|THE weeks of clean living, of abstention from his wonted daily
alcoholic ration, had inspired in Don Juan Cafetéro a revival of his all
but defunct interest in life; conversely, in these stirring times, he
was sensible of an equally acute interest in Sobrantean politics, for he
was Irish; and flabby indeed is that son of the Green Little Isle who,
wherever he may be, declines to take a hand in any public argument. For
the love of politics, like the love of home, is never dead in the
Irish. It is instinct with them--the heritage, perhaps, of centuries
of oppression and suppression, which nurtures rather than stifles the
yearning for place and power. Now as Don Juan turned Leber's launch
shoreward and kicked the motor wide open, he, too, descried against the
dawn the glare of the burning cantonments west of the city, and at the
sight his pulse beat high with the lust of battle, the longing to be in
at the death in this struggle, where the hopes and aspirations of those
he loved were at stake.
Two months previously a revolution would have been a matter of extreme
indifference to Don Juan; he would have reflected that it was merely the
outs trying to get in, and that if they succeeded, the sole benefit to
the general public would be the privilege of paying the bill. It was all
very well, perhaps, to appoint a new _jefe politico_, if only for the
sake of diversion, but new or old they “jugged” or booted Don Juan
Cafetéro impartially from time to time; the lowliest peon could shoulder
the derelict off the narrow sidewalks, while the policeman on the beat
looked on and grinned. Consequently, drunk or sober, Don Juan would not
have fought with or for a Sobrantean, since he knew from experience
that either line of activity was certain to prove unprofitable. To-day,
however, in the knowledge that he had an opportunity to fight beside
white men and perchance even up some old scores with the _Guardia
Civil_, it occurred suddenly to Don Juan that it would be a brave
and virtuous act to cast his lot with the Ruey forces. He was a
being reorganized and rebuilt, and it behooved him to do something to
demonstrate his manhood.
Don Juan knew, of course, that should the rebels lose and he be
captured, he would be executed; yet this contingency seemed a
far-fetched one, in view of the fact that he had John Stuart Webster at
his back, ready to finance his escape from the city. Also Don Juan
had had an opportunity, in the hills above San Miguel de Padua, for a
critical study of Ricardo Ruey and had come to the conclusion that at
last a real man had come to liberate Sobrante; further, Don Juan had
had ocular evidence that John Stuart Webster was connected with the
revolution, for had he not smuggled Ruey into the country? It was
something to be the right-hand man of the president of a rich little
country like Sobrante; it was also something to be as close to that
right-hand man as Don Juan was to his master, Webster; consequently
self-interest and his sporting code whispered to Don Juan that it
behooved him to demonstrate his loyalty with every means at his command,
even unto his heart's blood.
“Who knows,” he cogitated as the launch bore him swiftly shoreward, “but
what I'll acquit meself with honour and get a fine job undher the new
administhration? 'Tis the masther's fight, I'm thinkin'; then, be the
same token, 'tis John Joseph Cafferty's, win, lose or dhraw; an' may
the divil damn me if I fail him afther what he's done for me. Sure, if
Gineral Ruey wins, a crook av the masther's finger will make me _jefe
'politico_. An' if he does--hoo-roo! Hoo-ray!”
With his imagination still running riot, Don Juan made the launch fast
to the little dock, down which, he ran straight for the warehouse,
where the Ruey mercenaries were still congregated, busily wiping the
factory-grease from the weapons which had just been distributed to them
from the packing-cases. A sharp voice halted him, he paused, panting, to
find himself looking down the long blue barrel of a service pistol.
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” the man behind the weapon
demanded brusquely.
“I'm Private John J. Cafferty, the latest recruit to the Ruey army,” Don
Juan answered composedly. “Who did ye think I was? Private secreth'ry to
that divil Sarros? Man, dear, lower that gun av yours, for God knows
I'm nervous enough as it is. Have ye somethin' ye could give me to fight
wit,' avic?”
