“All right,” Hi said, with the words sticking in his throat. He did not

know what he was to do; there was nothing that he could do. He felt

suddenly that there was nothing for it but to plunge into the forest,

cost what it might. “I’ll never get out of it,” he thought. “But

anything to get away from this fellow.”

The building faced him, running north and south across the clearing.

They were standing close together nearly opposite the central point.

“Well, have you looked enough?” the man asked. “You’ll have plenty of

chance to look at it in the next ten days or so.”

“I’d like to go along the side of it once,” Hi said. “I’d like to pace

it.”

“Pace away,” the man said. “It’s 120 yards, but you’ll want to know for

yourself, I suppose.”

“Have you measured it, then?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’d like just to pace it and see it close to.”

He turned south from the man along the line of gods to the end of the

temple, which had not been cleared of creepers; the forest came to it

and cloaked it there. He turned here to look along the line of the

building. What struck him most was its silence, its blood-red colour

where the facings had fallen, and the fact that every inch of it bore

life of some sort. The man was watching him and playing with his rifle;

he was sitting on the stone trough which contained the tools, much as a

cat, having a mouse in a shelterless space, will drop him, withdraw a

few paces, look at the sky and lick her fur. Hi pretended to examine the

carving: he felt that the man must know what was passing in his mind. “I

must start pacing,” he thought.

He lifted his eyes towards the other end of the building. Dudley Wigmore

was standing there, facing him, with his right hand upon the building,

and with his left beckoning to him to come. It was very strange: he was

there and yet he was not there: he certainly saw him: then lost him:

then knew that someone sad was there who wanted him to go there. “Right,

I’ll go,” he thought; so he set out, pacing and counting.

When he came to the central door, abreast of the man, he was hailed.

“You needn’t go any further, chum. The other half is exactly the same,

another sixty yards.”

“I’m going to the end,” Hi said. “I believe your figures are wrong. I

believe you’re four yards out.”

“A pace won’t beat a yard-measure, chum.”

“I’ll talk in a minute,” Hi answered, still counting. “Just a minute, if

you don’t mind: I don’t want to lose count.”

He went on counting mechanically, thinking of a strangely different mark

of a vanished race not far from his home in Berkshire. Someone had told

him long before that that monument was 375 feet long. He counted his

pacing of this temple wondering if it would not prove to be the same,

and if it were the same why it should be. All the time he was terrified,

lest he should be shot in the back: the sweat was dripping from him.

Hope kept surging up in him that he might escape: despair kept urging

him to fling himself at the man’s feet and squeal for mercy. All sorts

of thoughts, of home and Carlotta and the things he wanted to do, seemed

to be protecting him. His life was from second to second; “eighty-one,”

he was alive, “eighty-two,” no bullet, “eighty-three,” not dead yet.

Dudley Wigmore was there: he could see his expression; very sad, yet

hopeful. Dudley Wigmore was not there; the end of the temple was there,

in a great corner-god, helmeted in the snake and eagle, whose mouth

crunched the leg of a man. By this time he was up to the hundred.

Suddenly Dudley Wigmore was there again, showing him the forest beyond

the end of the temple: the ground was sloping down there in a cover of

greyish thorn and greenish scrub, topped by what looked like ilex. He

went on pacing, repeating his count aloud: “a hundred and ten; a hundred

and fifteen.”

“Hey, chum,” the man called. “Hold on a minute. Wait for me a moment.”

Possibly he began to suspect suddenly: at any rate, he snapped-to the

breech of his rifle, rose, and began to walk steadily towards Hi.

“I’m just finishing,” Hi called. “I’m sure it must be more than you make

it. I make it 127 paces.” He turned to see where the man was, measured

his distance as about fifty yards, and then quietly, as though exploring

some ruin at home, turned the corner of the building.

The instant that he was out of sight, he darted across the end of the

temple into cover: he forced his way through the scrub, ducked well down

into it so as to be hidden, and ran downhill as he had never run. He had

gone perhaps seventy yards, head down and arms across eyes against the

thorns, when something hard took him across the leg, just below the

knee, so that he fell headlong violently into a thicket. It was a severe

fall, which knocked all the breath out of him. He came to himself with a

pain in his leg. “I’ve been shot,” he thought, “shot and hit in the

leg.”

Up above him on the plateau of the temple, he heard Letcombe-Bassett

call: “Chum. Heya, chum. Are you there, chum?” He heard him probe at

some of the near-by cover, seemingly with the barrel of his rifle. “I’ve

not been shot,” Hi thought, “I fell over a snag.” He dared not stir a

muscle, he hardly dared to breathe: Letcombe-Bassett seemed so near,

almost looking down upon him.

“Sing out, chum,” Letcombe-Bassett called. “Where have you got to?

Answer.” He listened for an answer, and, having none, muttered a curse.

“You needn’t pretend that you can’t hear me,” he called again. “You’re

within a few yards: so answer: don’t play the giddy goat.”

Hi’s heart was thumping in his throat, yet he smiled at this order, it

was so like the call of a cross seeker, in hide and seek, in the shrubs

at Tencombe, bidding the hiders to call “Cuckoo again.”

“Now cheese it, chum: come off with this kidding: where are you? Cut

this right out.”

There was a pause after this, while Letcombe-Bassett listened, not so

much for an answer, as for some sound, which would show him where Hi

was. Hi kept still as a stone, which was not easy, for he had fallen

into an uneasy posture, in a thicket which was the breeding or roosting

place of minute scarlet midges. These things surveyed him for a few

seconds, then, having decided that he would be good to eat, they settled

upon him. There were perhaps fifty of them, each with the theory that

the nearer the bone the sweeter the meat. Their bite was by far sharper

than the bite of the spotted-winged marsh-midge at home. But far worse

than the bite was the pertinacity with which they thrust down his neck,

into his ears, up his nostrils, or down to the roots of his hair, before

they bit. Hi longed to beat them from him and scratch as he had never

scratched. Letcombe-Bassett listened, making no sound.

“Chuck it, chum,” he called at last. “I know you’re there. You won’t kid

this nigger: I’m not that sort. You’d better come out. If I come in to

fetch you, you’ll sing a different song, my lad.”

Seeing that threats had as little effect as persuasion, he tried again,

with an appeal to reason. “Look here, kid,” he said, “I’m only speaking

for your own good. You’ll never find your way out of this. You’ll get

bushed to a dead cert, just as you were before. And if you get bushed in

this part, God help you. There’ll be no kind white man to give you chow;

don’t think it. If a snake doesn’t do you, a tiger will. Or if a woods

Indian finds you, he’ll eat you: to say nothing of the fever. Come on

out of it, like a sensible kid and turn-to at the temple. . . .

“If you think I’m not offering you enough, you’ve only to say the word.

I’ll go you an honest half, share and share alike, in all we find: I

can’t say squarer. I wouldn’t do it for many people; but I like you,

because you’ve got guts, and so I tell you straight.”

“That’s why Doll Tearsheet loved Falstaff,” Hi thought, not stirring.

“An odd taste, but love is blind. What will be his next move?”

Letcombe-Bassett paused to consider and to listen.

“All right, chum,” he called at last. “I’ll remember this. You needn’t

pretend to me that you’ve got clear away. I’m not so easily fooled as

you may think. You’re within earshot and very well within range; kindly

remember that. Are you going to come along and bear a hand?” He waited

for ten seconds for an answer, then said,

“I’ll give you while I count seven: if you don’t come before then, I’ll

come in and fetch you. I know where you are. As a matter of fact I can

see you from here.” This was thrilling hearing, though Hi believed (and

earnestly hoped) that it was not true. The man gave it a few seconds to

work upon his victim’s mind; then he began to count.

