With legs that shook and hands that clutched at nothing, Strawbridge
got out of the image room into the cathedral. He screwed himself to
sufficient self-control to be silent as he shivered along the aisles,
peering into every chapel and niche for Father Benicio. He raged
internally, thinking what he would do to Father Benicio. He syncopated
his thoughts with clenching of fists, spreading of nostrils, and
muttered blasphemies. When he found the priest, he would throttle him,
beat his shaven head on the stone flags. Vibrations of wrath shook
through his chest and belly.
He made the entire round of both aisles, and then turned automatically
into the priests' house. Opening a door, he stepped quickly into the
big room with the latticed side. He glanced about with a beating heart
and saw it was empty. He got to the entrance of the bishop's room and
looked in. Only the Christ on the cross, and the darkened pictures of
former bishops looked down on him. The drummer turned and set out up
the narrow passage, to search among the cubicles.
At that moment a loud ringing of the gong at the outer door caught his
attention. It came in a succession of three clangorous peals, loud and
imperative. It suggested an interruption and sent Strawbridge trotting
up the passage, looking hurriedly into each cubicle. All were as
obviously empty as a cigar box. Some smelled of burned candles, one of
medicine, one or two of stale bedding. The only difference between them
was in odor.
The doorbell clanged again, three times. Then it suddenly occurred to
Strawbridge that this might be Father Benicio, asking entrance. The
thought sent him flying to the door, with titillating nerves. He began
whispering through his dry mouth:
"Good God, let it be that devil Benicio!"
He stepped into the entrance and closed the inner shutter behind him.
At that moment the gong filled the closed passageway with a great
uproar. It was imperative, excited, and held the prolonged clangor of a
visitor who is at the end of his patience.
The drummer rushed to the door and laid noiseless hands on the bolts.
He had a sensation of immense strength. He wanted not to frighten
the priest, but to let him come unwarned into his grip. Not until
Strawbridge set about drawing the bolts did he remember that he had
but one hand. A thought flickered in his head that he might need his
automatic, but it was gone almost instantly.
The bars were hot. He could feel the heat, reflected by the panels,
of the sunshine outside. With a painful surge of expectancy he swung
open the outer shutters. In the dazzle of sunshine stood a figure who
the drummer could see was not Father Benicio. His murderous impulse
had been so sure of the priest, that he stood batting his eyes in the
glare, when he heard an excited voice gasp:
"_Gracias á Dios!_ it's you, Señor Strawbridge! _Diantre!_ I thought I
would never get you! But--_caramba!_--you know it already! Look, look,
Esteban, how white his face is, and how bloodshot his eyes! We were two
great fools, Esteban, to imagine we could tell _el señor_ anything!"
A second figure stepped in front of the door-casing and shrugged.
"_Naturalmente_, Lubito, if _el Señor General_ ordered these boats up
here, he knew when they were coming."
"But what shall we do, _mi General_?" demanded the bull-fighter,
excitedly. "Are you ready for us peons! Just a word, and we will flame
up like a bonfire!" The torero made a swift upward gesture.
Such ejaculations and questions were enough to seize part of the
attention of the homicidal drummer.
"What are you talking about!... Boats ... men ... peons!"
"_Demonio!_" roared Lubito, in admiration. "Is he not as deep as the
devil's pit, Esteban! What are we talking about? _Pues, mi General_, we
are talking about your men and your boats, your guns; they are below
the rapids. They are gathering in from God knows where. When we saw
them coming, Esteban and I came running here as fast as our legs would
carry us, to know when you wanted us, here in Canalejos, to strike. Is
it now? Is this the day? Shall we set fire to hell now? How is it, _mi
General_? Now?"
The bull-fighter's cries vibrated with a curious edge. He whipped out
an imaginary sword and saluted, tossing up his head and knot of hair.
"What part of Canalejos do we sack first! Send me where there are
plenty of women!"
Esteban, with his stupid peon face, stood nodding.
"And me ... send me where I can find Madruja, _mi General_."
