easily broken, he joined the band of White refugees sworn to destroy Don Lopez and his faction. With these outcasts he wandered and suffered for some months, till that campaign began which led to the killing of Lopez and the establishment of Don Manuel as Dictator in his stead.
For some years after this, Hi remained in the Western provinces, in Don Manuel’s employment, at work upon the problem dear to him, of perfecting steamboats for river traffic of different kinds. In 1891, when Don Manuel began his great scheme of controlling the San Jacinto River, some of his ideas were put in practice. For the next seven years, he was busily employed on the San Jacinto, in partial or complete charge of the boat service by which the workers on the dam were supplied. The following letter from him, written in early May, 1898, to his mother in England, will fill in some of the blanks in this history:
“On the 15th we had our great day with the opening of the dam. His Excellency, with his staff and a lot of senators and Congressmen, came to the pier at Curucucu, where they took our boats for the last ten miles up to the dam. After the formal opening, there was a banquet, at which H. E. made a very nice speech. He said he did not think the work would ever have been done but for my boats, which perhaps was partly true.
“About a week after the opening they finished the last stretch of the railway so that now the waters are linked with both coasts and my seven years’ job is at an end.
“As I had nothing to do, I was one of the first to take the train to the east through the forest; and I took the opportunity to go over the scenes of my old adventures. I got Dick Binge and Tommy to come with me. I started by going to San Marco, where the marriage party was so kind to me. I found Uncle Philip still living, in the same farm. His niece had married Hernando, the man who dispensed the cordials in the waggon. They were living at a farm near by and doing well. I had promised them when I parted from them to return the clothes they gave me. I couldn’t quite do this, but I was able to get them a couple of pedigree cows from His Excellency, which I hope will thrive up there on the hill.
“After seeing them, we went with a guide two days into the forest to the temple where the cousin of the Hundred Yards Blue nearly plugged me. The place has long since been opened up and explored. From some of the Indians thereabouts I learned of the end of Letcombe-Bassett, if that were his name. It seems that a few days after I escaped, he worked into the temple by himself and made a certain number of finds. A big stone fell across his legs and pinned him there. He called to his Indians to lift the stone, but the Indians wouldn’t, because they hadn’t liked his ways, so he stayed pinned there for three days and nights, till he died of thirst. So Dudley Wigmore was avenged. We had a look for Dudley Wigmore’s bones, but the jungle had taken charge of them. I learned later that one or two of his things and some of the treasure from the temple were recovered and sent to his old mother at Shepton Mallet. This was done by one of Wigmore’s French friends, years ago, during the troubles, soon after I was there. The rest of the things found in the temple are in the museum at Santa Barbara.
“From this point, as so much of the forest had been cleared and a lot of the bog drained, it was easy to make the next stage to the ranch, where the corpse looked through the window. Here I learned what had happened; it had long been a puzzle to me.
“The troop of Pitubas who had burned the Ribote house made one or two forays into the Gaspar country, to burn the houses of other prominent Whites. Word came that afternoon that they were coming to burn this particular ranch. That old ruffian, Don Pablo, who would not let me go to Anselmo, ordered the people to vacate the ranch, and to join his body, which (he said) would then attack the Pitubas. They hurried the women away to safety; then, as they rode out to join Don Pablo, someone in a panic fired a shot, and everybody began to blaze away at nothing. These were the shots which I heard.
“A young Englishman employed in the ranch stayed there after the others lest a telephone call should come through with news of Don Manuel. While he waited, he saw the Pituba spy and shot him through the window; being then thoroughly scared, he took horse and galloped away. I heard him go.
“The telephone call came through while I was there, as I am not likely to forget.
“The people who challenged me and shot my horse, as I left the place, were the Pitubas, who burned the ranch to the ground that night. I found it rebuilt and thriving. That old ruffian, Don Pablo, owns it: he is a Senator and a grandissimo: I saw him there. He looks liker a portrait of a beadle than ever: a beadle or a town-bull.
“From this point we rode through the forest to the place where I went astray in the rain; and thence up the pass to the crater; and so, by degrees, to the Ribotes’ ranch. The old man and wife were still alive. The old man was failing and the old woman had had so many troubles that she did not care to see me, but I paid for my horse, I am glad to say, at last, and heard their news. The daughter had become an enclosed nun and the son, Anton, had been killed in the anti-clerical rebellion five years ago. I was grieved indeed not to see those two again. The house had been divided against itself, like so many during the troubles. From there, I rode on to the little town where I had been jailed. It has become a very prosperous place since I was there. They have built a new town hall and a new jail. They have also changed its name from Ribote to Tres de Mayo. Some don of state had built a lovely palace on the site of the Ribote mansion, which was burned while I was there.
