Captain Mitchell, pacing the wharf, was asking himself the same
question. There was always the doubt whether the warning of the
Esmeralda telegraphist--a fragmentary and interrupted message--had been
properly understood. However, the good man had made up his mind not
to go to bed till daylight, if even then. He imagined himself to have
rendered an enormous service to Charles Gould. When he thought of the
saved silver he rubbed his hands together with satisfaction. In his
simple way he was proud at being a party to this extremely clever
expedient. It was he who had given it a practical shape by suggesting
the possibility of intercepting at sea the north-bound steamer. And it
was advantageous to his Company, too, which would have lost a valuable
freight if the treasure had been left ashore to be confiscated.
The pleasure of disappointing the Monterists was also very great.
Authoritative by temperament and the long habit of command, Captain
Mitchell was no democrat. He even went so far as to profess a contempt
for parliamentarism itself. “His Excellency Don Vincente Ribiera,” he
used to say, “whom I and that fellow of mine, Nostromo, had the honour,
sir, and the pleasure of saving from a cruel death, deferred too much to
his Congress. It was a mistake--a distinct mistake, sir.”
The guileless old seaman superintending the O.S.N. service imagined that
the last three days had exhausted every startling surprise the political
life of Costaguana could offer. He used to confess afterwards that the
events which followed surpassed his imagination. To begin with, Sulaco
(because of the seizure of the cables and the disorganization of the
steam service) remained for a whole fortnight cut off from the rest of
the world like a besieged city.
“One would not have believed it possible; but so it was, sir. A full
fortnight.”
The account of the extraordinary things that happened during that
time, and the powerful emotions he experienced, acquired a comic
impressiveness from the pompous manner of his personal narrative. He
opened it always by assuring his hearer that he was “in the thick
of things from first to last.” Then he would begin by describing the
getting away of the silver, and his natural anxiety lest “his fellow” in
charge of the lighter should make some mistake. Apart from the loss of
so much precious metal, the life of Senor Martin Decoud, an agreeable,
wealthy, and well-informed young gentleman, would have been jeopardized
through his falling into the hands of his political enemies. Captain
Mitchell also admitted that in his solitary vigil on the wharf he had
felt a certain measure of concern for the future of the whole country.
“A feeling, sir,” he explained, “perfectly comprehensible in a man
properly grateful for the many kindnesses received from the best
families of merchants and other native gentlemen of independent means,
who, barely saved by us from the excesses of the mob, seemed, to my
mind’s eye, destined to become the prey in person and fortune of the
native soldiery, which, as is well known, behave with regrettable
barbarity to the inhabitants during their civil commotions. And then,
sir, there were the Goulds, for both of whom, man and wife, I could not
but entertain the warmest feelings deserved by their hospitality and
kindness. I felt, too, the dangers of the gentlemen of the Amarilla
Club, who had made me honorary member, and had treated me with uniform
regard and civility, both in my capacity of Consular Agent and as
Superintendent of an important Steam Service. Miss Antonia Avellanos,
the most beautiful and accomplished young lady whom it had ever been my
privilege to speak to, was not a little in my mind, I confess. How the
interests of my Company would be affected by the impending change of
officials claimed a large share of my attention, too. In short, sir,
I was extremely anxious and very tired, as you may suppose, by the
exciting and memorable events in which I had taken my little part. The
Company’s building containing my residence was within five minutes’
walk, with the attraction of some supper and of my hammock (I always
take my nightly rest in a hammock, as the most suitable to the climate);
but somehow, sir, though evidently I could do nothing for any one by
remaining about, I could not tear myself away from that wharf, where the
fatigue made me stumble painfully at times. The night was excessively
dark--the darkest I remember in my life; so that I began to think that
the arrival of the transport from Esmeralda could not possibly take
place before daylight, owing to the difficulty of navigating the gulf.