The man who had challenged him--a lank, swarthy individual from the
Mexican border--looked him over with twinkling eyes. “You'll do,
Cafferty, old-timer,” he drawled, “and if you don't, you'll wish you
had. There's a man for every rifle just now, but I wouldn't be surprised
if there'd be a right smart more rifles than men before a great while.
Help yourself to the gun o' the first man that goes down; in the
meantime, hop into that there truck and keep the cartridge belt for the
machine guns full up. You're just in time.”
Without further ado Don Juan climbed into the truck. A little citadel of
sheet steel had been built around the driver's seat, with a narrow slit
in front through which the latter peered out. The body of the truck
had been boxed in with the same material and housed two machine guns,
emplaced, and a crew of half a dozen men crouched on the floor,
busily engaged in loading the belts. Four motor bicycles, with sturdy,
specially built side-cars attached, and a machine gun in each side-car,
were waiting near by, together with a half-dozen country carts loaded
with ammunition cases and drawn by horses.
“How soon do we start?” Don Juan demanded anxiously, as he crowded in
beside one of his newfound comrades.
“I believe,” this individual replied in the unmistakable accents of an
Oxford man, “that the plan is to wait until five o'clock; by that time
all the government troops that can be spared from the arsenal and palace
will have been dispatched to the fighting now taking place west of the
city. Naturally, the government forces aren't anticipating an attack
from the rear, and so they will, in all probability, weaken their base.
I believe that eases our task; certainly it will save us many men.”
Don Juan nodded his entire approval to this shrewd plan of campaign and
fell to stuffing cartridges in the web belting, the while he whistled
softly, unmusically, and with puffing, hissing sounds between his
snaggle teeth, until a Sobrantean gentleman (it was Doctor Pacheco) came
out of the warehouse and gave the order to proceed.
They moved out silently, the Sobrantean rebels falling into line behind
the auto-truck, the motorcycle battery, and the transport-carts, all of
which were in charge of the machine gun company. They marched along
the water-front for four blocks and then turned up a side street, which
happened to be the Calle de Concordia, thus enabling Mother Jenks, who
was peering from the doorway of El Buen Amigo, to see them coming.
“Hah!” she muttered. “'Enery, they're cornin'. The worm is turnin',
'Enery; fifteen years you've wyted for vengeance, my love, but to-d'y
you'll get it.”
She waddled out into the street and held up her hand in a gesture
as authoritative and imperious as that of a traffic officer.
“Batter-r-ry 'alt!” she croaked. She had heard the late 'Enery give that
command often enough to have acquired the exact inflection necessary
to make an impression upon men accustomed to obeying such a command
whenever given. Instinctively the column slowed up; some of the Foreign
Legion, old coast-artillerists, no doubt, came to a halt with promptness
and precision; all stared at Mother Jenks.
“Ow about 'arf a dozen cases o' good brandy for the wounded?” Mother
Jenks suggested. “An' 'ow about a bally old woman for a Red Cross
nurse?”
“You're on, ma'am,” the foreign leader replied promptly, and translated
the old lady's suggestion to Doctor Pacheco, who accepted gracefully
and thanked Mother Jenks in purest Castilian. So a detail of six men was
told off to carry the six cases of brandy out of El Buen Amigo and load
them on the ammunition carts; then Mother Jenks crawled up into the
armoured truck with the machine-gun crew, and the column once more took
up its line of rapid march.
The objective of this unsuspected force within the city was, as Ricardo
Ruey shrewdly suspected it might be, poorly garrisoned. Usually a force
of fully five hundred men was stationed at the national arsenal, but the
sharp, savage attack from the west, so sudden and unexpected, had thrown
Sarros into a panic and left him no time to plan his defence carefully.
His first thought had been to send all his available forces to
support the troops bearing the brunt of the rebel attack, and it was
tremendously important that this should be done very promptly, in view
of the lack of information concerning the numerical force of the enemy;
consequently he had reduced the arsenal force to one hundred men and
retained only his favorite troop of the Guards and one company of the
Fifteenth Infantry to protect the palace.
