Gaspar Ruiz, condemned to death as a deserter, was not thinking either
of his native place or of his parents, to whom he had been a good son on
account of the mildness of his character and the great strength of his
limbs. The practical advantage of this last was made still more
valuable to his father by his obedient disposition. Gaspar Ruiz had an
acquiescent soul.
But it was stirred now to a sort of dim revolt by his dislike to die the
death of a traitor. He was not a traitor. He said again to the sergeant:
"You know I did not desert, Estaban. You know I remained behind amongst
the trees with three others to keep the enemy back while the detachment
was running away!"
Lieutenant Santierra, little more than a boy at the time, and unused as
yet to the sanguinary imbecilities of a state of war, had lingered
near by, as if fascinated by the sight of these men who were to be shot
presently--"for an example"--as the Commandante had said.
The sergeant, without deigning to look at the prisoner, addressed
himself to the young officer with a superior smile.
"Ten men would not have been enough to make him a prisoner, mi teniente.
Moreover, the other three rejoined the detachment after dark. Why should
he, unwounded and the strongest of them all, have failed to do so?"
"My strength is as nothing against a mounted man with a lasso," Gaspar
Ruiz protested, eagerly. "He dragged me behind his horse for half a
mile."
At this excellent reason the sergeant only laughed contemptuously. The
young officer hurried away after the Commandante.
Presently the adjutant of the castle came by. He was a truculent,
raw-boned man in a ragged uniform. His spluttering voice issued out of
a flat yellow face. The sergeant learned from him that the condemned men
would not be shot till sunset. He begged then to know what he was to do
with them meantime.
The adjutant looked savagely round the courtyard and, pointing to the
door of a small dungeon-like guardroom, receiving light and air through
one heavily barred window, said: "Drive the scoundrels in there."
The sergeant, tightening his grip upon the stick he carried in virtue
of his rank, executed this order with alacrity and zeal. He hit Gaspar
Ruiz, whose movements were slow, over his head and shoulders. Gaspar
Ruiz stood still for a moment under the shower of blows, biting his
lip thoughtfully as if absorbed by a perplexing mental process--then
followed the others without haste. The door was locked, and the adjutant
carried off the key.
By noon the heat of that vaulted place crammed to suffocation had become
unbearable. The prisoners crowded towards the window, begging their
guards for a drop of water; but the soldiers remained lying in indolent
attitudes wherever there was a little shade under a wall, while the
sentry sat with his back against the door smoking a cigarette, and
raising his eyebrows philosophically from time to time. Gaspar Ruiz
had pushed his way to the window with irresistible force. His capacious
chest needed more air than the others; his big face, resting with its
chin on the ledge, pressed close to the bars, seemed to support the
other faces crowding up for breath. From moaned entreaties they had
passed to desperate cries, and the tumultuous howling of those thirsty
men obliged a young officer who was just then crossing the courtyard to
shout in order to make himself heard.
"Why don't you give some water to these prisoners?"
The sergeant, with an air of surprised innocence, excused himself by the
remark that all those men were condemned to die in a very few hours.
Lieutenant Santierra stamped his foot. "They are condemned to death, not
to torture," he shouted. "Give them some water at once."
Impressed by this appearance of anger, the soldiers bestirred
themselves, and the sentry, snatching up his musket, stood to attention.
But when a couple of buckets were found and filled from the well, it was
discovered that they could not be passed through the bars, which were
set too close. At the prospect of quenching their thirst, the shrieks of
those trampled down in the struggle to get near the opening became very
heartrending. But when the soldiers who had lifted the buckets towards
the window put them to the ground again helplessly, the yell of
disappointment was still more terrible.
The soldiers of the army of Independence were not equipped with
canteens. A small tin cup was found, but its approach to the opening
caused such a commotion, such yells of rage and pain in the vague mass
of limbs behind the straining faces at the window, that Lieutenant
Santierra cried out hurriedly, "No, no--you must open the door,
sergeant."
The sergeant, shrugging his shoulders, explained that he had no right
to open the door even if he had had the key. But he had not the key.
The adjutant of the garrison kept the key. Those men were giving much
unnecessary trouble, since they had to die at sunset in any case.
Why they had not been shot at once early in the morning he could not
understand.
Lieutenant Santierra kept his back studiously to the window. It was
at his earnest solicitations that the Commandante had delayed the
execution. This favour had been granted to him in consideration of
his distinguished family and of his father's high position amongst the
chiefs of the Republican party. Lieutenant Santierra believed that the
General commanding would visit the fort some time in the afternoon,
and he ingenuously hoped that his naive intercession would induce
that severe man to pardon some, at least, of those criminals. In the
revulsion of his feeling his interference stood revealed now as guilty
and futile meddling. It appeared to him obvious that the general would
never even consent to listen to his petition. He could never save those
men, and he had only made himself responsible for the sufferings added
to the cruelty of their fate.
"Then go at once and get the key from the adjutant," said Lieutenant
Santierra.
The sergeant shook his head with a sort of bashful smile, while his eyes
glanced sideways at Gaspar Ruiz's face, motionless and silent, staring
through the bars at the bottom of a heap of other haggard, distorted,
yelling faces.
His worship the adjutant de Plaza, the sergeant murmured, was having his
siesta; and supposing that he, the sergeant, would be allowed access to
him, the only result he expected would be to have his soul flogged out
of his body for presuming to disturb his worship's repose. He made a
deprecatory movement with his hands, and stood stock-still, looking down
modestly upon his brown toes.
Lieutenant Santierra glared with indignation, but hesitated. His
handsome oval face, as smooth as a girl's, flushed with the shame of
his perplexity. Its nature humiliated his spirit. His hairless upper lip
trembled; he seemed on the point of either bursting into a fit of rage
or into tears of dismay.
Fifty years later, General Santierra, the venerable relic of
revolutionary times, was well able to remember the feelings of the
young lieutenant. Since he had given up riding altogether, and found
it difficult to walk beyond the limits of his garden, the general's
greatest delight was to entertain in his house the officers of the
foreign men-of-war visiting the harbour. For Englishmen he had a
preference, as for old companions in arms. English naval men of all
ranks accepted his hospitality with curiosity, because he had known Lord
Cochrane and had taken part, on board the patriot squadron commanded
by that marvellous seaman, in the cutting out and blockading operations
before Callao--an episode of unalloyed glory in the wars of Independence
and of endless honour in the fighting tradition of Englishmen. He was a
fair linguist, this ancient survivor of the Liberating armies. A trick
of smoothing his long white beard whenever he was short of a word in
French or English imparted an air of leisurely dignity to the tone of
his reminiscences.