By this time Strawbridge had fathomed what had set off the imaginations
of his self-appointed henchmen. He made a heavy gesture.
"That isn't my flotilla. It's the dictator's boats, come up from Rio at
last." He stood staring at his two followers, with a new and profound
depression coming over him. "So this is the end of it! This is the
end of everything!" A great sigh burst from him. He struck his palm
miserably against his breast. "Oh, Good God! Well, I'm ready to go."
He stumbled out of the priests' house. Each of the bewildered peons
took one of his arms, and the three men set out around the buttresses
of the cathedral and the adobe lean-tos, toward the terrain of the
river. The pain of a complete and final leave-taking of Dolores was
upon Strawbridge. The peons had not the least notion of the cause of
their master's despair.
"But, _mi General_," demurred Lubito, uncertainly, "there are too many
canoes for the trading party; the river is black with them. _Caramba!_
if they are not your men--"
"_Es verdad, Señor mi General_," put in Esteban. "There are too many--"
The peon's words were interrupted by a sharp, crashing blow from
the direction of the river. It smote the ear-drums of the three
men terrifically, and was followed by an abrupt silence. It was a
cannon-shot. At the moment the three men trotted around the last
obscuring adobe that stuck to the cathedral. On La Fortuna they saw a
puff of smoke dissolving into air, and far down below the rapids they
saw a crawling of men from a multitude of canoes--so far away that they
looked like insects. Among these insect lines forming on the shore,
Strawbridge caught the gleam of a banner.
The cannon on La Fortuna crashed again. Soldiers went marching out of
the fort, toward the foot of the rapids. They went down the terrain of
the river at a double-quick.
A feeling of movement and stir spread over the city. Almost before
Strawbridge knew it, the whole terrain on which he stood was covered
with denizens of the adobes. The Cock came out, peered through the
sunshine, then darted back into his inky hut and reappeared with an
extraordinary single-barreled, muzzle-loading pistol and a dagger. Men
and women came running out of the plaza, to the riverside, for a view.
Lubito clutched the drummer's arm.
"You see, _mi General_, it is your men attacking. What shall I do?
Gather up my men and advance?"
Some obscure cerebration caused Strawbridge to answer, "No, ... no, not
now. Wait till we see how this goes!"
The bull-fighter snapped his fingers in admiration.
"_Caramba_, Esteban!" he cried above the noise of the gathering crowd.
"What calmness! This is the strategy of a Napoleon!"
By this time the gun on La Fortuna was firing regularly, and far down
the river, among the insects, little plumes of smoke showed where the
shells were bursting.
Strawbridge left the river bank and made his way through the crowd,
toward the plaza. He was filled with a rising anxiety for the señora.
He wondered where she was, to what convent she had retired. He supposed
that she would be safe, but she would surely be frightened. The drummer
went hurrying eastward through a small _calle_, glancing to right and
to left, half expecting to see the señora's face at some barred window.
Along the thoroughfares natives were darting about, salvaging their
household goods as if from a fire. Women and children, with burdens on
their backs, turned out into the streets and went hurrying along, urged
by the groaning of cannon and an occasional dry rattle of musketry.
This continued from street to street, and by the time the drummer
reached the plaza, the square was already crowded with fugitives, all
of whom were flowing westward, past the palace and the state buildings,
toward the outskirts of town and the llanos. The mass moved slowly and
in great disorder. Mules and donkeys went past, laden with household
goods; carts containing food, _mosquiteros_, calabashes, invalided
persons. Pedestrians struggled along under huge bundles done up in
ponchos; old women carried their belongings twisted up in their skirts,
with their bare legs and feet exposed. It was an astonishing, frantic
procession, with every one struggling, pushing, cursing unfortunates
who could not move quickly. Perched on top of many a bundle rode pet
game-cocks. The shrill crowing of these fowls added a curious stridor
to the turmoil of the refugees.
Almost every shop around the plaza was shut now. One or two doors had
been forced by looters, and the riffraff of the street eddied into
these magazines as if by some law of nature, and streamed out again
with their arms filled with spoil.