Acting under hastily given telephonic orders, the commanding officer
at the cantonment barracks had detailed a few hundred men to fight a
rear-guard action while the main army fell back in good order behind a
railway embankment which swept in a wide arc around the city and offered
an excellent substitute for breastworks. This position had scarcely
been attained before the furious advance of the rebels drove in the
rear guard, and pending the capture of the arsenal, Ricardo realized
his operations were at an _impasse_. Promptly he dug himself in, and the
battle developed into a brisk affair of give and take, involving meagre
losses to both factions but an appalling wastage of ammunition.
The arsenal, a large, modern concrete building with tremendously thick
walls reinforced by steel, would have offered fairly good resistance
to the average field battery. Surrounding it on all four sides was a
reinforced concrete wall thirty feet high, with machine-gun bastions at
each corner and a platform along the wall, inside and twenty-five feet
from the ground, which afforded foot room for infantry which could use
the top five feet of the wall for protection while firing over it. There
was but one entrance, a heavy, barred steel gate which was always
kept locked when it was not necessary to have it opened for ingress or
egress. Given warning of an attack and with sufficient time to prepare
for it, one hundred of the right sort of fighting men could withstand an
indefinite siege by a force not provided with artillery heavier than an
ordinary field gun. With a full realization of this, therefore, Ricardo
and his confrères had designed to accomplish by strategy that which
could not be done by the limited forces at their command.
The tread of marching men, the purr of the motorcycles and the armoured
truck, during the progress of the invaders up the Calle de Concordia,
aroused the dwellers in that thoroughfare. Those who appeared in
their' doorways, however, as promptly disappeared upon recognizing this
indubitable evidence of local disturbance. As the column approached the
neighbourhood of the arsenal, three detachments broke away from the main
body and disappeared down side streets, to turn at right angles later
and march parallel with the main command. Each of these detachments was
accompanied by one unit of the motorcycle-mounted machine-gun battery
with its white crew; two blocks beyond the arsenal square each
detachment leader so disposed his men as to offer spirited resistance to
any sortie that might be made by the troops from the palace in the hope
of driving off the attackers of the arsenal.
Having thus provided for protection during its operations, the main body
nominally under Doctor Pacheco but in reality commanded by the chief of
the machine-gun company, proceeded to operate. With the utmost assurance
in the world the armoured truck rolled down the street to the arsenal
entrance, swung in and pointed its impudent nose straight at the iron
bars while the hidden chauffeur called loudly and profanely in Spanish
upon the sentry to open the gate and let him in--that there was
necessity for great hurry, since he had been sent down from the palace
by the _présidente_ himself, for machine guns to equip this armoured
motor-car. The sentry immediately called the officer of the guard, who
peered out, observed nothing but the motor-truck, which seemed far from
dangerous, and without further ado inserted a huge key in the lock and
turned the bolt. The sentry swung the double gates ajar, and with a
prolonged and raucous toot of its horn the big car loafed in. The sentry
closed the gate again, while the officer stepped up to turn the key in
the lock. Instead, he died with half a dozen pistol bullets through his
body, while the sentry sprawled beside him.
The prolonged toot of the motor-horn had been the signal agreed upon to
apprise the detachment waiting in a secluded back street that the truck
was inside the arsenal wall. With a yell they swept out of the side
street and down on the gate, through which they poured into the arsenal
grounds. At sound of the first shot at the gate, the _comandante_ of the
garrison, which had been drawn up in double rank for reveille roll
call, realized he was attacked and that swift measures were necessary.
Fortunately for him, his men were standing at attention at the time,
preparatory to receiving from him one of those ante-battle exhortations
so dear to the Latin soul.
A sharp command, and the little garrison had fixed bayonets; another
command, and they were in line of squads; before the auto-truck could
be swung sideways to permit a machine gun to play on the Sobranteans
in close formation, the latter had thrown out a skirmish fine and were
charging; while from the guardhouse window, just inside the gate, a
volley, poured into the unprotected rear of the truck following its
passage through the gate, did deadly execution. The driver, a bullet
through his back, sagged forward into his steel-clad citadel; both
machine-gun operators were wounded, and the truck was stalled. The
situation was desperate.