“From here we rode on and camped in the clump where the officer made me a prisoner. Of all the places which I visited, this was the only one which did not seem to have changed. In the morning, we rode on and came to the falls down which I had been swept when I escaped from Brother Bright Tooth and his friend. As there was very little water in the river it did not look the same, but I could see the place with the overhanging bank where I came ashore. Just at the place where I took the water there is now a railway bridge; the track by which I rode on Bright Tooth’s horse has now the railway beside it. The hamlet where Bright Tooth and his mother lived has changed beyond all recognition into a thriving market town, but I found the German. He had become very stout and enormously prosperous. He remembered me quite well and told me all about Bright Tooth and his mother. The mother, he said, went into Santa Barbara during the troubles and was ended when the troubles were ended. Bright Tooth and a friend of his, I hope the friend who was with him when they tried to nobble me, were garrotted under His Excellency for murdering an old woman at Medinas.
“From this point, it was only a short stage to Carpinche, which is now a port for big forest timber. There were ships of up to a thousand tons in the harbour there. I watched them heaving the great red-hearts and green-hearts in through the holes in their bows. Not that the forests are being skinned. They are being planted as well as being cut.
“We took boat here—not a sailing boat, for those have passed away and market produce goes now to the city by train. We went in one of the ferries which ply every hour from Carpinche to Santa Barbara, calling at La Boca. I landed at La Boca to try to find word of Giordano. He had gone back to Italy, they told me, some years ago and was living there near Florence; very rich, they said. Pedro Ruiz was still marketing and gardening. I saw him at last in the flesh and bought some plants from him, which I hope I shall make grow for the sake of old times. The padron of my boat and Chigo had both gone back to Italy: few Italians stay here more than seven years.
“From there I came on to the Farola, where I had the long wait that anxious morning. As I landed in the late afternoon, I was the only person there, except a few anglers fishing for snappers. I could see what used to be the Piranhas’ house, so leaving the pier, I walked up to it. It is now the house of enclosed nuns in which Rosa lives. They are contemplatives, so there was no seeing Rosa: none of us will ever see her again, I suppose. I am too active to take to the monkish way of life myself; but I have seen monks and nuns out here, from time to time, who have made me see something of what they see. When you once see the beauty of holiness, no other beauty seems living. Rosa is happy. I went to the house just when they were singing their service, in that chapel which used to be the Piranhas’ chapel, where Donna Emilia and her husband are buried. I felt very queer, to think that Rosa was singing there and I so near her, listening: and suddenly I knew that she knew that I was listening, and was sending me a message of great happiness.
“In the city, I learned of some of the rest of these people. Don Inocencio was killed in the troubles: murdered the day after Don Manuel lost the battle, like so many other Whites. Allan Winter is still out at Quezon: Weycock is in the Shipping Co. I saw him at the Club: he is a man I cannot stick. Don José is one of his clients, they say: he would be.
“I asked Colonel Peñedo at the War Office if he could find out for me about the Pituba officer who would not let me land and afterwards jailed me. He was a Captain Avellano, it seems; a well-known Red and as brave as they are made. Don Livio, that mongrel scoundrel, was responsible for sending him to Ribote to burn the Ribote house. It seems that he had no written orders to stop the boats at La Boca: in doing that he was probably just being cussed. He was a gallant man in his way: he was killed fighting for Lopez a year later, “fighting like a wild tiger cat, one against twenty,” so Peñedo said. The Pituba officers were usually pretty tough: so I hope he may rest in peace.
“Of some of the other criminals and waifs, upon whose tracks mine impinged, I could learn nothing. Anna the were-wolf got herself shot in the troubles by wanting to be too revolutionary: the Reds did not kill the Whites so that Anna and her friends might rule.
“I haven’t mentioned Ezekiel Rust, because I have so often written to you about him. He and his wife Isabella are still out at Encarnacion; he runs the haras there, in very good style; she seems fond of him: both are well. He always wants to come back to England, to see Tencombe again, but I beg him not to think of it. Many there would recognise him, and although the evidence against him cannot now be strong, he would be certain to incriminate himself, and it would be too pitiful if the poor old chap should get himself hanged or (more probably) shut up as a criminal lunatic. Where he is now, he is a valuable man. Whereheis now, Keeper Jackson is, I hope, a valuable ghost. Why not let it rest at that?
“I asked about that picture-dealer on the water-front. It seems that he got a lot of things from the de Leyva collection, chiefly the bronzes. Then Don José tried to get them out of him, and as he wouldn’t sell them, Don José took them, with all his other belongings, and had the man deported. I suppose this is Don J’s nearest approach to a virtuous act. Of course, this was years ago, only a few days after the troubles began.
“H. E. had me out to dine at the palace, to ask me about another job, opening up the Burnt Lands by canals, and would I design the boats? It seems tame, after the San Jacinto: like falling off a log; but I want to be in everything that H. E. is in. He thinks that the B. L. can be planted in patches, if there are catchments. He is the most hopeful soul I know.
“By the way, in the palace, I found the Aztec, the Ribote brother. He is a sort of Secretary for Clerical Affairs, rather a big gun. I did not remind him of our meeting.
“Well, this is a long letter: I must stop.
“Words cannot describe the changes in the city since the bad old ’87 days: no town can have changed more in the time. My love to Bell and Father. I hope to be back in June, for a couple of months: so don’t fill the house up.”