“Very well, then: while I count seven. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

This is your last chance, I warn you straight. Are you coming? Very

well, then. . . . Seven. I think I may promise you that you’ll regret

this, my young friend. You’re within easy shot-gun range, and I’ll walk

you up like I’d walk up partridges. I gave you a square deal, but you

asked for trouble. Don’t blame me, if you get it.”

At that instant, from somewhere in the forest, perhaps thirty yards from

where Hi had entered it, a piece of a dead bough fell to the ground,

with a noise which to Hi was exactly that of one slipping on wet earth

and recovering. To Letcombe-Bassett it gave a much-desired clue.

“Right,” he called. “Thank you for telling me where you are; now we’ll

see. My Indians say you stink. You’ll stink worse before I’ve done with

you, my young whelp.”

At this he burst into cover in the direction of the fallen bough; but as

the jungle happened to be thick there, he gave it up, went back into the

open, cast about for Hi’s marks, and re-entered at the very place where

Hi had entered. When once within the scrub, he seemed to neglect tracks

and again tried to force a passage to where the bough had fallen. He

beat the cover as he went. It was all dry, feathery, fronded cover,

sweetly smelling when crushed, but abounding in scarlet midges. Hi heard

him slap at his cheeks and curse: he himself felt that he was being

eaten alive, yet he could not stir.

“All right,” the man called. “Don’t think I’ve done with you. You’ve not

done me yet. Since I know you’re not over here, I know you must be over

there; and when I get you, you’ll get the kibosh put on all this

poppycock; you wait.”

The man cast back along the fringe of the cover, beating it, as far as

Hi could judge, with care. The wood there was all sage-green sari-sari

plants, easy to thrust through but confusing to see in, as the fern-like

shoots grew thick to the ground. When he had made a cast of about sixty

yards, he turned, to make a cast back, a little further into the wood.

Hi heard him come nearer.

“The brute,” Hi thought, “he knows something about hunting; he’ll cast

to and fro like a shuttle till he lands right on to me. My only chance

will be to trip him and try to bag his gun.”

The man came slowly back, searching: Hi heard him kick at the

undergrowth, shake aside boughs, slap at the midges, and whistle between

his teeth. Sometimes he sang, in a voice no bigger than a hum, the first

line of a song:

“There were three flies; three merry, merry flies.”

He would stop here, as though he knew no more of the words, hum through

the tune, or whistle it, in a groom’s whistle, between his teeth, and

then sing the refrain: “Whack fol lol tiddly ido.” All the time, he was

drawing nearer, beating the cover; presently he was at the end of his

beat, and turning to beat back a little further into the forest. “I’m

sixty or seventy yards into the forest from the clearing,” Hi reckoned.

“He has gone roughly through half of that. Now he’s getting really near,

and this time he may see me.”

The man seemed to think that he was drawing near to the quarry. “Do you

hear?” he called, “you’re not dealing with anybody; you’re dealing with

me. I don’t give up when I begin a thing: I do it. This cast or the next

you’ll be sorry, my little sucking swine.” He came back, upon his new

line, beating as before, and muttering to himself: “Oh, not in there?

No, but not far off and not much longer. Damn these flies. If I’d a dog

I’d damn soon flush this puppy. Come on out of it, you young swine. My

good golly, I’ll take your pelt off in return for all these midges: so

much I’ll promise you.”

He came slowly along, drawing nearer to Hi. He seemed to take hours over

each few yards of ground. Hi understood now how it comes to pass that

hunted men, with prices on their heads, will sometimes give themselves

up. He had not come to that point yet, but it was no longer out of his

thought. The man came near to Hi, passed him, still muttering, beating

and singing, and so slowly went to the end of his beat.

“Now for it,” Hi thought. With the utmost care he moved his hand, so as

to smear it, for one delicious instant, over his face: it was the only

relief possible: the next instant, he heard the man turn and come

swiftly straight towards him. Could he have heard or seen him moving?

“That’s where you are, is it, my cock,” the man called. “Right you are.”

Hi was tempted to leap and run for it. The words went through him like

shots; but he gripped himself, and said, “No, this man deals in bluff;

he’s bluffing now to make me stir.” He lay still, while the man came

straight towards him. There was no song of the flies now, he was walking

with some fixed intention as though to a mark. He stopped at about nine

yards from where Hi lay. Hi could see both his leggings and boots.

“Now then,” the man said. “Now then, my sucking dove; you’re somewhere

just about here. I know you must be. I’m quite content to stay here all

day, waiting till you squeal. I’ve done as much for a rabbit I’d got no

quarrel against. I’d do more for you, let me tell you. You won’t tire

me, when I’m fixed on a thing. Are you going to surrender and ask my

pardon? Well, if you won’t answer, you’re wise; for you’re going to get

a bullet in your guts before you’re much older: you can save your breath

to squeal with.”

He came two paces nearer through the scrub. Hi could see the fronds of

the talpas moving above him as he forced his way through. Just beyond

the talpas was a space of earth littered with yellow fungus. “When the

beast comes on to that,” Hi thought, “he’ll be bound to see me; he must

see me.”

The man wrestled through the talpas on to the bare space and kicked the

fungus aside. “Yellow stink-horn,” he said. He was within six feet of

Hi; he had only to stoop to see him.

Then at that instant, with a sudden startling leap, somewhere to the

right of the man and behind Hi, something big arose in the cover and ran

for it. The man was prepared for a jump of the sort: he leaped to one

side with a cry: “Ah, there you go. So you think you’ll try that.” Hi

saw him clearly for an instant, standing tense, trying to see the

leaping thing, whatever it was. Then, as he could not see, he leaped

into the covert after it, shouting, “Stop, or I’ll plug you.” Two yards

further on, he may have had a glimpse of a quarry, for he fired, jerked

out the shell, snapped in a second shell and fired again, quicker than

Hi had thought possible. Hi heard him mutter: “Got him. That touched him

where he lived; but I’ve got to get to him, to make sure.”

The man stood for an instant, trying to see. “He’s down,” he muttered.

“Or is he down?” The noise still came to them of something moving:

perhaps after all he hadn’t got him. Hi heard him jerk out the shell and

snap in another. “Well, I’ll soon make sure,” he muttered. “It wasn’t a

bad shot for nine-tenths guess-work, if I did get him. I’d have given

something to have seen him cop the spike. These stinking kids think

themselves someone at school: then they come here as though the earth

belonged to them: they have to learn what they amount to.”

He moved away into the wood. Hi heard him there beating shrubs at about

a hundred yards from him. At that distance he was not likely to hear

small movements in the bush; Hi was able to change his position to a

thicker patch of scrub and to deal with the midges. After an hour of

searching, Letcombe-Bassett became silent. “He’s resting,” Hi thought,

“or waiting for some sign. He thinks that if I’m alive I shall think

that he is gone and get up to go; while, if I am dead, the carrion-birds

or those beastly ‘betes-puants’ will show where I am.”

Letcombe-Bassett was in fact waiting for just those reasons. He had

nothing better to do: he enjoyed snap-shooting and would gladly wait all

day for a shot: he had besides found cause to believe that Hi had not

budged. Presently, he came nearer to Hi and called, “All right, son, my

Indios will be here at twelve with chow. We’ll see how you feel with

some Indio trackers after you.” This was the last threat for the time:

after this he came slowly up the hill, kicking or beating at some

patches, though not searching them as on his way down. He passed within

fifteen yards of Hi, somewhere out of sight in the talpas and sari-sari.

In a few minutes, Hi heard him burst through a patch of crackle into the

clearing.

“He’s going to wait for the Indian trackers,” Hi thought. “Or is that

just a ruse of his? I wonder how long it is to twelve.”