“I'm a gone goose,” mourned Don Juan Cafetéro, and he leaped from the
shambles to the ground, with some hazy notion of making his escape
through the gate. He was too late. Two men, riding tandem on a
motorcycle with a machine gun in the specially constructed side-car,
appeared in the entrance and leaped off; almost before Don Juan had time
to dodge behind the motor-truck to escape possible wild bullets, the
machine gun was sweeping the oncoming skirmish line. Don Juan cheered
as man after man of the garrison pitched on his face, for the odds were
rapidly being evened now, greatly to the pleasure of the men charging
through the gate to support the machine gun. Out into the arsenal yard
they swept, forcing the machine-gun crew to cease firing because of the
danger of killing their own men; with a shock bayonet met bayonet in the
centre of the yard, and the issue was up for prompt and final decision.
Don Juan's Hibernian blood thrilled; he cast about for a weapon in this
emergency, and his glance rested on the body of the dead officer beside
the gate. To possess himself of the latter's heavy “cut-and-thrust”
sword was the work of seconds, and with a royal good will Don Juan
launched himself into the heart of the scrimmage. He had a hazy
impression that he was striking and stabbing, that others were striking
and stabbing at him, that men crowded and breathed and pressed and swore
and grunted around him, that the fighting-room was no better than it
might have been but was rapidly improving. Then the gory fog lifted,
and Doctor Pacheco had Don Juan by the hand; they stood together in the
arsenal entrance, and the little Doctor was explaining to the war-mad
Don Juan that all was over in so far as the arsenal was concerned--the
survivors of the garrison having surrendered--that now, having the
opportunity, he, Doctor Pacheco, desired to thank Don Juan Cafetéro for
his life. Don Juan looked at him amazedly, for he hadn't the slightest
idea what the Doctor was talking about. He spat, gazed around at
the litter of corpses on the arsenal lawn, and nodded his red head
approvingly.
In an incredibly short space of time the news that the arsenal had been
captured and that Sarros was besieged in the palace spread through
the city. The sight of the red banner of revolution floating over the
arsenal for the first time in fifteen years brought hundreds of willing
recruits to the rebel ranks, as Ricardo Ruey had anticipated; these were
quickly supplied with arms and ammunition; by ten o'clock a battalion
had been formed and sent off, together with the machine-gun company, to
connect with the San Bruno contingent advancing from the south to turn
the flank of the government troops, while the equipping of an additional
battalion proceeded within the arsenal. As fast as the new levies were
armed, they were hurried off to reinforce the handful of white men who
had, after clearing the arsenal, advanced on the palace and now, with
machine guns from the arsenal commanding all avenues of escape from the
trap wherein Sarros found himself, were calmly awaiting developments,
merely keeping an eye open for snipers.
Thus the forenoon passed away. By one o'clock Don Juan Cafetéro--who
in the absence of close-range fighting had elected himself ordnance
sergeant--passed out the last rifle and ammunition. He was red with
slaughter, slippery with gun-grease, dripping with perspiration and
filthy with dust and dirt. “Begorra,” he declared, “a cowld bottle av
beer would go fine now.” Then, recalling his limitations, he sighed and
put the thought from him. It revived in him, however, for the first time
since he had left the steamer, a memory of John Stuart Webster, and his
promise to the latter to report on the progress of the war. So Don Juan
sought Doctor Pacheco in his headquarters and learned that a signal-man,
heliographing from the roof of the arsenal, had been in communication
with General Ruey, who reported the situation well in hand, with no
doubt of an overwhelming victory before the day should be over. This and
sundry other bits of information Don Juan gleaned and then deserted the
Sobrantean revolutionary army quite as casually as he had joined it, to
make his precarious way down the Calle San Rosario to the bay.