In the midst of this pillaging and flight, a murmur, which swiftly rose
to cries, oaths, and shouts of anguish, came from the direction of
the palace. It grew louder and louder, and presently the drummer was
aware that the crowd about him was solidifying and surging backward. He
tried to find out what was the matter, but in the uproar he could ask
nothing. Within the space of a minute he was caught in a dense jam and
had to struggle merely to keep his feet. He held his sore hand up, to
prevent its being hurt, and tried to push his way in some direction,
but men and women were crushing into him on every side. Then, owing to
his height, he saw the danger. Down the square the palace guards were
coming at a double-quick in the direction of the fighting. The front
ranks had leveled their bayonets to force a swift passage through the
mob. Before the steel the crowd flung itself back, shrieking in terror
and pain. The masses crushed blindly toward the sides of the square,
lost their bundles, upset carts, bastinadoed their burros, and flung
themselves, in compact masses, away from the line of march.
As the guards plowed down the plaza, Strawbridge felt himself crushed
one way, then another; and then suddenly a line of division opened and
left him with half a dozen others directly in the middle of the way. He
was in a narrow alley through which the bayonets were double-quicking.
He had that terrible sensation of being unable to move in either
direction. He stood dodging in a mad contra-dance, then he seemed lost;
he dashed to one side and tried to press his body into a solid wall of
flesh. He might as well have tried to sink into a bank of rubber. He
stood out; he was still exposed. The bristle of bayonets was right on
him. He made a last convulsive effort to merge himself, when an arm
thrust out of the mass, hooked about his waist, and from some leverage,
pried the American into a niche at the very moment the bayonets skimmed
smoothly past.
The crush stood perfectly immobile as the rifles went by. A sweat broke
out on Strawbridge. He twisted his head to look at the palace guards.
Only a few days before, they had been little better than servants
who fetched and carried for him; now, at a cannon-shot, at a volley
of firearms, they had formed a machine which, accidentally, almost
casually, had transfixed him.
The moment the soldiers were past, the crowd filled the _calle_
again, struggling with greater violence than ever. A voice shouted in
Strawbridge's ear:
"Where are you trying to go?"
Strawbridge looked about and saw a bearded and somewhat familiar face.
It belonged to the man who had wedged him into the crowd. Then the
drummer recognized him as Dr. Delgoa, the minister of war, whom he had
seen once or twice at the palace. The doctor's face had a strained
look, and now in the press he still held Strawbridge's arm, perhaps
with an idea of directing the drummer's steps.
"I wasn't going anywhere, specially," shouted the American. "Trying to
find out what's the trouble."
The doctor shook his head.
"_Diantre!_ This is terrible! Come with me; I am going to the
_palacio_. Here! Let's get into this side street. This crush!" These
exclamations were jogged out of him as he edged his body into this
and that aperture. He made way for the drummer, who followed him body
to body, and at last succeeded in pushing himself into the mouth of a
stinking little side _calle_.
In this place the crowd dwindled to small groups and single pedestrians
who hurried back and forth with ant-like aimlessness. Dr. Delgoa rested
a moment. He wore a high hat; now he took it off, drew out a silk
handkerchief, and mopped his face and hair. Somehow he had managed to
preserve his silk hat; his black frock-coat and his pearl-gray trousers
were unrumpled despite his struggle.
"We'll have to get away from here!" he said in a breath. "This _calle_
will be untenable in thirty minutes.... The machine-guns...." He
started walking along the _calle_, with the stragglers. "_Caramba!_ I
wish I knew which way the cat'll jump," he puffed, drying his hatband
as he went. "One never knows what to do. I left my wife at home. Of
course the telephones have been seized, and I can't talk to her. Where
are you going, Señor Strawbridge?" He had evidently forgotten the
drummer's answer to this same question a minute or two before.
"I'm trying to find out what caused this." The American looked back and
listened to the inarticulate roar of the mob thundering in the tympanum
of the narrow street.