The mosquitoes bit like fury. We have been infested here with mosquitoes
before the late improvements; a peculiar harbour brand, sir, renowned
for its ferocity. They were like a cloud about my head, and I shouldn’t
wonder that but for their attacks I would have dozed off as I walked
up and down, and got a heavy fall. I kept on smoking cigar after cigar,
more to protect myself from being eaten up alive than from any real
relish for the weed. Then, sir, when perhaps for the twentieth time I
was approaching my watch to the lighted end in order to see the time,
and observing with surprise that it wanted yet ten minutes to midnight,
I heard the splash of a ship’s propeller--an unmistakable sound to a
sailor’s ear on such a calm night. It was faint indeed, because they
were advancing with precaution and dead slow, both on account of the
darkness and from their desire of not revealing too soon their presence:
a very unnecessary care, because, I verily believe, in all the enormous
extent of this harbour I was the only living soul about. Even the
usual staff of watchmen and others had been absent from their posts for
several nights owing to the disturbances. I stood stock still, after
dropping and stamping out my cigar--a circumstance highly agreeable,
I should think, to the mosquitoes, if I may judge from the state of my
face next morning. But that was a trifling inconvenience in comparison
with the brutal proceedings I became victim of on the part of Sotillo.
Something utterly inconceivable, sir; more like the proceedings of
a maniac than the action of a sane man, however lost to all sense
of honour and decency. But Sotillo was furious at the failure of his
thievish scheme.”
In this Captain Mitchell was right. Sotillo was indeed infuriated.
Captain Mitchell, however, had not been arrested at once; a vivid
curiosity induced him to remain on the wharf (which is nearly four
hundred feet long) to see, or rather hear, the whole process of
disembarkation. Concealed by the railway truck used for the silver,
which had been run back afterwards to the shore end of the jetty,
Captain Mitchell saw the small detachment thrown forward, pass by,
taking different directions upon the plain. Meantime, the troops were
being landed and formed into a column, whose head crept up gradually so
close to him that he made it out, barring nearly the whole width of
the wharf, only a very few yards from him. Then the low, shuffling,
murmuring, clinking sounds ceased, and the whole mass remained for about
an hour motionless and silent, awaiting the return of the scouts. On
land nothing was to be heard except the deep baying of the mastiffs at
the railway yards, answered by the faint barking of the curs infesting
the outer limits of the town. A detached knot of dark shapes stood in
front of the head of the column.
Presently the picket at the end of the wharf began to challenge in
undertones single figures approaching from the plain. Those messengers
sent back from the scouting parties flung to their comrades brief
sentences and passed on rapidly, becoming lost in the great motionless
mass, to make their report to the Staff. It occurred to Captain Mitchell
that his position could become disagreeable and perhaps dangerous, when
suddenly, at the head of the jetty, there was a shout of command, a
bugle call, followed by a stir and a rattling of arms, and a murmuring
noise that ran right up the column. Near by a loud voice directed
hurriedly, “Push that railway car out of the way!” At the rush of bare
feet to execute the order Captain Mitchell skipped back a pace or two;
the car, suddenly impelled by many hands, flew away from him along the
rails, and before he knew what had happened he found himself surrounded
and seized by his arms and the collar of his coat.
“We have caught a man hiding here, mi teniente!” cried one of his
captors.
“Hold him on one side till the rearguard comes along,” answered the
voice. The whole column streamed past Captain Mitchell at a run, the
thundering noise of their feet dying away suddenly on the shore. His
captors held him tightly, disregarding his declaration that he was
an Englishman and his loud demands to be taken at once before their
commanding officer. Finally he lapsed into dignified silence. With a
hollow rumble of wheels on the planks a couple of field guns, dragged
by hand, rolled by. Then, after a small body of men had marched past
escorting four or five figures which walked in advance, with a jingle
of steel scabbards, he felt a tug at his arms, and was ordered to come
along. During the passage from the wharf to the Custom House it is to be
feared that Captain Mitchell was subjected to certain indignities at
the hands of the soldiers--such as jerks, thumps on the neck, forcible
application of the butt of a rifle to the small of his back. Their ideas
of speed were not in accord with his notion of his dignity. He became
flustered, flushed, and helpless. It was as if the world were coming to
an end.