XVII

He reckoned that he had breakfasted before seven, and had been at the

ruin before nine: perhaps it was eleven now. Almost at once, he heard

the chant of Indians and the drone of a pipe coming towards the

clearing. “My luck is out again,” he thought. “Here are the Indians:

this is where I shall stop, then.” He heard Letcombe-Bassett hail the

Indians: he was still close to, at the edge of the clearing. Hi could

hear the goobies clatter as the men trotted across to him. He heard the

man address them, explaining what he wished them to do; and the grunting

of the Indians as they understood and assented.

He was tempted to rise and run; but the memory of the swiftness of the

man’s shooting held him back. “He would have half a dozen shots in the

first half minute,” he thought, “and then the Indians would run me down.

I’ve no chance that way; but this way I may get one bang at an Indian,

if not at him.” He squirmed down into his patch, while the man led the

Indians to the spot where he had entered cover some hours before.

“Leu-in, hounds, eleu, ed-hoick,” the man called. The Indians came into

cover, just like hounds, and began to cast, with little cries and

ejaculations, like the whimper of hounds, feathering yet not quite

owning to it. “Ed-hoick,” the man called. “Yooi, pash him up. Hoik to

Chaunter: hoik. Hoik to Dowsabel. Yooi, yooi, yooi; fetch him out.”

“We all know you’ve been terrier-boy to the North Surrey,” Hi thought

with bitterness. “You need not advertise the fact.”

The hounds came eastwards in a very wide cast. “It’s a drive,” Hi

thought. “They’re going to make a semi-circle, and drive me up to the

gun. He’s going to stay in the clearing, to pot me when I break.”

He had not time to consider the matter, for the Indians were moving

swiftly to him, some above him, some below, and one straight for him.

They were on the work they did best in the world. They were doing it

with enjoyment, with little quick cries, one to another. “No power on

earth can stop that Indian from seeing me,” Hi thought. “He’s coming

straight for me.” In an instant the Indian had thrust aside the scrub,

so that Hi saw him plainly. He was a short, squat, plump young Indian

brave, in a cotton shirt; he had long black hair sleeked down with fat;

he had a gold half-moon in his nose; he carried a spear, and bore a

blow-pipe on his back. Their eyes met. Hi had never seen him before,

that he could remember. He was a broad-faced, high-cheek-boned man, with

hardly any nose, like most of the tribe. He looked at Hi and Hi at him

for one marvellous second, in which they understood each other. So will

a man and dog meet, understand and pass on, with no word said, yet the

dog wagging his tail. The Indian smiled and passed on, and Hi knew that

it was all right.

The little quick cries became a little louder, that was all, some sort

of a message passed down the line, to let the Indians know.

Presently the Indians moved up into the clearing to report that the

white man had escaped.

Their going was like the lifting of the cloud at the passing of the

line-squall. Hi knew that there had been an overwhelming change in his

fortunes, brought about by no merit of his own, but by something

fortunate that happened. He had been upon the rack for hours: now he was

suddenly free. He cleared his face and hands of midges, though their

bites no longer seemed to matter. He rolled over, with a sigh of delight

at being alive, and fell asleep.

Sometimes in childhood he had dreamed a recurring dream, of a most

beautiful grave spirit of a woman, whom he knew as his “Elder Sister

Ruth.” In his dreams, this spirit sometimes came to his bed, looked at

him with eyes so beautiful that it was hard not to wake, and then,

sometimes, some blessed times, took him by the hand and led him into the

air, through the window and away, over the tree-tops, to strange lands,

or to the stars. Even if such dreams were broken they were a joy to him:

when they were not broken he thought of them for days.

He had not dreamed of Ruth for years; indeed, he had seldom thought of

her since his going to his prep. school; but now he dreamed of her: she

was there, that heavenly spirit, calling him “Christopher,” her name for

him, just as she had called him, for the first time, in that

night-nursery at Tencombe, in the nook where his cot was, when he had

wakened (as he thought) to see her beside him, lit by the flicker from

the fire. It was such joy to see her there, after those days of

friendlessness, that the tears streamed down his face. He knew that it

had been hard for her to come to him, and that it was hard for her to

speak; yet what use were words, she understood.

For a moment he lay still in his happiness; then, thinking that he had

not seen her for years, he gazed at her, and found that she had not

changed; but that he could see more in her face than in the past. She

had a calmness and wisdom of beauty that was not subject to change: all

peace, courage, goodness and happiness were in her face, and a hope so

bright that no danger made a drawback.

All this was joy to him for a moment, until, in his dream, the thought

came to him that she only appeared to him in dream; that this was a

dream, and that it would fade. She smiled at his thought. “No, it is not

a dream,” she said, “look about you.”

Marvelling, he sat up and put out his hand upon the soft grey-green

frondage of the sari-sari. That dry, feathery touch was real: that smell

of mint and turpentine from the crushed fronds was real. The red-hearts

in the glow of the sun were real; so were those little green wrynecks

questing their bark for food. On the ground was the broken yellow

fungus, and beyond it lay the two brass rifle-shells, with ants

examining them. A little gust of wind came down the forest, the

sari-sari bowed to it and glistened and dappled, like the grass under

the wind on Blowbury. A buck of the forest, delicate and proud,

appeared, wide-eyed as a hare, noble as a Persian prince; he scraped

with his forefoot and tossed his head in challenge.

“You see, it is real,” Ruth said. “Shall we go on, then? We will set out

together: it is not far.”

“O God, Ruth,” he said, “I’ve wanted you. I’ve wanted you.”

She knew that, without his telling: she helped him to his feet. The

light became more glorious than he had ever known it: all the leaves

upon the trees seemed to be edged with fire. The light upon Ruth’s face

came from the beauty of her spirit: he knew that. This other beauty was

a part of the happiness which she brought.

Instantly they set out through the forest side by side, so easily that

they seemed to be moving upon the wind: the boughs gave way before them:

they passed the hawk in her ravine and the wild-cat in his range: the

deer gazed at them, but were not startled. In a glade of grass where a

brook ran Ruth stopped him, because, in the brook, was a nest full of

the eggs of a waterfowl, and in the grass were little blue mitai

berries, known as the berries of our Lady from being ripe near Lady Day:

of these he ate and took store.

After this they came to a jut of earth on which a dead tree stood with

its roots exposed. Many mice in their holes here watched him with little

bright eyes. At the foot of the jut was a shrub with hard, thick,

dark-green leaves, and a rough bark, seamed with fibres like veins, as

fragrant as incense from creamy gum.

“Put this cream upon your face and hands,” Ruth said, “then you will not

feel the bites of the insects.”

He smeared himself as he was bidden and instantly the burning in his

skin was soothed. He saw Ruth gravely considering him with eyes so

beautiful that he felt that he could not bear their gaze.

“Will you be always with me?” he asked.

“Always.”

“Oh,” he said, “if you would help me to save Carlotta, who is in danger

and trusting to me.”

“She is in no danger,” Ruth said, “but the trumpets are calling.”

As in a dream, the words “the trumpets are calling” seemed fraught with

meanings from beyond the world. He gazed at Ruth, as though by gazing he

would come to a knowledge of the truth. He saw, as it were darkly, a

confusion of men doing terrible things to each other while the

trumpeters blew. Then all this cleared away, he beheld nothing but

Carlotta in white, looking upward, with a look of happiness such as he

had never seen, save on Ruth’s face. Behind her, he saw the pinnacles of

a church, glittering, as he thought, from the light catching the

crockets, until he saw that the glittering was from winged spirits

exulting in such beauty.

“It is not as man thinks,” Ruth says, “but as God wills.”