Dr. Delgoa started to explain, but at that moment out of a back door of
a shop bundled an old woman with a great pile of fiber hammocks. The
men collided with her. The old creature spat invectives. She twisted
about, saw who had struck her, and became more furious.
"It's that thief Delgoa! That bloodsucker Delgoa! May a ray of God
blast your entrails! You stole every centavo my shop could earn, you
and your cursed police! May you be bayoneted through the liver!"
Her anathemas were finally lost in the uproar. They struck coldly on
the drummer's nerves in so perilous a situation, but Delgoa paid no
attention to her. He began shaking his head, with his distressed look.
"If a man could only tell which way it is going to go."
"Who is it fighting us?" called Strawbridge. "Have the federal forces
suddenly got up here?"
Delgoa looked around at him, rather surprised.
"No, it's Saturnino."
Strawbridge stared, thunderstruck.
"Saturnino--fighting us!"
"Yes, yes. Been brewing a long time. Very ambitious man. Heretofore the
general has handled him somehow, through the influence of the general's
wife. Now I understand she has entered a convent, and of course--" the
Minister made a hopeless gesture--"of course that unchained hell."
A wide dismay suddenly swept over the drummer. He felt that he and all
the people in Canalejos were caught like flies in the web of Coronel
Saturnino's endless calculations. He knew that back there, in San
Geronimo, the colonel had worked out, night after night, precisely how
he would conquer this point and that redoubt; how many men it would
require to take that coign of vantage, and so on, step after step, all
the way to his goal.
Suddenly the drummer turned to the minister.
"Why didn't Fombombo throw the colonel into prison years ago?"
Dr. Delgoa looked at him, his mind evidently coming back from some
painful abstraction.
"Oh, yes.... He couldn't. Saturnino has always been a favorite with
the army. Besides, the general needed a tactician. _Diablo!_ I wish the
general had kept his wife in the _palacio_!"
By this time the two men had come to the mouth of the little side
street, where it emptied into the main thoroughfare opposite the
palace. Delgoa held out an arm to warn the drummer, then advanced
carefully to the limit of the protecting walls and peered down the
plaza. The place was a litter of scattered goods and broken carts. Here
and there a human figure darted across the wreckage, making for some
place of safety. The crowd had struggled past and were gone.
Just across the street the doors of the palace stood open. Four
soldiers were posted by each shutter, whose duty, evidently, was to
close the building at a moment's notice. On top of the palace roof
were lined a number of guards, and in the machicolations above the
architrave shone the muzzles of some rapid-fire guns.
Dr. Delgoa stood in the _calle_, peering at the scene before him and
listening with all his ears. He said to Strawbridge in an apprehensive
voice:
"The cannonading at La Fortuna has stopped."
The drummer listened. It was true, but he had not observed the fact,
under the ceaseless tearing sound of the small arms, which was growing
louder and louder. It sounded somewhat like an approaching storm.
Delgoa waved a hopeless hand.
"_Dios mio!_ which way will this battle go! _Canastre!_ this deciding
for your life, your property and your family!" With a tortured face he
turned to Strawbridge. "Just think, if I fail to guess the victor just
once, I go into La Fortuna, my property confiscated, and my wife...."
He snapped his fingers and flung out his hands.
Such frank opportunism amazed the American.
"Why--damn it, man!--stick to the side you think is right!"
"Right! _Right!_" Delgoa laughed in a very access of irony. "My dear
_amigo_, I am a politician. I have nothing to do with--" He interrupted
himself to listen to the increased ripping and tearing of the gun fire;
then, with his head cocked sidewise, he looked steadily at Strawbridge
and whispered, "I believe Saturnino is winning...."
The drummer was outraged.
"Well--by God!--between the two I stand by the general!"
"But look yonder!" The minister pointed down the plaza. "Yonder are the
guards falling back!"
At that moment a flurry of men that looked like leaves before a wind,
whirled out of a street into the plaza and instantly settled into every
niche and crevice they could find. Almost immediately came another
whirl of men, falling back behind every makeshift ambuscade. The
minister gripped the American's arm.