The long building was surrounded by troops, which were already piling
arms by companies and preparing to pass the night lying on the ground in
their ponchos with their sacks under their heads. Corporals moved with
swinging lanterns posting sentries all round the walls wherever there
was a door or an opening. Sotillo was taking his measures to protect his
conquest as if it had indeed contained the treasure. His desire to
make his fortune at one audacious stroke of genius had overmastered his
reasoning faculties. He would not believe in the possibility of failure;
the mere hint of such a thing made his brain reel with rage. Every
circumstance pointing to it appeared incredible. The statement of
Hirsch, which was so absolutely fatal to his hopes, could by no means
be admitted. It is true, too, that Hirsch’s story had been told so
incoherently, with such excessive signs of distraction, that it really
looked improbable. It was extremely difficult, as the saying is, to make
head or tail of it. On the bridge of the steamer, directly after his
rescue, Sotillo and his officers, in their impatience and excitement,
would not give the wretched man time to collect such few wits as
remained to him. He ought to have been quieted, soothed, and reassured,
whereas he had been roughly handled, cuffed, shaken, and addressed in
menacing tones. His struggles, his wriggles, his attempts to get down on
his knees, followed by the most violent efforts to break away, as if he
meant incontinently to jump overboard, his shrieks and shrinkings and
cowering wild glances had filled them first with amazement, then with
a doubt of his genuineness, as men are wont to suspect the sincerity of
every great passion. His Spanish, too, became so mixed up with German
that the better half of his statements remained incomprehensible. He
tried to propitiate them by calling them hochwohlgeboren herren, which
in itself sounded suspicious. When admonished sternly not to trifle he
repeated his entreaties and protestations of loyalty and innocence again
in German, obstinately, because he was not aware in what language he was
speaking. His identity, of course, was perfectly known as an inhabitant
of Esmeralda, but this made the matter no clearer. As he kept on
forgetting Decoud’s name, mixing him up with several other people he had
seen in the Casa Gould, it looked as if they all had been in the lighter
together; and for a moment Sotillo thought that he had drowned every
prominent Ribierist of Sulaco. The improbability of such a thing threw
a doubt upon the whole statement. Hirsch was either mad or playing a
part--pretending fear and distraction on the spur of the moment to
cover the truth. Sotillo’s rapacity, excited to the highest pitch by the
prospect of an immense booty, could believe in nothing adverse. This Jew
might have been very much frightened by the accident, but he knew where
the silver was concealed, and had invented this story, with his Jewish
cunning, to put him entirely off the track as to what had been done.
Sotillo had taken up his quarters on the upper floor in a vast apartment
with heavy black beams. But there was no ceiling, and the eye lost
itself in the darkness under the high pitch of the roof. The thick
shutters stood open. On a long table could be seen a large inkstand,
some stumpy, inky quill pens, and two square wooden boxes, each holding
half a hundred-weight of sand. Sheets of grey coarse official paper
bestrewed the floor. It must have been a room occupied by some higher
official of the Customs, because a large leathern armchair stood behind
the table, with other high-backed chairs scattered about. A net hammock
was swung under one of the beams--for the official’s afternoon siesta,
no doubt. A couple of candles stuck into tall iron candlesticks gave a
dim reddish light. The colonel’s hat, sword, and revolver lay between
them, and a couple of his more trusty officers lounged gloomily against
the table. The colonel threw himself into the armchair, and a big negro
with a sergeant’s stripes on his ragged sleeve, kneeling down, pulled
off his boots. Sotillo’s ebony moustache contrasted violently with the
livid colouring of his cheeks. His eyes were sombre and as if sunk very
far into his head. He seemed exhausted by his perplexities, languid with
disappointment; but when the sentry on the landing thrust his head in to
announce the arrival of a prisoner, he revived at once.
“Let him be brought in,” he shouted, fiercely.
The door flew open, and Captain Mitchell, bareheaded, his waistcoat
open, the bow of his tie under his ear, was hustled into the room.
Sotillo recognized him at once. He could not have hoped for a more
precious capture; here was a man who could tell him, if he chose,
everything he wished to know--and directly the problem of how best to
make him talk to the point presented itself to his mind. The resentment
of a foreign nation had no terrors for Sotillo. The might of the whole
armed Europe would not have protected Captain Mitchell from insults and
ill-usage, so well as the quick reflection of Sotillo that this was an
Englishman who would most likely turn obstinate under bad treatment, and
become quite unmanageable. At all events, the colonel smoothed the scowl
on his brow.
“What! The excellent Senor Mitchell!” he cried, in affected dismay.
The pretended anger of his swift advance and of his shout, “Release
the caballero at once,” was so effective that the astounded soldiers
positively sprang away from their prisoner. Thus suddenly deprived
of forcible support, Captain Mitchell reeled as though about to fall.
Sotillo took him familiarly under the arm, led him to a chair, waved his
hand at the room. “Go out, all of you,” he commanded.
When they had been left alone he stood looking down, irresolute and
silent, watching till Captain Mitchell had recovered his power of
speech.