He felt the scene merge again into a dimness, so that he could not see,

only feel, that he was moving away again, with Ruth near him, over

country which would have been difficult but for her presence. She led

him through thorns, which he never felt and through waters where she

bare him up. Once, after the endless way, he would have sunk, had she

not sung to him, as once before at Tencombe, a song so beautiful that it

was as though the world were singing. What happened to him in these

hours he never knew, save that he was miraculously helped: in a sense,

those hours were as though they had not been: in another sense, they

were among the intensest hours of his life.

It was after three o’clock in the next afternoon when he came out of the

wood into the plain of San Jacinto. The forest ceased, the light became

stronger suddenly: then, instead of the waving gloom stabbed with glare,

he saw the plain, going on into the north in rolls of freedom: he saw

the homes of men and heard the lowing of cattle.

Soon he came to a road running east and west; he turned to the east

along it, till, at a wayside cross, he sat down, wondering whether he

could go any further: the world seemed to be swaying beneath him and in

front of him.

Half an hour later, a horseman hove in sight, closely followed by a

three-horsed brake full of men and women, who were singing to a

mandoline and a reed-pipe, under an awning of green and white stuff. The

rider saluted Hi as he passed, then, being struck by his appearance,

which was that of a corpse and a scarecrow combined, pulled up and

caused the brake to halt. Some of the men dismounted and asked Hi, in

Spanish, what was the matter. A plump and pale young woman, with eyes

like big black plums, came down to look at him. Hi heard them decide

that he was English and a caballero; but, then came a discussion of the

question: how had a caballero gotten into this pickle?

“Where you been?” the girl asked, in English. “In the forest?”

“Yes.”

“Lost?”

“Yes.”

“Ay de mi. For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dios mio. He had been lost in the forest. Regard the mud: see also the

thorn-marks and the bitings of bichos.”

“Always some are lost in the forest: they go blind, then they go mad.

They will drink fire, thinking it water.”

“Remember that man of Matoche: he who had nothing but a book.”

“Also that other: the Americano: for whom some Americana must still

mourn. He had her locket, the poor man.”

“And this is but a boy and a caballero.”

“Yes, and very gentle,” the girl said. “His manners are so modest.”

She turned to Hi, and spoke again in English. “You go San Marco?” she

asked. “We take you to San Marco?”

“Is that near Anselmo?”

“Near where?”

“Anselmo.”

This the girl did not know: she repeated it among her friends, who all

seemed puzzled. Then one man said:

“Anselmo?”

“Si,” Hi repeated. “Anselmo.”

“Si,” the man said, with a swift jabber of assent and explanation to the

company. “Anselmo.” He seemed to add that it could be reached through

San Marco.

“Yes,” the girl called, “you get Anselmo there.”

“I’m not very tidy for riding with you,” Hi said, shewing the wreck of

his clothes, torn in forty places and mired to the throat.

“That doesn’t matter,” the girl said. “Can you climb up?”

He could not climb up; he found that he could hardly stand. The girl and

one of the men helped to steady him on his feet; then the men in the

brake got hold of him and heaved him in, with cries of:

“Welcome the stranger.”

“Since thou mayst be Jesus, welcome: yet if thou beest not, welcome.”

The girl, who had spoken English, made room for him beside her, and as

the brake drove on, she put her arm round him and called him, “My dear.”

She had been drinking a little, but she was a very good young woman.

“I talk English, my dear; I love the English: some of them, what? We had

two English in our house. Mr. and Mrs. Watson; do you know them? To-day,

we been to a wedding.”

Here one of the musicians handed her a wicker-covered blue glass

liqueur-bottle with a tin measure which could be screwed over the

stopper.

“Isn’t Paco dreadful?” she said. “First we had wine: then we had brandy:

now he’s going to give us all the Milk of Venus. We shall all be drunk,

Paco.”

“No, no, not for you,” Paco said. “But for the Englishman.” They gave Hi

a swig of the Milk of Venus, which revived him wonderfully: then they

took swigs of it themselves till it was all gone: then they threw the

bottle at Uncle Philip (as they called the rider), hit his horse on the

crupper and made him buck. The plump young woman was very kind; she put

her arm a good deal more tightly round Hi and said that she did love

stars.

“You know, stars in the evening: they’re so like angels.”

Hi said that she was like an angel.

“A bit fallen angel; I don’t think: what?” she said.

A man with a mahogany-coloured face, “rather like a frog,” Hi thought,

since his eyes turned up and his face was all going to throat, began to

sing a doleful ballad, with a chorus in which all joined. As all felt

better after this, one of the other men sang a song which went with

great spirit, though it made the ladies blush. As he was pleased with

its reception, he sang all the blushing parts of it a second time. Then

the frog man produced a bag from under the seat: it contained three

small bottles with brightly coloured labels showing ladies of a free

disposition. The labels were printed with the words: “Smiles of the

Muses.” There was much applause in the brake when they appeared.

“Ha. Smiles of the Muses. Three bottles.”

“Ha, the good Hernando, who knows what is good.”

“Always the good Smiles of the Muses, to drive away care and settle what

went before.”

The brake pulled up by the wayside, so that no Smile might be spilled.

The good Hernando dispensed something like a quarter of a bottle to each

of the company. It was a syrup or cordial, about as thick as olive oil.

It smelt, when opened, of all the flowers of heaven. At a first taste it

reminded one of strawberries and of honey: then it warmed the throat:

then, as it trickled along, it made a feeling glow all the way down.

When the brake drove on again, the mandoline struck up a Smile of the

Muse: the reed-pipe piped to it and the company sang. The song had not

much body to it, being indeed a catch about the eyes of a lady being as

lovely as stars. It went on, during some miles of the way, till in the

dusk of the evening the brake halted in San Marco, which was a town of

six farms and a chapel.

Here, as weary as Hi was, he noticed that something had happened:

someone had come in with news which brought all the town out of doors.

When the news reached the wedding party, it changed their tone. The

younger men hurried off to the group about the messenger, who stood on

the chapel steps answering questions. The frog-faced man, the good

Hernando, helped Hi down from the brake. Uncle Philip and the girl urged

him to enter a lime-washed farm-house, with a smell of wine-press about

it near which the brake had stopped. Hi was so dizzy with fatigue that

he hardly knew what he was doing, yet he shrank from bringing his filthy

state into a clean home.

“You come to the harness-room,” Uncle Philip said, through the girl,

“for a bath, and to get out the thorns and jiggers.”

They brought him a half-cask and hot water: after his bathe they gave

him a clean cotton sleeping suit and a bed with Christian sheets. They

brought broth to him, when he was in bed, but he was asleep before it

came: he slept for fifteen hours.

In the afternoon of the next day, when he woke, he found his clothes

washed and mended. Uncle Philip and the girl brought him a coat, a

sombrero and a pair of new shoes, which they pressed him to accept with

a grace and sweetness of welcome which moved him almost to tears.

“Guests come from God,” they said.

“Hosts, too,” he thought.

“If I ever can,” he said, “I will bring these things back: be sure. I

can never, never thank you enough.”

When he had dressed, he came to the girl.

“What has happened?” he asked. “I’ve been lost for a week. What has

happened in the country?”

“There is war,” she said.

“In Santa Barbara city?”

“We do not hear of the city, save once in the week, when the ore-train

returns with the empty trucks. No; but one from the west came here

yesterday to call us to war. There are thousands, he said, marching to

Santa Barbara.”

“What for?”

“For our religion, so he said.”

“Is that Don Manuel?” Hi asked. “Is it Don Manuel’s army that is

marching?”

“I do not know. It will be some army.”

“Where it is?” Hi asked. “Do you happen to know where it is?”

“It was near here, within a short ride, yesterday,” she said, “going to

Anselmo, the place you asked about.”