"Your general is losing; we are going to change dictators!"
The American burst out in profanity:
"I don't give a damn! I've always been against Saturnino! He's nothing
but a rascal, a damn clever rascal! Hasn't got a principle in him!" The
drummer shook off the doctor's arm, and next moment darted out of his
covert, toward the long flight of steps at the entrance of the palace.
The big American's flight might have been the signal for the whole
regiment of palace guards to retreat headlong toward the _presidencia_.
Immediately a company of insurgents deployed into the square, and knelt
to fire. Even in the drummer's short sprint across the _calle_, the
attackers discharged a volley. The crash, pent up between the houses,
roared down the _calle_, and a shower of leaves and twigs fell from the
ornamental greenery in the plaza. Stone flakes leaped from the façade
of the palace; spots of dust floated up into the air along the _calle_;
the air was filled with a whining. Here and there a flying guard
stumbled in the plaza; two or three of the less severely wounded went
crawling on their hands and knees toward the side streets, to escape
the steel storm. Strawbridge dashed up the long flight of steps and was
hardly inside the recessed doors when the van of the retreating guard
began to pour up the steps into the building.
The moment the drummer entered the palace he stepped into quietude
and order. The heavy walls reduced the rifle fire in the streets to a
mere popping. Along the passage were stationed several officers, who
directed the returning soldiers to march back into the building, toward
some objective unknown to the American. One or two of the officers
recognized Strawbridge and saluted as he entered.
An odd feeling of home-coming visited the salesman as he stood near the
entrance. His painful week at the priests' house seemed to have dropped
out of his life. It seemed to him that the señora was still in the
music-room, that he might walk back, tap, and have her come to the door.
Bullets were now snapping regularly at the stone façade. They reminded
Strawbridge of the first scattering drops of rain at the beginning of
a summer shower. Another batch of soldiers came running up the long
steps. One of them even laughed, and waved his cap to some one on the
roof, when at that moment he fell forward and lay twisting on the sharp
comers of the stone steps. Suddenly the drummer saw that it was Pambo,
the little brown guard who had nursed him through his illness. His
comrades had left him on the steps. An impulse sent the drummer leaping
down three steps at a time through the whining air. He seized Pambo in
his arms and came back up. The little soldier recognized the American,
for he gasped out, "_Cá!_ _Señor Americano_, tell Juana...." Then he
began bending his body backward, thrusting out his chest in an effort
for breath. When Strawbridge laid him on the floor, he continued these
convulsive movements, bowing up his torso, his mouth open, gasping, and
his eyes staring.
The next moment the officer nearest the door looked out and gave a
command, and the four soldiers swung shut the heavy metal doors.
Instantly the hall was blanketed to silence. The only sounds were the
footsteps of the guards walking briskly to the rear of the building and
the clinking of balls striking the doors of the palace.
The drummer fell in with the last soldiers who went down the hallway.
Along the sides of the passage hung the dark portraits of former
dictators, men who had usurped and lost power, and who had been done
to death in just such another eruption as now raged outside. With a
beating heart the drummer hurried past these ironic pictures.
He meant to fight for General Fombombo. Why? He did not know. Perhaps
it was because of the order for rifles. Perhaps because he sensed
in the arbitrary general something finer than what he found in the
cynical colonel. Or, more likely, it was the result of the salesman's
discovery that Saturnino was a lover of Dolores; the general was only
her husband. Strawbridge fell in with the soldiers.
The recruits turned in at a side door of the passageway, and this gave
upon a flight of stairs that led to the roof. Guards were pouring up
and down this staircase; the upward-bound were laden with ammunition
boxes; the down-bound were empty-handed. This was the general's
ammunition, hoist from some donjon in the palace.
The moment Strawbridge stepped into the stairway a din of firing and
shouting broke upon his ears. The salesman ran up the steps beside
one burden-bearer. As they emerged on the roof, one of the soldiers
reached over and jerked the big American down to a stooping posture.