Here in his very grasp was one of the men concerned in the removal of
the silver. Sotillo’s temperament was of that sort that he experienced
an ardent desire to beat him; just as formerly when negotiating with
difficulty a loan from the cautious Anzani, his fingers always itched
to take the shopkeeper by the throat. As to Captain Mitchell, the
suddenness, unexpectedness, and general inconceivableness of this
experience had confused his thoughts. Moreover, he was physically out of
breath.
“I’ve been knocked down three times between this and the wharf,” he
gasped out at last. “Somebody shall be made to pay for this.” He had
certainly stumbled more than once, and had been dragged along for some
distance before he could regain his stride. With his recovered breath
his indignation seemed to madden him. He jumped up, crimson, all his
white hair bristling, his eyes glaring vengefully, and shook violently
the flaps of his ruined waistcoat before the disconcerted Sotillo.
“Look! Those uniformed thieves of yours downstairs have robbed me of my
watch.”
The old sailor’s aspect was very threatening. Sotillo saw himself cut
off from the table on which his sabre and revolver were lying.
“I demand restitution and apologies,” Mitchell thundered at him, quite
beside himself. “From you! Yes, from you!”
For the space of a second or so the colonel stood with a perfectly stony
expression of face; then, as Captain Mitchell flung out an arm towards
the table as if to snatch up the revolver, Sotillo, with a yell of
alarm, bounded to the door and was gone in a flash, slamming it after
him. Surprise calmed Captain Mitchell’s fury. Behind the closed door
Sotillo shouted on the landing, and there was a great tumult of feet on
the wooden staircase.
“Disarm him! Bind him!” the colonel could be heard vociferating.
Captain Mitchell had just the time to glance once at the windows, with
three perpendicular bars of iron each and some twenty feet from the
ground, as he well knew, before the door flew open and the rush upon him
took place. In an incredibly short time he found himself bound with
many turns of a hide rope to a high-backed chair, so that his head alone
remained free. Not till then did Sotillo, who had been leaning in the
doorway trembling visibly, venture again within. The soldiers, picking
up from the floor the rifles they had dropped to grapple with the
prisoner, filed out of the room. The officers remained leaning on their
swords and looking on.
“The watch! the watch!” raved the colonel, pacing to and fro like a
tiger in a cage. “Give me that man’s watch.”
It was true, that when searched for arms in the hall downstairs, before
being taken into Sotillo’s presence, Captain Mitchell had been relieved
of his watch and chain; but at the colonel’s clamour it was produced
quickly enough, a corporal bringing it up, carried carefully in the
palms of his joined hands. Sotillo snatched it, and pushed the clenched
fist from which it dangled close to Captain Mitchell’s face.
“Now then! You arrogant Englishman! You dare to call the soldiers of the
army thieves! Behold your watch.”
He flourished his fist as if aiming blows at the prisoner’s nose.
Captain Mitchell, helpless as a swathed infant, looked anxiously at
the sixty-guinea gold half-chronometer, presented to him years ago by
a Committee of Underwriters for saving a ship from total loss by fire.
Sotillo, too, seemed to perceive its valuable appearance. He became
silent suddenly, stepped aside to the table, and began a careful
examination in the light of the candles. He had never seen anything so
fine. His officers closed in and craned their necks behind his back.
He became so interested that for an instant he forgot his precious
prisoner. There is always something childish in the rapacity of the
passionate, clear-minded, Southern races, wanting in the misty idealism
of the Northerners, who at the smallest encouragement dream of nothing
less than the conquest of the earth. Sotillo was fond of jewels, gold
trinkets, of personal adornment. After a moment he turned about, and
with a commanding gesture made all his officers fall back. He laid down
the watch on the table, then, negligently, pushed his hat over it.
“Ha!” he began, going up very close to the chair. “You dare call my
valiant soldiers of the Esmeralda regiment, thieves. You dare! What
impudence! You foreigners come here to rob our country of its wealth.
You never have enough! Your audacity knows no bounds.”
He looked towards the officers, amongst whom there was an approving
murmur. The older major was moved to declare--
“Si, mi colonel. They are all traitors.”
“I shall say nothing,” continued Sotillo, fixing the motionless and
powerless Mitchell with an angry but uneasy stare. “I shall say nothing
of your treacherous attempt to get possession of my revolver to shoot me
while I was trying to treat you with consideration you did not deserve.
You have forfeited your life. Your only hope is in my clemency.”