“That is it,” he said. “If the army comes from the west and is marching

east it must be Don Manuel’s army, going to save Carlotta. Is it a White

army?”

“Yes.”

“Thank heaven,” he said, “Ezekiel Rust got through. You do not know, do

you, whether the Reds have harmed one Señorita de Leyva?”

“No.”

“I suppose all the people here have gone to the army?”

“No,” the girl said. “One or two have gone.”

“Aren’t you Whites here? Are you Reds?”

“We have the work to do: it is the people in cities who have these

quarrels.”

“But in this quarrel,” he said, “surely everyone must join.”

“The work has to be done. If these city people worked, they would not

have the time to quarrel.”

“Oh, wouldn’t they,” he said, “that’s all you know of men. But, look

here, how can I get to Anselmo?”

“You are not going to fight?”

“I’ve been trusted with a message to Don Manuel. If he is to be at

Anselmo, I must try to get there to meet him. You’re sure it is

Anselmo?”

“The men from here went there last night.”

“And how can I get there?”

“The ore-train to Piedras Blancas, going to-night,” she said, “would

take you to within ten miles of it, so Hernando says.”

“Could I go in that?”

“Uncle Philip will speak to the engine driver.”

“Oh, thank you. At what time would the train reach the place within ten

miles of Anselmo?”

“Who knows, with a thing so dangerous as a train? Perhaps at midnight:

perhaps at dawn. Sometimes it is two days.”

“Good heaven. Is the engine-driver likely to refuse to take me?”

“Hernando says that soldiers were searching the line yesterday.”

“What soldiers?”

“Red soldiers: State soldiers from Meruel. They were looking to see if

the Whites were coming by train.”

“Has there been any battle yet?”

“We have heard of none. They expected none till they are close to the

city.”

“Thank heaven,” Hi said, “perhaps I shall be with them in time, after

all. And, oh, will you ask your Uncle Philip to beseech the

engine-driver to take me? Say it’s very, very important: for a woman’s

life may depend on it.”

“He ask all right.”

“Suppose he refuse,” Hi said.

“He not refuse, unless he got soldiers with him. But Hernando says they

may explode the line to stop the soldiers.”

However, at eight that evening, when the engine-driver took Hi as a

passenger, the line had not been exploded and no news had come of a

battle. The engine-driver was a Scot from Lanark, who had seen a

detachment of the Western army away in the west two days before. “They

came to the siding at Zamorra,” he said, “to lift the oats stored there

for the teams. Their captain was with them, a very big man,

fierce-looking, with fine hands. What’s this, they call him? Manuel.”

“Yes, Manuel.”

“The damned marauding son of a gun will get his neck in a noose before

he’s much older.”

“Will he?” Hi asked. “He has the right on his side.”

“Be damned to the right on his side. He’s setting up a civil war here,

because he don’t like the laws of the opposition. Yon’s a damned

precedent. However, he’ll be soon hanged and his moss-troopers the same.

Now get in, lad, to your nest: she’s starting.”

Hi leaned out to shake hands with the girl, Uncle Philip and Hernando,

who had come to see him off. He thanked them again and again.

“If you come these way again,” the girl said, “you look us up, what?”

“That indeed I will do,” Hi said. “And I wish I could thank you or repay

you.”

The train’s jerk at starting flung him from his farewells into his nest

among the ore, where he passed this the last night of his journey to

fetch Don Manuel.

XVIII

Shortly before dawn the next morning the train stopped at the

quarry-siding of Piedras Blancas, where the cooks of a squadron of

Meruel Reds were preparing broth and maté with water from the railway

tanks.

“There you are, lad,” the driver said, as he bade Hi good-bye. “Here’s a

wheen good law-and-order men to give yon marauding Manuel his paiks.

More power to ye, sons,” he cried, raising his voice. “And hang yon

idolatrous Deeck Turpin on a sour apple-tree.”

On leaving the train, Hi slipped through the crowd of quarry men and

soldiers, out of the siding to the road. Men and horses were coming from

their billets in the village. The cliff of the quarry loomed out white:

the stone dust made the village like moonlight or a flour mill.

Turning rapidly away downhill, he came to a grassy bank, where he

breakfasted on food which the girl had provided. As he ate, all that

expanse of the plain came into light and colour from the morning: he

could see.

There, far away, was Santa Barbara, glittering under a smudge of mist,

which hung over the violet of the sea. There, less than half way to the

city, was the hill to which he had been struggling all these days. That

heave of hill, topped by the church tower, one pinnacle of which was a

statue of Our Lady, was the hill of Anselmo, distant. . . . He could not

say how far distant it was, in that deceptive light: “Ten miles,” they

had said, but it might well be fifteen. “Oh, for a telescope or a pair

of glasses,” he said, “then I could see if the White army is there. That

is where it must be.”

As he turned towards Anselmo, he heard the sergeants of the Meruel Reds

calling the roll at the siding.

“Those fellows are here for no good,” he thought. “I’ll get along to Don

Manuel before I am stopped.”

The sun strode up out of the sea to give to the country a beauty,

unspeakable to one who had been for a week in the gloom of the forest.

To the joy of the light was added a beauty of overwhelming blossom, so

great that the soul of the earth seemed to be exulting in the sun.

“I shall reach Don Manuel after all,” he said. “I shall be actually with

him when we save Carlotta from the prison. And, oh, thank God, after

all, I have helped a little, for Rust has gotten through.”

After an hour and a half of walking, he was so far down into the plain

that Anselmo was almost merged in the tree clumps at its base. It seemed

to be less than two miles to the tower. The track led through clumps of

ilex into groves of timber, among which a brook ran. As he passed into

the cover of the ilex, he looked back at the land from which he had

come, at the foothills like an advanced guard and the mountains like an

army of kings. On the track by which he had come, he saw horsemen coming

in twos at a rather quick trot. “There are those soldiers who were at

the station,” he thought. “They are coming this way, too. Can they be

coming to join Don Manuel?”

Why should they not be? They were State troops, but in civil wars,

troops sometimes pass from the State to its rebels. “They can’t be

coming to attack him, anyway,” he thought, “for there aren’t a hundred

of them, and Don Manuel has thousands, so they said. If Don Manuel be in

the village there, they’ll meet their match.”

It came into his mind that if these men were coming to attack, or if Don

Manuel, being at Anselmo, came out to attack them, his own position,

between the two forces, would be perilous. He therefore hurried through

the cover, and pastures beyond to a copse of Turkey-oak which hid all

sight of Anselmo hill. As he went, he listened for some sound of Don

Manuel’s army, the noise of many hoofs, the call of bugles, the shouting

of orders, or even a shot from a picket. As he heard no such sounds he

concluded that the army was not there. “Perhaps it has gone on to Santa

Barbara,” he thought. “I may be just too late for it, through sleeping

too long yesterday.”

Then he thought, “It is more likely that they are all in Anselmo town on

the other side of the hill. And more likely still that they haven’t yet

reached Anselmo. They’ve been coming a long way on very bad going;

they’re bound to have crocked a lot of horses. That’s it, no doubt. I’ve

got here before them. In which case, good Lord, those Reds behind me

will probably take me prisoner. I’d better hide in this copse till

they’ve gone on or shown their hand.”

He had not gone far into the copse of Turkey-oak, when he suddenly found

that the further half of the copse was full of soldiers. His first

thought was, “Here are the Whites,” but a clearer view showed him that

they wore dusty reddish Meruel uniforms such as he had seen at the

station at dawn.

“Meruel Reds,” he thought, “I wish I knew which side they are on.”

To hesitate would have looked suspicious: he walked boldly on.