Everybody was stooping. The palace guards crouched and sprawled inside
the waist-high wall that surrounded the roof, and fired through the
machicolations. Stationed here and there among the riflemen were
machine-guns. Each gun was handled by two men. Now and then one of
these guns would break into a hard yammering, then abruptly cease. The
riflemen were firing in the same careful way. They sighted and fired
with murderous concentration. Like all Latin-American revolutionists,
they never used volley-firing in the hope of making a hit. Every bullet
was aimed at somebody.
A dead man or two and a few wounded men were scattered over the tiled
roof. Stone splinters snapped out of the merlons from adverse gun
fire. The smell of smokeless powder filled the air with a headache-y
quality. The drummer saw a rifle and a bandolier of cartridges beside
a motionless figure. He crawled to it and salvaged the gun. He got to
the wall and settled himself beside an aperture, in line with the whole
wallful of reclining riflemen.
Peering out between his merlons, he found himself looking into the
westering sun. Saturnino had flung his forces on top of the houses
directly west of the palace. This screened his men in the yellow glow
of the declining sun. The whole outline of the opposite buildings
was an indistinct purple. The drummer stared fixedly at this purple
outline, then he thought he glimpsed a movement. He leveled his gun
and fired. At the same moment a machine-gun near him began a sudden
chattering. Just where the drummer had seen a movement, the black
figure of a man lurched up against the yellow light and disappeared
backward.
A thrill of triumph shot through Strawbridge. He thought he had hit
his man. He lifted himself for a good look and another shot, when a
bullet flicked a bit of stone out of his merlon and cut his forehead
just over his eye. The salesman dodged down, put up his fingers to the
sting, and saw that he was bleeding a little. It made him angry, and he
fired his rifle viciously several times at the blank purple rim of the
opposite wall.
At that moment a hand was laid on his shoulder. Strawbridge looked
around and saw that it was General Fombombo. The dictator was patting
his shoulder warmly and encouraging him as a father might encourage the
first efforts of a son.
"That's the idea--two or three quick shots, then get down."
The general himself did not keep down so carefully. He seemed sure that
he would not be touched, and was careful only of his men. A contagious
power surrounded the commander. His hand on Strawbridge's shoulder
filled the American with warmth and confidence. He felt a passion to do
some striking thing in the general's service. Standing up quite as high
as the dictator himself, he suddenly cried out:
"Look! Yonder are some fellows down on the street level! Watch me get--"
The general pressed him down.
"Guard yourself," he ordered; "you are too valuable to be in this
firing-line. You must go to New York for me. Report to the magazine and
help send up ammunition. Descend quickly, señor!"
The drummer was about to crawl off toward the manhole, when abruptly
the whole rank of rapid-fire guns began a steady shrieking. At the same
moment half the riflemen reared up to shoot at something on the street
level. As they did so came a cracking from the opposite building. The
guards fell backward from their barricade, some wounded, some finished.
Perhaps half remained standing, firing solid volleys down into the
street.
Fombombo bellowed for the riflemen to remain down and let the
machine-guns clean the streets. The big man's roars seemed to fling the
soldiers back into their niches. The machine-gunners, with their steel
shields protecting them, depressed their guns and began a vibratory
screaming at something below.
Strawbridge, with a nervous spasm in his throat, peered through a
machicolation. Out from behind the nearest building came a swarm of
ghastly scarlet figures armed with heavy timbers. The machine-guns
whipped the _calle_ about them. Groups of the ragged red specters were
struck to the ground about the timbers, but others of the rabble leaped
to their places. They were the "reds." Saturnino had collected these
wretches from the canal camps all over the survey, and now flung them
at the dictator. There was something sickening in the charge of the
"reds" across the _calle_. The machine-guns could not beat them back.
They sowed the street with filthy red canvas bags; but still they came
on and rushed their timbers under the overhang of the building, where
the machine-guns could not reach them.
The drummer turned and scuttled toward the manhole. As he straightened
and went flying down the steps, he heard a great booming echoing
through the palace.