He watched for the effect of his words, but there was no obvious sign of
fear on Captain Mitchell’s face. His white hair was full of dust,
which covered also the rest of his helpless person. As if he had heard
nothing, he twitched an eyebrow to get rid of a bit of straw which hung
amongst the hairs.
Sotillo advanced one leg and put his arms akimbo. “It is you, Mitchell,”
he said, emphatically, “who are the thief, not my soldiers!” He pointed
at his prisoner a forefinger with a long, almond-shaped nail. “Where
is the silver of the San Tome mine? I ask you, Mitchell, where is the
silver that was deposited in this Custom House? Answer me that! You
stole it. You were a party to stealing it. It was stolen from the
Government. Aha! you think I do not know what I say; but I am up to your
foreign tricks. It is gone, the silver! No? Gone in one of your lanchas,
you miserable man! How dared you?”
This time he produced his effect. “How on earth could Sotillo know
that?” thought Mitchell. His head, the only part of his body that could
move, betrayed his surprise by a sudden jerk.
“Ha! you tremble,” Sotillo shouted, suddenly. “It is a conspiracy. It is
a crime against the State. Did you not know that the silver belongs
to the Republic till the Government claims are satisfied? Where is it?
Where have you hidden it, you miserable thief?”
At this question Captain Mitchell’s sinking spirits revived. In whatever
incomprehensible manner Sotillo had already got his information about
the lighter, he had not captured it. That was clear. In his outraged
heart, Captain Mitchell had resolved that nothing would induce him to
say a word while he remained so disgracefully bound, but his desire to
help the escape of the silver made him depart from this resolution. His
wits were very much at work. He detected in Sotillo a certain air of
doubt, of irresolution.
“That man,” he said to himself, “is not certain of what he advances.”
For all his pomposity in social intercourse, Captain Mitchell could meet
the realities of life in a resolute and ready spirit. Now he had
got over the first shock of the abominable treatment he was cool and
collected enough. The immense contempt he felt for Sotillo steadied him,
and he said oracularly, “No doubt it is well concealed by this time.”
Sotillo, too, had time to cool down. “Muy bien, Mitchell,” he said in a
cold and threatening manner. “But can you produce the Government receipt
for the royalty and the Custom House permit of embarkation, hey? Can
you? No. Then the silver has been removed illegally, and the guilty
shall be made to suffer, unless it is produced within five days from
this.” He gave orders for the prisoner to be unbound and locked up in
one of the smaller rooms downstairs. He walked about the room, moody and
silent, till Captain Mitchell, with each of his arms held by a couple of
men, stood up, shook himself, and stamped his feet.
“How did you like to be tied up, Mitchell?” he asked, derisively.
“It is the most incredible, abominable use of power!” Captain Mitchell
declared in a loud voice. “And whatever your purpose, you shall gain
nothing from it, I can promise you.”
The tall colonel, livid, with his coal-black ringlets and moustache,
crouched, as it were, to look into the eyes of the short, thick-set,
red-faced prisoner with rumpled white hair.
“That we shall see. You shall know my power a little better when I tie
you up to a potalon outside in the sun for a whole day.” He drew himself
up haughtily, and made a sign for Captain Mitchell to be led away.
“What about my watch?” cried Captain Mitchell, hanging back from the
efforts of the men pulling him towards the door.
Sotillo turned to his officers. “No! But only listen to this picaro,
caballeros,” he pronounced with affected scorn, and was answered by a
chorus of derisive laughter. “He demands his watch!” . . . He ran up
again to Captain Mitchell, for the desire to relieve his feelings by
inflicting blows and pain upon this Englishman was very strong within
him. “Your watch! You are a prisoner in war time, Mitchell! In war time!
You have no rights and no property! Caramba! The very breath in your
body belongs to me. Remember that.”
“Bosh!” said Captain Mitchell, concealing a disagreeable impression.
Down below, in a great hall, with the earthen floor and with a tall
mound thrown up by white ants in a corner, the soldiers had kindled
a small fire with broken chairs and tables near the arched gateway,
through which the faint murmur of the harbour waters on the beach could
be heard. While Captain Mitchell was being led down the staircase, an
officer passed him, running up to report to Sotillo the capture of more
prisoners. A lot of smoke hung about in the vast gloomy place, the
fire crackled, and, as if through a haze, Captain Mitchell made out,
surrounded by short soldiers with fixed bayonets, the heads of three
tall prisoners--the doctor, the engineer-in-chief, and the white leonine
mane of old Viola, who stood half-turned away from the others with his
chin on his breast and his arms crossed. Mitchell’s astonishment knew no
bounds. He cried out; the other two exclaimed also. But he hurried on,
diagonally, across the big cavern-like hall. Lots of thoughts, surmises,
hints of caution, and so on, crowded his head to distraction.
“Is he actually keeping you?” shouted the chief engineer, whose single
eyeglass glittered in the firelight.
An officer from the top of the stairs was shouting urgently, “Bring them
all up--all three.”
In the clamour of voices and the rattle of arms, Captain Mitchell made
himself heard imperfectly: “By heavens! the fellow has stolen my watch.”
The engineer-in-chief on the staircase resisted the pressure long enough
to shout, “What? What did you say?”
“My chronometer!” Captain Mitchell yelled violently at the very moment
of being thrust head foremost through a small door into a sort of cell,
perfectly black, and so narrow that he fetched up against the opposite
wall. The door had been instantly slammed. He knew where they had put
him. This was the strong room of the Custom House, whence the silver
had been removed only a few hours earlier. It was almost as narrow as
a corridor, with a small square aperture, barred by a heavy grating, at
the distant end. Captain Mitchell staggered for a few steps, then sat
down on the earthen floor with his back to the wall. Nothing, not even
a gleam of light from anywhere, interfered with Captain Mitchell’s
meditation. He did some hard but not very extensive thinking. It was
not of a gloomy cast. The old sailor, with all his small weaknesses
and absurdities, was constitutionally incapable of entertaining for
any length of time a fear of his personal safety. It was not so much
firmness of soul as the lack of a certain kind of imagination--the kind
whose undue development caused intense suffering to Senor Hirsch; that
sort of imagination which adds the blind terror of bodily suffering and
of death, envisaged as an accident to the body alone, strictly--to all
the other apprehensions on which the sense of one’s existence is based.
Unfortunately, Captain Mitchell had not much penetration of any kind;
characteristic, illuminating trifles of expression, action, or movement,
escaped him completely. He was too pompously and innocently aware of
his own existence to observe that of others. For instance, he could
not believe that Sotillo had been really afraid of him, and this simply
because it would never have entered into his head to shoot any one
except in the most pressing case of self-defence. Anybody could see he
was not a murdering kind of man, he reflected quite gravely. Then
why this preposterous and insulting charge? he asked himself. But his
thoughts mainly clung around the astounding and unanswerable question:
How the devil the fellow got to know that the silver had gone off in the
lighter? It was obvious that he had not captured it. And, obviously, he
could not have captured it! In this last conclusion Captain Mitchell
was misled by the assumption drawn from his observation of the weather
during his long vigil on the wharf. He thought that there had been much
more wind than usual that night in the gulf; whereas, as a matter of
fact, the reverse was the case.
“How in the name of all that’s marvellous did that confounded fellow get
wind of the affair?” was the first question he asked directly after the
bang, clatter, and flash of the open door (which was closed again
almost before he could lift his dropped head) informed him that he had a
companion of captivity. Dr. Monygham’s voice stopped muttering curses in
English and Spanish.
“Is that you, Mitchell?” he made answer, surlily. “I struck my forehead
against this confounded wall with enough force to fell an ox. Where are
you?”
Captain Mitchell, accustomed to the darkness, could make out the doctor
stretching out his hands blindly.
“I am sitting here on the floor. Don’t fall over my legs,” Captain
Mitchell’s voice announced with great dignity of tone. The doctor,
entreated not to walk about in the dark, sank down to the ground, too.
The two prisoners of Sotillo, with their heads nearly touching, began to
exchange confidences.
“Yes,” the doctor related in a low tone to Captain Mitchell’s vehement
curiosity, “we have been nabbed in old Viola’s place. It seems that one
of their pickets, commanded by an officer, pushed as far as the town
gate. They had orders not to enter, but to bring along every soul they
could find on the plain. We had been talking in there with the door
open, and no doubt they saw the glimmer of our light. They must have
been making their approaches for some time. The engineer laid himself
on a bench in a recess by the fire-place, and I went upstairs to have a
look. I hadn’t heard any sound from there for a long time. Old Viola,
as soon as he saw me come up, lifted his arm for silence. I stole in
on tiptoe. By Jove, his wife was lying down and had gone to sleep. The
woman had actually dropped off to sleep! ‘Senor Doctor,’ Viola whispers
to me, ‘it looks as if her oppression was going to get better.’ ‘Yes,’
I said, very much surprised; ‘your wife is a wonderful woman, Giorgio.’