“I shall jolly soon know which side they’re on,” he thought. “They’re

Reds. I’ll bet my burial money.”

Those whom he saw were single mounted troopers, each holding three

unmounted horses. All were craned forward on their horses’ necks

intently watching something that was being done outside the copse

towards Anselmo. Beyond these horseholders, some dismounted troopers

with carbines at the ready were at the edge of the copse, also intently

watching. Two officers who were there staring at Anselmo through

glasses, caught sight of Hi. One of them challenged in Spanish and at

once moved up to him, to ask who he was, and what he wanted there.

“I am English,” Hi answered, “I am going to Anselmo.”

“What for?” the officer asked, in good English.

“To see George Elena?”

“Who is he?”

“A horse-breeder.”

“What about?”

“To borrow a horse to get back to Santa Barbara.”

“Where do you come from?”

“I’ve been lost in the forest.”

“How?”

“Well, I lost my way.”

“Oh, you lost your way, did you,” the officer said, becoming somewhat

harder in his manner. “Why do you wear that coat and hat? you are not a

native here. Why are you disguised?”

“My own clothes were ruined in the forest as you can see,” Hi said.

“Some kind people at San Marco, where I came out of the forest, gave me

these to make up.”

The other officer moved over to them, to ask what his brother had asked.

“So, a sacred pekin,” he said. They talked in Spanish for a moment, with

looks at Hi which were not favourable.

“Zubiga,” the elder officer called, to a couple of orderlies, who jumped

forward at the order, “Take this man in charge.” Then turning to Hi, he

said, “You will stand aside a little. We will see later.”

“Mayn’t I go on to Anselmo?”

“No: sacred pekin, you mayn’t.”

They left him with the orderlies, while they returned towards the edge

of the copse to watch what their scouts were doing. “They are sending

out spies,” Hi thought. “I’ve come just too late. Don Manuel is up the

hill in Anselmo, and if I’d only been here an hour sooner, I’d have

joined him before these devils arrived. Now I’m diddled again.”

After some minutes of suspense, the squadron from Piedras Blancas

entered the copse. The officer in charge of it took the salute of the

two officers who had stopped Hi; he spoke to them both, went to the edge

of the copse, to watch what was being done, talked for a few minutes

there, and then came to Hi. He was an elderly man, with a frank,

fearless face, and the pug-nosed look of a lightweight boxer.

Like all the officers of the army he spoke English.

“When were you last in Anselmo?” he asked.

“I have never been there.”

“Never; yet you know people there. Do you speak Spanish?”

“No: unfortunately. I’ve only been about a fortnight in this country.”

“Where were you last night?”

“In the ore-train coming from San Marco to Piedras Blancas.”

“Where were you yesterday?”

“At San Marco.”

“Did you see or hear anything of a rebel army at San Marco?”

“No.”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“What are you doing in this country? How did you come here?”

Hi told him as much as he thought sufficient: it did not ring quite

true. The officer seemed puzzled.

“Were you in Piedras Blancas this morning?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You saw these troops?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see troops yesterday?”

“No.”

“Yet you saw these this morning, you say?”

“Yes.”

“And at once decided that you would bring the news of what you had seen

to Anselmo?”

“Not at all,” Hi said. “I’m not a spy. I happen to know that the Elenas

in Anselmo have horses, and as they know friends of mine in Santa

Barbara I hoped to borrow a horse to ride home on.”

The officer frowned.

“There’s something not quite right, somewhere,” he said, “I don’t see

what brings you here. What friends have you in Santa Barbara?”

“Mr. Winter of Quezon. Mr. Weycock of the Sugar Company knows me.”

“English people?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” the officer said. “Stand easy.”

He stood easy for a few seconds, considering, then he returned to Hi.

“You say you were taken to Ribote and then lost your way in the forest?

What were you doing when you were taken to Ribote?”

“Going to Anselmo.”

“What for?”

“To see the Elenas’ horses.”

“You say this was ten days ago?”

“Yes.”

“Why should you see the Elenas’ horses?”

“My father is a horse-breeder in England.”

“If you’re lying,” the officer said, “it may be a very serious matter

for you.”

“I am not lying,” Hi said: he hoped that he wasn’t. A couple of scouts

rode in to the copse to report: the officer left Hi to examine them: he

went with them to the copse-edge while they explained something. Hi

could see them gesticulating, while the officer tried to get at the

truth. After a minute’s thought, he called the other officers, explained

the situation to them, and gave the order to mount. Seeing Hi, he called

to the orderly in Spanish to bring the boy with him. “Mount him on a

spare horse,” he said.

“Sir,” Hi called out. “Will you not let me go on to Anselmo?”

“No, sacred pekin,” the pekin officer answered. “And make less noise.”

When the squadron had mounted, with Hi in their midst on a spare horse,

the files moved away out of the copse into the open. They moved across a

scrubby pasture in a direction parallel with Anselmo hill. Flankers rode

out to their left, and all eyes were turned to the left, not to Anselmo,

but to a roll of rising ground beyond it. “That is where Don Manuel is,

then,” Hi thought.

As they drew clear of the trees, Hi had for a moment a good view of

Anselmo. It was like one of the little hill cities which he had seen in

Italy, except that it was smaller than any, and stood upon a smaller

hill. A clump of trees grew on the hillside so as to hide most of the

wall with gray-green leaves. From the edge of the wood the white church

tower rose, topped by its statue.

When this was about a mile behind them, the troops came over the roll of

ground into sight of the plain stretching on into the west. There,

rather more than a mile away, was a big white estancia with a haras or

horse-breeding stable beside it, below three conspicuous windmill pumps.

About half a mile beyond this, moving slowly towards Santa Barbara, was

a large body of mounted men, with flankers thrown out on both sides, and

many spare horses.

“There they are,” everybody said at once. “There it is,” Hi said to

himself. “That is Don Manuel’s army, or a part of it; and that big

breeding stable is the Elenas’ place, where I ought to have been ten

days ago.

“And now,” he thought, with a quickening pulse, “I shall probable see a

battle; and these hundred odd Reds will get licked as they deserve.”

However, the officer of his party had no intention of engaging. He hung

to the rear of the moving army for rather more than a mile: then, at a

crossing of tracks, he turned away directly to Santa Barbara and gave

the order to trot. It was perhaps ten in the morning when they left the

cross roads: it must have been mid-day when they halted at the Inn of

the Little Foxes, where a trooper, bearing a red pennon, stood at the

door: the inn being a headquarters of some kind.

The commander went into the inn to report and to ask for orders. He was

gone for a quarter of an hour, during which a shot was fired a mile or

two to the west. It was followed by several shots, of different

qualities, answering each other. After this, though the firing often

almost ceased, and sometimes sounded from further away, it never quite

ceased and on the whole drew nearer. It was all independent firing.

It reminded Hi of the sounds of pheasant shooting at home in the

unpreserved downland coverts where birds are scarce.

When the commander came out, another officer was with him. This one

seemed to be a general, preparing to ride. He was flicking his spotless

boots with a silk handkerchief, and walking with an arch of the legs

caused partly by tight breeches, partly by affectation. “Where is this

English fellow?” he called.

“There, sir,” the commander said. “Bring him up, you.” Hi was led

forward.

“I believe, boy, that you are a spy,” the general said. “I’ve a good

mind to shoot you. Most soldiers in my place would shoot you. As it

happens, my orders are not to shoot aliens, but to send them in for

trial; which I shall do. You will go in to Santa Barbara till your case

can be sifted a little. Any misfortune which happens to you you will

have brought upon yourself.” He called in Spanish to some troopers to

take Hi to the waggons which were about to start under escort to the

city. He also gave them a few written words about Hi’s case for the

escort commander. As Hi now knew what answer any officer would give to

him, if he replied, he held his peace. The troopers gave him into the

charge of the escort of the waggon, who told him, in English, to get

into a waggon. When Hi asked which waggon, for there were half a dozen

tilted army waggons all of one pattern, the man told him that he did not

care which waggon, but that if he did not get into one straightaway he

would break his face. “Get into that one there,” he cried, “and don’t

show your face outside the tilt or you’ll get a butt in the lip.”