It was the "reds" thundering with their wooden rams against the doors
of the building. When Strawbridge got below, the whole palace shook
with the blows. All the inner doors along the central hallway stood
open, and soldiers darted in and out of the rooms to fire through the
windows. Rifle-shots roared through the place, and the stinking haze of
smokeless powder floated out into the corridor through the tops of the
doors and settled against the roof.
Some impulse sent Strawbridge running to the señora's room. As he
dodged inside, he saw two groups of soldiers crouched in the corners
and raking the windows with their fire. Some of their bullets bit
pieces out of the iron window bars. At regular intervals the end of a
heavy beam crashed against the bars and slowly bent the heavy grille
inward. One by one the anchorages in the stone casing broke loose.
The two squads of peon soldiers were barricaded behind delicate
dressing-tables and exquisitely wrought chairs; half a dozen guards
knelt behind a canopied four-poster. Their rifles were leveled across
an embroidered silk coverlet. Everything in the room still looked
incongruously feminine, even with men firing across it and a dead
soldier sprawled on a couch. Now and then a bullet drilled a neat
hole in an old-fashioned thin glass mirror in a dressing-stand. And
notwithstanding the sharp stench of powder-gas, still a faint feminine
sweetness lingered in the señora's apartment, a gentle wraith that
would not be exorcised.
Abruptly the whole of the bending bars broke loose and clanged down
inside. Instantly the window was filled with crashing rifles. The
concussion tore the drummer's ear-drums as he crouched behind the
massive bed. Guards crumpled up out of both firing-squads. Bottles,
brushes, and silver containers on the señora's dressing-table leaped
to splinters. The next moment the window was full of the heads and
shoulders of men, struggling to climb inside. They were the most
ghastly human beings the drummer had ever imagined.
The few guards left in the room fired point-blank into these terrible
creatures. Strawbridge caught up a gun and was on the point of firing.
He was aiming down the barrel at a skull-like head when he recognized
the tortured features and the burning monkey eyes of Josefa.
Such a revulsion swept over the American at the semblance of the little
clerk that he dropped his rifle and crouched behind the silken bed. The
prisoners in La Fortuna had been released. The mere horror of their
faces must have shocked the remnant of the guard into flight. Those who
were unwounded leaped from hiding and bolted for the door, shouting
above the din, "_Los presos!_ The prisoners are upon us! La Fortuna has
fallen!" They rushed pell-mell into the hallway, still shouting their
warning until their voices were lost in the din.
Strawbridge stared at these animated cadavers. Whether they recognized
and spared him as an American, or whether they overlooked him among
the wounded and dead, he never knew. The disinterred wretches streamed
past, with unshaven faces, with yellow skins sticking to the very bones
of their skulls, with eyes lost in bony pits, with lips stretched
across teeth in wrinkles. Their clothes were torn filth and sores. Into
the boudoir with them gushed the smell of rotting flesh and latrines.
This was the very dung of Venezuelan society; it was the cesspool of
the prison regurgitating into the palace; it was human sewage flowing
backward. It was inexpressibly obscene.
Nausea overcome Strawbridge; yet as they passed into the hallway he
struggled up and followed them. The corridor was a haze filled with
flashing rifles. Out of half a dozen rooms poured other assailants, who
had succeeded in breaking through the windows--other prisoners, other
"reds," other insurgent soldiers, all mixed in the maddest confusion.
They collected themselves under some leader; they formed themselves
into a regiment and then went pouring through the doorway onto the
staircase leading to the roof.
The drummer stood watching the scarecrow fighters as if hypnotized. He
watched them swirl into the passage that led above. Suddenly, above
the tumult, he heard the hard, shuddering reports of the machine-guns.
A storm of steel burst down on the ghastly assailants, bearing them
backward: the skeleton regiment recoiled, bent low, and started
climbing again, struggling up over their fallen comrades straight into
the muzzles of the guns. Ghastly croaking shouts; thin, rattling
huzzas; the clatter of the guns; the reek of ordure and sores; the
inferno roared on. The rattle of the machine-guns was dwindling.