Just then a shot was fired in the kitchen, which made us jump and cower
as if at a thunder-clap. It seems that the party of soldiers had stolen
quite close up, and one of them had crept up to the door. He looked in,
thought there was no one there, and, holding his rifle ready, entered
quietly. The chief told me that he had just closed his eyes for a
moment. When he opened them, he saw the man already in the middle of
the room peering into the dark corners. The chief was so startled that,
without thinking, he made one leap from the recess right out in front
of the fireplace. The soldier, no less startled, up with his rifle
and pulls the trigger, deafening and singeing the engineer, but in his
flurry missing him completely. But, look what happens! At the noise of
the report the sleeping woman sat up, as if moved by a spring, with a
shriek, ‘The children, Gian’ Battista! Save the children!’ I have it in
my ears now. It was the truest cry of distress I ever heard. I stood as
if paralyzed, but the old husband ran across to the bedside, stretching
out his hands. She clung to them! I could see her eyes go glazed; the
old fellow lowered her down on the pillows and then looked round at me.
She was dead! All this took less than five minutes, and then I ran down
to see what was the matter. It was no use thinking of any resistance.
Nothing we two could say availed with the officer, so I volunteered to
go up with a couple of soldiers and fetch down old Viola. He was sitting
at the foot of the bed, looking at his wife’s face, and did not seem to
hear what I said; but after I had pulled the sheet over her head, he got
up and followed us downstairs quietly, in a sort of thoughtful way.
They marched us off along the road, leaving the door open and the candle
burning. The chief engineer strode on without a word, but I looked back
once or twice at the feeble gleam. After we had gone some considerable
distance, the Garibaldino, who was walking by my side, suddenly said, ‘I
have buried many men on battlefields on this continent. The priests talk
of consecrated ground! Bah! All the earth made by God is holy; but
the sea, which knows nothing of kings and priests and tyrants, is
the holiest of all. Doctor! I should like to bury her in the sea. No
mummeries, candles, incense, no holy water mumbled over by priests. The
spirit of liberty is upon the waters.’ . . . Amazing old man. He was
saying all this in an undertone as if talking to himself.”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Captain Mitchell, impatiently. “Poor old chap!
But have you any idea how that ruffian Sotillo obtained his information?
He did not get hold of any of our Cargadores who helped with the truck,
did he? But no, it is impossible! These were picked men we’ve had in
our boats for these five years, and I paid them myself specially for the
job, with instructions to keep out of the way for twenty-four hours at
least. I saw them with my own eyes march on with the Italians to the
railway yards. The chief promised to give them rations as long as they
wanted to remain there.”
“Well,” said the doctor, slowly, “I can tell you that you may
say good-bye for ever to your best lighter, and to the Capataz of
Cargadores.”
At this, Captain Mitchell scrambled up to his feet in the excess of
his excitement. The doctor, without giving him time to exclaim, stated
briefly the part played by Hirsch during the night.
Captain Mitchell was overcome. “Drowned!” he muttered, in a bewildered
and appalled whisper. “Drowned!” Afterwards he kept still, apparently
listening, but too absorbed in the news of the catastrophe to follow the
doctor’s narrative with attention.
The doctor had taken up an attitude of perfect ignorance, till at last
Sotillo was induced to have Hirsch brought in to repeat the whole story,
which was got out of him again with the greatest difficulty, because
every moment he would break out into lamentations. At last, Hirsch
was led away, looking more dead than alive, and shut up in one of the
upstairs rooms to be close at hand. Then the doctor, keeping up his
character of a man not admitted to the inner councils of the San Tome
Administration, remarked that the story sounded incredible. Of course,
he said, he couldn’t tell what had been the action of the Europeans, as
he had been exclusively occupied with his own work in looking after the
wounded, and also in attending Don Jose Avellanos. He had succeeded in
assuming so well a tone of impartial indifference, that Sotillo seemed
to be completely deceived. Till then a show of regular inquiry had
been kept up; one of the officers sitting at the table wrote down the
questions and the answers, the others, lounging about the room, listened
attentively, puffing at their long cigars and keeping their eyes on the
doctor. But at that point Sotillo ordered everybody out.