“You can’t come in here,” an Englishman, inside the waggon said, “this

one is full up.”

“What are you waiting for?” the escort called. “Get in.”

“It is full up,” Hi said.

“Full up,” the man replied. “Who says it’s full up? You sacred suspects

should all be shot if I’d my way. I’ll see if you’re full up. Get in.

Make way for him, you. Now get in.” With a cudgel which he carried he

poked the suspects till they made room; then Hi was thrust in among

them.

The waggon was full. It contained an Englishman with a Spanish wife and

three little children; an elderly American in the pineapple trade; an

imbecile of doubtful nationality who dribbled at the mouth and gurgled

in the throat; a strong young native woman in hysterics; an old woman

who was drunk; her grandson, who had eaten something which had disagreed

with him; three native men, one of them very old and infirm, the second

shot in the body, unconscious and plainly near death, the third in a

dreadful condition with fever. On the top of the discomforts of Hi’s

entrance, the waggons started.

“Why couldn’t you have gone to one of the other waggons?” the Englishman

said. “You could have seen that this was full, one would have thought.”

“I had to do what I was told,” Hi said. “It’s not my fault.”

“At least you can give a lady room,” the man replied, “you can see that

there’s a lady here in an interesting condition.”

“I am sorry,” Hi said, moving as far as he could, “I did not see.”

“Any man of decent feeling would stand up,” the man said. “But perhaps

you don’t come from the fobug St. German.”

“Where is that?”

“Oh, perhaps you don’t understand Latin; it’s where manners is.”

“Well, I wish we were there,” Hi said.

“That touched you where you live,” the American said. “This kid ain’t to

blame for coming here. Though I’ll roast this gol-derned Government for

putting him.”

“Ay, ay, ay, de mi,” the young woman called, as she rose to a sitting

posture and clawed with both hands in the faces beside her.

“Come off with all that, Angelita,” the American said. “You, mister,

catch a holt of that hand and I’ll catch a holt of this; then she won’t

do us an injury.” Hi caught one of the arms of the young woman as he was

bid, but she was strong in the arm and writhing all ways at once. “Gee,”

the American said, “this young woman will ask her husband how about it

when he comes home from his Lodge; she won’t wait till day dawns.”

As Hi hove down the arm of the young woman, the imbecile began to coo at

him, with symptoms of affection. Presently the Englishman, who was a

tall, thin, hatchet-faced man, with little moustaches waxed at the ends,

said: “That captain-man ought to be shot for sending a lady in such a

state in a waggon like this. I have been here five years and this is my

reward. My wife now is going to be sick. It is the fresh air beating

upon her, in her present state.”

The old woman, who was drunk, here shoved her grandson to the tail-board

of the waggon; the fresh air seemed to have beaten upon him.

“This is a nice way to send a lady to the city,” the Englishman said.

“That boy ought to be ashamed of himself. As for that captain-man, I

shall complain to the Government. It is a marvel that she doesn’t

miscarry.”

“She’ll run a darned good chance of that,” the American said. “The

Whites will be here this afternoon. There’ll be fighting in the streets

to-night. So if you know a good snug cellar in a back street, get to it,

pronto.”

Here the three children of the Englishman began to cry; their mother,

who was a big woman with a white fat face and jowl, boxed their ears for

crying. The drunken woman, having soothed her grandson a little, drank

from a bottle; then, rising from the floor to her feet, tried to dance,

lifting her skirts to her knee. All this time the waggon was swaying

forward at a good pace on a rough road; the children were weeping, the

Englishman was growling, the young woman was writhing and hysterical,

the old man was motionless, the dying man gasping for air, and the man

with the fever was shivering. Hi and the American were trying to keep

the girl in one place. The imbecile, who had decided that he liked Hi,

kept pressing close to him and patting the back of his neck. Hi, who had

no free hand, kept warding him off with his elbow; but the creature,

perhaps mistaking this for a return of affection, pressed back, cooing.

The girl suddenly shook herself free and shrieked at the top of her

voice. She did not know what she was doing; all her young muscular body

was out of control. Hi remembered tales in the Bible of people who “had

a devil”; this young woman had a devil, or the devil had her. “Look out,

kid,” the American called, “she’s into the hay-lot, your side.”

“Come back,” Hi called. “Be quiet, señorita; it’s all right. We’re all

friends here.”

“Friends,” the American said, “I guess we are. It’s these darned Santa

Barbarians who are the enemies in this land. They’ll knock my apple

season galley west. Lie still, Angelita, lie still.”

“It’s all these hidalgos,” the Englishman said. “They cause the trouble

in this land. What this land wants is to be opened up to free

competition and progress. It wants white men. These priests and these

hidalgos are fallacies; they ought to have been exploded long ago. If

the English Government doesn’t step in, it ought to be made to. My wife

is a Pinamente; one of the oldest families, if we had our rights; and

here these soldiers, these fine jacks-in-office, send her in a waggon

like this.”

“I feel for her,” the American said, “being of a darned old family

myself.”

At this moment, above the noise of the waggons, as they bumped and

lurched along, there came the whine and beat of barbaric music. The

waggons drew to the side of the track, while the music grew louder and

went by. Some hundreds of horses in twos went by, with a scuffling up of

dust and the stink of sweat, horses and hot leather.

“Pitubas moving out,” the American said. “I told you the Whites are

coming. They’ll fight this day and the Whites’ll whip.”

“How do you know?” the Englishman asked.

“Because I’ve been in the fighting business; had three years of it, and

I know fighters when I see them. Man for man, the Whites will put rings

round these yellow devils.”

“You lie,” the old drunken woman said suddenly, in very good English,

blinking like an owl. “Damn your soul, you lie.” She blinked, but said

no more; as it happened, it was all the English she knew. The waggon

halted by the side of the track as other music drew nearer.

“Their darned national anthem,” the American said, beginning to sing to

the tune.

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

It was 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.

“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 the

_Tenderloin_ to-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 the

_Solita’s_ riding-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.

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

the _Solita_. 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.

XX

APPENDICES AND NOTES

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.

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 barque _Venturer_, 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.

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 the _Solita_.

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 the

_Solita_ to 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. Where _he_ is

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.”

A note added by Highworth Ridden:

“The above was written by me to my mother soon after the completion of

the dam, when I revisited Santa Barbara for the first time since the

troubles. I left the pier on that morning of the troubles thinking to be

back in ten days: I did not return save for that time as a prisoner for

more than eleven years.

“What I did not and could not write to my mother, I write now, after

another eleven years. It is about Carlotta. It is difficult to set down

what she was to me. ‘Calf-love,’ I suppose most people would say. Well,

there is a generosity in calf-love that gives it a grace: not that mine

had any grace. I saw her on only one day twenty-two years ago: I have

thought of her every day since; not as a lover of course (for years

past), but as a spirit apart, unlike anyone else that ever was. You who

never saw her cannot understand this. She was the most exquisite thing:

in life marvellous, in the unspeakable end, heroic: and always so

beautiful, so gracious. All who knew her felt this: she had cruel

enemies, the mad, the diseased, the godless, the savage and the greedy

hated her.