Strawbridge heard hoarse coughing cries: "Down with Fombombo! There he
is! Strike him! Stab! Shoot! Here he is, over with him!" The drummer
wondered what thoughts burned through the dictator's mind as he faced
his horrible enemies. The cesspool of the prison had belched back,
clear up to the roof of the palace, and General Fombombo was inundated.
Strawbridge was deathly sick. He tottered back to the boudoir and
clambered out at the broken window, unopposed. Assailants no longer
encircled the palace; they had drained inside. The tumult on the roof
was rapidly subsiding. Here and there cries of "_Viva_ Saturnino!"
began to sound. Presently a few soldiers came running out of the
palace, waving their rifles and shouting, "_Viva_ Saturnino!"
_Viva_ Saturnino! The battle was over.
News of the victory spread through the plaza and the adjoining streets
with extraordinary swiftness. Strawbridge could hear cries for
Saturnino as they were repeated in every direction--near, far, now from
all parts at once--"_Viva_ Saturnino!"
By common concert men and women appeared, coming in from every
direction. Crowds might have formed out of the air. They came shouting
and huzzaing for victory. They took up the cry, "Liberty! Justice and
Saturnino!"
A group of peons began dancing in the evening shadows which fell across
the plaza. Some tatterdemalions ran with ropes, lassoed the head of
General Fombombo's statue, and began pulling it from its pedestal.
The marble seemed to resist. It held out its scroll bearing "Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity," but at last it swung slowly outward and
smashed down on the pavement.
At its fall a ferocious joy-making boiled up in the crowd. Some one
lighted a fire in the center of the square, and immediately every
one flung the litter from the refugees upon the pyre--broken carts,
smashed furniture, rags, all manner of waste. The fire boiled up in
a great white smoke, and presently flames began licking through it.
The revelers began to sing; half a dozen voices, a score, others and
others, until a great sounding chorus roared up from the plaza. Some
rimester had improvised the words:
_Viva el Coronel Saturnino_,
Son of Freedom and Rio Negro!
Save our daughters and our niñas.
To Hell with General Fombombo.
The crowd danced about the bonfire to this absurd chant--men and women,
embracing, kissing, singing, whirling in and out like brown vortices of
sand blown up by the winds on the llanos.
The drummer stood near the façade of the palace, watching the growing
saturnalia. He thought of the señora, and he thanked God she was safe
in some convent, out of all this fury and madness. Greater and greater
crowds gathered in the plaza; they streamed in from everywhere. An old
woman passed Strawbridge, with her arms about a filthy skeleton-like
creature. In the gathering gloom of evening, Strawbridge recognized
the old charwoman of the cathedral, Doña Consolacion, and her grandson
Josefa. These two had been reunited. The drummer watched them pass. The
strange thought came to him that he had brought them down to their poor
plight.
The bonfire was leaping high by this time, and with the delicacy of
an etching the ornamental trees stood out against the flames. Below
circled the dark figures of the peons, singing of liberty, justice, and
Saturnino. Amid the rhythmic intervals of this uproar, the American
heard a solitary sobbing. The sound was so consonant to his own mood
that he looked about for the mourner. He found the weeper in the gloom
beside the long stairway that led up into the palace. He walked slowly
around the curve of the marble balustrade, and in the shadows he saw a
misshapen woman bending over some object on the pavement and weeping
vehemently. Strawbridge drew closer until he could see her face,
distorted with grief. It was Madruja. The peon girl was heavy with an
unborn child, and in her arms she held the body of the fallen dictator.
The dead tyrant looked curiously small as he lay on the pavement, where
he had been thrown from the roof of the palace. Occasionally the girl
would pause in her sobbing, to stroke the dead man's face with her
puffed fingers; then she would break out afresh.
As Strawbridge stood blinking his eyes a street vender came running
along, lifting his hands in an attitude of prayer and shouting a
priest-like singsong at the skies. Strawbridge listened to him. He was
chanting in a frenzy of satire:
"O Saint Peter! O good Saint John! Guard well your eleven thousand holy
virgins; General Fombombo is on his way to Paradise!"