“I went to the chapel of Carlotta, which H. E. built. Her tomb, with her

recumbent figure, is there: it is very beautiful. Her sculptured head on

the stairs leading to the Plaza is liker her. Gamarro’s painting of her

is not like. Bedwyn’s pencil sketch is like. But she was like the light,

no one could have painted her.

“I tried to do something for her once, and though I failed, I am prouder

of that than of anything else that I have ever done. Whatever she was,

she made men know that gleams come into this world from a world beyond,

which is better than this.

“H. F. R.”

“When I set out from the hotel on that morning of the troubles, I took

with me a scrap of the hermosita which she had broken for me. This being

in my pocket-book, was stolen from me at Ribote by the Englishman who

got me out of jail. The rest of the spray, being in my trunk at the

hotel, was, as I supposed, lost, during the troubles, with all my kit.

“But in 1899, being at the Club in Santa Barbara, I met the then

proprietor of the hotel, who said, that he had recently found some

trunks and bags in a disused cellar: that these had evidently been put

away during the troubles and never claimed since, and were now to be

sold. I went to see them, and among them found one of my tin trunks, in

which were some ruined clothes. With the clothes, in some hotel

blotting-paper, I found the hermosita spray which Carlotta had given to

me, and the envelope, addressed by her to Donna Emilia, which I had

picked up and kept. So that I have what few have, one of the last gifts

and one of the last writings of a lovely soul.

“That is all that one can say of her, that she was a lovely soul. I have

met no one in the least like her. I can but thank God for her, knowing

that she came from God.

“H. F. R.”

A note upon Carlotta, by Arturo Grau, author of “Memoirs of

Those Times.”

“I felt when I met her, what I have felt ever since, that in her mortal

body an angel walked, who needed but a small instrument though a perfect

one.

“Those who met her, felt despair at their unworthiness beside so much

perfection; yet felt exaltation at the thought that such perfection

could be in this world. I can truly say, with so many others, that she

altered my life for me.”

Another note upon Carlotta, by Roberto Mandariaga.

“None can describe her, nor would one understand, if she were described.

She was like a light sent from God.”

Another note upon Carlotta, by Roger Weycock.

“She was a little, sprightly thing with a lot of colour. She was very

much of a lady by birth, being a de Leyva; but for this she might have

passed for bold. She seemed to me to be very fond of her own opinion,

which was not always wise. She had been the spoiled darling all her

life; old de Leyva’s pet; the Chavez group worshipped her. Someone had

told her, in her youth, that she was like a little fairy. She seemed to

me to be always acting the fairy. I do not of course pretend to justify

her murder, which must ever remain a blot upon an unconstitutional but,

on the whole, rather great administration. At the same time I, who saw

her, can testify that she was not the angel from Paradise which some,

who never saw her, would have us believe. She was a pert young woman,

accustomed to her own way, who had the tragical fate to run counter to a

much stronger way than her own. The character of Carlotta de Leyva, as

worshipped (this is scarcely too strong a word) at present at Santa

Barbara, had no original in the young woman whom I met; it is an

invention of the poets (of the sentimental-idealistic school, of whom

Tomás de Medellin is the chief exponent), backed by an able but quite

unscrupulous propagandist press, whose interest it is to blacken Don

Lopez by every means in its power.”

Another note upon Carlotta, by Guillermo de Medellin, father of

the poet.

“I saw her almost daily for many years. As a traveller in both

hemispheres, I have met many thousands of people; some of them

distinguished, a few great, none like her. I have met some with more

compelling power; that, after all, was not what she had; she had

blessing power, as though she came from Heaven.

“She was one whom many loved; surely all to their great good. No hatred

or other evil could exist in a mind full of her memory.

“Once, when she was a little girl, five or six years old, I asked her

what she would do when she grew up. She said that she would build

everybody a palace. ‘What,’ I said, ‘with your little hands?’ ‘No,’ she

said, ‘my lover will build it for me.’ This I have so often, often

thought of.”

* * * * * * *

The poem “Carlotta,” by Tomás de Medellin, is well-known in Santa

Barbara. It is a formless but interesting jumble of writing about her,

in sonnets, ballads, lyrics and dramatic dialogues. It contains most of

the fables about her which the imagination of the race has seized upon.

I quote here some translation from portions of the poem.

The Sonnet of Camilla, Mother of Don Manuel, on hearing of her

son’s betrothal to Carlotta:

Lord, when Thy servant, doubting of Thy grace,

Went in despair from what she judged Thy frown

To search for comfort in an earthly town,

Despairing of all help in any place!

When she was sure, that not in any case

Could her demerits touch the longed for crown,

But rather sorrow, that would bring her down

Where no light comes, nor joy, nor Bridegroom’s face:

* * * * * * *

Then, in the chaos, lo, a plan revealed.

Lo, in the sand, the lilies of the field.

All thy blind servant’s darkness of untrust

Proven more wicked than her tongue can speak.

To her unfaith thou turn’dst the other cheek,

And, to her greed, gavest gold that cannot rust.

Lines, on the same occasion. This poem is known in Santa Barbara

as “The Vision of Camilla concerning Manuel.”

In the dark night I saw Death drawing near

To make me go from here;

In all my sin, with all my work undone,

Leaving behind my son

With no more stay nor path

Than what the wild horse hath.

I saw the souls of all my earthly friends

Laid bare, their aims and ends;

How some might love him, many help, but none

Be wisdom to my son.

Wisdom that is a road

Where no track showed,

A dawn, when no lamp glowed.

Thus in the night I heard Death come, I heard

The mouse shriek at the bird;

My sins came huddled to my bed, the bell

Dead hours did tell:

There was no light: only the tick of time:

Life, strangling in the slime.

Then in the multitude of souls I saw

A bright soul, without flaw,

Wearing a star upon her brow like heaven

In the green light of even.

However black (I knew) the night might turn

That star would burn.

She reached her hand to me and cried: “Death calls,

Time strikes, the hour falls.

And like a flight of birds the souls prepare

To whirl into the air,

To bring to be what none may understand.

I shall but light the hand . . .

Lo, here, the light upon my brow shall lead

Thy son until he bleed;

Until he fail, and falter, and despair.

Even in his blackest night I shall be there

My star will be his guidance: he will know

What light is, from its glow.”

A sonnet upon Ezekiel Rust.

Son of Isaiah Rust, of Churn, his wage

Was eighteenpence a day, working for Squire,

With rabbits twice a year, and sticks for fire,

In a stoopt cottage, broken-backt with age.

His life was among horses from his birth,

He uttered cries which horses understood,

He handled squire’s stallion in his mood.

Strange blood being in him from the ancient earth.

Often, when moons were full, he ranged the Downs,

Much like the fox, but liker to the hare

Who forms in the thymed grass in the hill air,

And sees from the hill edge, as the stars rise,

The glare in heaven above the market towns

And turns back to the midnight, being wise.

The Meditation of Carlotta in Prison.

This that I understand,

This that I touch with hand,

This body, that is I,

To-day will die.

O given Spirit, now taken,

Keep to this truth unshaken,

That the good thing, well-willed,

Becomes fulfilled.

The Meditation of Highworth Ridden.

I have seen flowers come in stony places;

And kindness done by men with ugly faces;

And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races;

So I trust, too.

The Comfort of Manuel, on Setting Forth defeated in the

_Venturer_.

Bad lies behind, worse lies before.

What stars there were are in us still;

The Moon, the Inconstant, keeps her will,

The Sun still scatters out his store,

And shall not Man do more?

When the worst comes, the worst is going:

As a gate shuts, another opes:

The power of man is as his hopes:

In darkest night the cocks are crowing.

In the sea roaring and wind blowing

Adventure: man the ropes.

* * * * *

THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, ST. GILES’ WORKS, NORWICH

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple

spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors

occur.

A Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience.