Telango, who had discovered his loss just now. “To anoint that dirty
head, eh? Then take this!” and with a stout cudgel he belabored the
luckless Pedro till the latter broke away and fled into further darkness.
No wonder Telango had found him out—his great shock of hair and beard
were matted in a gray, greasy mask, like the runnings of a cheap candle.
Pedro did not finish the shearing season. Next morning he was missing
from Alamitos, and a few days later news came that he was in Cubero. His
accomplices had no explanations to offer for his disappearance or for
their wet clothing, and as for Alonzo, he “told nothing to nobody.” Only
at times he was observed to drop his shears and double up as though he
had a pain in his stomach, while his face would become suspiciously red.
Furthermore, he came carelessly up to Telango at noon with:
“Oh, here’s your lard bucket—I picked it up by the arroyo. And say—if you
want to make candles, you’d better go scrape the foot-log. Somebody has
greased the whole middle of it!”
“What thing?” grumbled Telango. “Of the witches, no doubt. And _quizas_
the same who anointed Pedro.”
“_Quizas_,” answered Alonzo solemnly, and he walked off without cracking
a smile.
The Habit of the Fraile.
The Habit of the Fraile.
I.
The end drew near of the longest siege that was ever in any of the
three Americas. More than a year ago the red field of Ayacucho had
crowned the triumph of the rebel colonies. The mother-nation that
found the New World, and tamed it and gave it to her sons, no longer
had sons there, for the very last had disowned her. Mexico, the first
great Spanish kingdom in America, had turned republic; and so had the
neighbor provinces. South America had followed suit; for the cry of
“Independence,” premature as it was among these peoples, then and still
so unripe for self-government, carried contagion, and Peru itself, the
gem of the conquest, the land of riches and romance, had thrown off the
merciful “yoke” of home to stagger for generations under the ten-fold
worse yoke of her own corrupt sons. Of all the Americas that had been
Spain’s by discovery, by conquest and by settlement, there now remained
to her on the continent only the space boxed by the four walls of
Callao[38]—a space a mile and a half square. There the red-yellow-and-red
flag still flaunted defiance to the victorious insurgents; for there
Rodil,[39] “the second Leonidas,” was making the last heroic stand for
Spain.
It was hopeless odds—this fiery loyalist against all rebel South America.
There was no possibility of reinforcements from anywhere; no chance of
retreat. Cooped up in what was then the largest fort in the New World,
he saw the land fenced with the flushed armies of Bolívar,[40] the bay
blocked by the allied fleets. For twenty-one months he had repulsed their
almost daily attacks and outwitted their ceaseless stratagems; and for
twenty-one months, too, had baffled the still more dangerous foes within
his walls. Of the two thousand eight hundred men at his hand when the
siege began, March 1, 1824, over seven hundred had been killed and more
than twice as many had died of the pestilence. Of the eight thousand
citizens first within the fort—for all Callao was included by those huge
ramparts—two thousand four hundred had been sent out to avoid famine,
and over five thousand had fallen by the plague. The survivors had no
heart left. Almost daily some new plot to betray the fort was discovered,
and almost daily the “iron general” gave a row of conspirators to the
musketeers. To war, disease and treachery, famine added its terrors.
Horse meat and rats were already delicacies; and only yesterday, a noble
invalid had given a plate heaped up with gold for three lemons.
It was New Year’s eve. That, down here, twelve degrees below the equator,
meant high summer. All day long the tropic heat had beaten mercilessly
upon Callao, and now the wan defenders lay sprawled along the ramparts
beside their guns, drinking the grateful dusk. Here and there sounded the
uneven tramp of the patrol down the cobble-paved streets, and their sharp
challenge, “_Alto! Quien vive?_” to every one they met. It rang out now,
and the soldiers crossed their muskets before a tall, gray-robed figure.
“It is I, my children,” was the quiet answer. “Delay me not, for I go to
the sick.”
“Pass, father,” said the _sargento_, and all lifted their caps, stepping
from the narrow sidewalk to make room for the priest.
“But what is this?” cried the officer, suddenly thrusting out his long
arm and clutching something which was about to fly right between them. It
was a thin, pale girl of ten, hooded in the black manta of her people.
“_Que es esto?_” repeated the _sargento_ more gently. “Dost thou not know
the orders that none shall move upon the street after dark, since so many
drop letters over the walls to the rebels? Get thee in, for even children
are not exempt,” and he pushed her back into the doorway from which she
had just burst.
But the child made no motion to obey. “The padre!” she panted. “The
padre! For my brother is very sick.”
“_Si, pues?_ Well, go thou and catch the fraile, then. But much eye that
thou come not near the walls.” And the kindly old Spaniard led his men
off down the street.
By this time the priest had turned the corner; and when the child came
flying to that street, lo! he was far ahead. But she kept running
breathlessly and at last, where the dark bulk of the castle of San Felipe
overhung them, she plucked the gray robe from behind. Her bare feet
had drawn no noise from the stones, and the priest started violently,
choking back what sounded like the beginning of a cry.
He wheeled sharply about with a stern “What is this?”—but his voice was
pinched.
“My brother—very sick—padre! Please, your grace, come!” she panted.
“To the devils with your brother!” he growled, flinging her off.
“_Váyate!_” and he was gone before the dumbfounded child could speak
again. She stood a moment looking stupidly after him, and then, sobbing,
limped wearily homeward.
II.
The house, like most of Callao in those ill days, was little better
than a wreck after twenty-one months of the rebel cannonading. The dark
stairway teetered and groaned dismally as she scrambled up, and overhead
the Southern Cross blinked hazily at her through a tattered frame—the
insurgent shells had left little of the flimsy roofs of the city where
it never rains. Long, ragged strips of bamboo lathing dangled here and
there, and at her childish tread dribbles of the gravel covering came
pattering about her like uncanny footfalls. She was trembling all over
when she pushed open a broken door and entered the room, the rude
Moorish balcony of which overhung the street. There was a hole in the
roof here, too, and the doors of the balcony had been splintered by a
cannon ball. A twisted rag flared smokily in an iron plate of grease on a
broken chair, and where the vagrant shadows began to stand their ground
against its feeble rays, some one was bending over a tattered mattress
upon the floor.
“_No hay cuidado_,” said a strange voice as she stopped short, in alarm.
“The _sargento_ bade me bring a cup of _caldo_ for thy brother, seeing
thee so much a woman. For now that there is nothing to eat, he said,
perhaps that would be the best medicine.”
“God pay you!” cried the child nervously. “And my brother?”
“He drank the broth as one greedy, and in a moment fell asleep. How many
days makes it that he is sick?”
“Two, señor. Since four days there was nothing to eat but two crusts of
bread, and those he made me eat.”
“_Pobrecito!_ He has no more than hunger. To-morrow I will bring another
_caldo_—for even broth of horse gives strength—that ye may not starve.
But have ye no fathers?”
“Papa fell in San Felipe; and our mother was sent from the city with
many. But us she hid in the house, saying that the enemy had no mercy
even to the weak. And so it was; for the women that tried to pass to Lima
the _insurjentes_ fired upon. And she never came back.”
“Dogs of rebels! But now I go, little one. Have heart, for I will look to
you. _Hásta luego._”
When he was gone the child crouched down by her brother and slipped her
trembling hand into his. The shadows were so crawly! They seemed to draw
back and then come stealing at her. And it was so still—only the hail of
the sentries, breaking across such a silence as if they stood guard over
a city of the dead.
“_Que hay_, little sister?” said the boy, starting up wide awake with the
suddenness of those that are fevered. “The father? Couldst not find one?
But it is all the same, for God sent us a friend with food.”
“And he comes to-morrow also,” she added eagerly. Then she told how she
had followed the priest, but he had shaken her off with rough words.
“_Ea?_ How is that? For the fathers do not so. And how is it thou
followedst him even to the castillo?”
“_Pues_, for that he went very fast and I could not catch him. He was at
the corner even when the _sargento_ let me pass; but when I came running
there he was almost at the next _cuadra_, as if he too had run.”
Vicente suddenly sat up on the squalid mattress. The smoky wick flung
deep shadows in his hollow cheeks, and he looked so pale and wild that
Lina almost cried out at him.
“I tell thee, ’manita,” he whispered earnestly, “I believe not in that
priest! Running so, and so rough to thee! And thou sayest that at touch
of thy hand to his robe he started and was to call out? There is a
danger, I tell thee!” he repeated vehemently, striking his thin fist upon
the floor till the impish shadows danced again. “All is crooked now, when
they say the very captains wait to sell our general. And if the priests
be traitors too——”
“But what to do?” asked the girl, in awe of this fierce young brother.
“Ay! What to do? For we know nothing. But something there _is_, my heart
tells me. _Oyez!_ Wouldst thou know the padre again, seeing him?”
“_Como no?_ For it was near the _farol_, and I saw under the hood his
eyes, how shining they were.”
“And his voice, too—no? Come, then, and we will see who is this father
that curses his children!” And the boy rose eagerly, though his legs
shook under him.
“But how canst thou go out, _hermano_, being so sick?”
“_No hay cuidado._ For now it is for our king against the rebels, and
strength I shall have for that. The _caldo_ also gives me new life.
_Vamos!_”
III.
Weak as he was, he drew her down the tottering stairs and into the dark
street; and there they stood a moment, not knowing whither to turn.
“_Claro!_” exclaimed Vicente, “we will follow as he went—perchance we may
meet him returning.”
But at the very corner some one turning in hastily from the next street
stumbled fairly over them; and Vicente and Lina and the stranger went
down in a heap.
“Little animals!” snarled an angry voice. “Are you blind? For a so-little
I would break your bones. Eh? He is _who_?” he hissed, catching them by
the arms—for he had heard Lina’s excited whisper, “_Es él_.”
“She says you are the priest that would not go to her sick brother,”
answered Vicente in a steady voice, “and I believe it, for you are rough
to the weak. But we will find a padre who is not so.”
“_Márchanse_, brats!” said the stranger in a tone of relief. “But,” he
added, turning and shaking his finger at them, “no more running after me,
or I throw you over the wall.”
“Have no care, señor padre,” said Vicente, with sarcastic politeness;
and taking Lina by the hand he hurried around the corner. In a moment he
turned his head and caught a glimpse of some dark object peering past the
wall. “_Es!_” he whispered, squeezing the slender fingers, and a few rods
farther on drew Lina into a recess of the wall. He was trembling all over.
“_Es!_” he repeated. “Canst thou not see that _he_ is no fraile, though
he wears the habit? It is the voice of a soldier and not of the church.
And here! This fell to my very hand when we all went to the ground
together”—and he held up a crumpled paper. “But first it is to see
whither goes this father of rebels. Come so far as the house and there
wait me, for it is better that I go alone.”
“But, Vicente—I—I’m afraid of the _duéndes_!”
“_Epa!_ Fear not, sisterling, for the goblins touch not those that are
true. Remember, it is for Spain!” And pushing her gently inside their own
doorway, and stooping to kiss her, he hurried down the street.
Lina dared not climb the noisy stairs to the deserted rooms. She crouched
in the hall, shivering, drawing the manta about her shoulders as if with
cold, but shutting her teeth bravely. The shuffle of Vicente’s broken
shoes had already died away; and it seemed as if the whole world had
slipped past with him. Ages and ages she waited, till she was ready to
scream with fear; and then she sprang nervously to the door at a sound in
the street. It was only a patrol shambling over the crazy cobblestones,
but as it drew nigh she was seized with a sudden access of fear. Between
them stumbled Vicente, a heavy hand on either shoulder.
“Let him go!” she cried, rushing upon the soldiers as if to strike them
down. “He is my little brother, and has done nothing. Only we found the——”
“_Cállete_, Lina!” spoke up Vicente sharply. “If only the señor official
will be so good as to take her with me to the general—for she is quite
alone, señor.”
“It is well—come on, little Amazon!” said the officer, from whom war and
starvation had not dried up all Andalusian humor. “Snails! But I thought
she was to capture us! March!”
IV.
General Rodil pushed back his chair from the table, and his grave face
took on a puzzled look as the officer and his odd prisoners were ushered
into the room. “The general who never sleeps,” they called him—for at
whatever hour of day or night, he was always appearing suddenly here,
there, everywhere. Well masked was the faint heart into whose depths
those gray eyes did not bore; tiny indeed the slackness that escaped
them. Well might the ignorant invest him with a superstitious terror—this
man who was really the garrison of Callao.
“_Que cosa?_” he demanded in a low, clear voice.
“_Pues, señor generál_,” said the officer, still standing at “salute.”
“This boy we found in the Street of the Pelicans, as if waiting for some
one. And when we searched him _this_ was in his shirt.”
Rodil uncrumpled the paper and bent to read it by the flickering candle.
Suddenly his haggard face turned even paler, and then a dark flush rose
as he sprang to his feet and took two steps forward. As suddenly he
stopped, and threw at the children a glance that seemed fairly to burn
them.
“Are there none but traitors?” he cried, with a choke. “Even to the
babies! And now, my Ponce de Leon!” for the smuggled note read:
“_Todo listo. No mas se espera al comandante rúbio. Arregla todo de San
Rafael._”
[All ready. Only waiting the blonde commander. Fix everything in the
castle of San Rafael.]
The “blonde commander” could be none other than Rodil’s dear friend and
trusted officer, in charge of one of the twin castles—a man whom he had
“made” in rank and fortune. The general’s face seemed of stone as he
demanded:
“Boy! From where is this letter?”
“_Vueséncia_, I picked it up from a fraile who fell over us in the
street; and because he had been rough to my little sister, I followed to
see where he would go.”
“Carefully! For when it is between the king’s honor and traitors, even
youth counts not! What should a fraile be doing with letters of the
insurgents?”
“For _that_, I think he was no fraile,” answered Vicente sturdily,
holding his head erect, though his knees wavered; and he told all the
happenings of the evening, while Lina nodded an earnest corroboration.
Before he was done, something of the hardness had faded from Rodil’s face.
“Your _cuenta_ runs well,” he said at last. “Give me proof and I will
fill your hat with gold. But if not—if you are old enough to be a
traitor, you are old enough to die one!”
Vicente’s ragged shoulders squared still straighter. “When I _ask_ you
for money, señor _generál_!” he replied proudly. “We are of Spain, and
for _that_ I do it. He that made as priest went not to the convento, but
into the house 74, Street of the Viceroy.”
“_Hola!_ _Señor teniente_, take twenty men in the instant and round-up
that house, bringing hither all that are in it; and that everything be
searched. And send the teniente Ochoa with another file to bring hither
prisoner the Comandante Ponce de Leon. _Corriendo!_”
For twenty minutes “the sleepless general” walked the room—sometimes
apparently unconscious of the children, and suddenly flinging at them
some question, sharp and searching as a javelin. Then there were
reluctant feet upon the stairs.
“It has to report, your Excellency,” said Lieutenant Ochoa, “that the
Señor Comandante Ponce de Leon is not to be found. Since the first dusk
no one has seen him.”
Rodil struck his forehead; but before he seemed able to command his
voice, there was another commotion outside, and a group of officers
bustled into the room.
“What is this, _mi generál_?” cried one of them angrily. “Here we are
dragged from the house like criminals! What means this rat-catcher of a
lieutenant?”
“Little by little, gentlemen mine!” answered Rodil in a suspiciously
quiet tone. “You will excuse the molestation for my sake, since I ordered
it. And now, I beg you, have the goodness to tell me of a fraile who
entered your house half an hour ago.”
“_Fraile_, señor _generál_? No priest has entered the house,” answered
the first speaker, sharply. He was a tall, handsome officer, upon whom
even the shabbiness of a uniform that had seen twenty-one months’
fighting sat becomingly. “I think your Excellency might have asked the
question with less violence to us.”
“Ill it fits me to show discourtesy to such loyal gentlemen,” Rodil
replied, with an added dryness. “And I am glad to learn that no priest
has been among you—for I fancied, my Señor Captain Baca, that he might
be converting you to the brotherhood. You would half pass for a fraile
yourself, now that I see”—and in spite of himself the general’s voice
rose ever so little—“the moustache which was the pride of the company is
shorn off since midday.”
“_Pues_—your Excellency,” stammered the tall captain. “For the
heat—and—and—since time hangs heavily on our hands, I shaved for a joke.”
“Well edged is thy humor, captain mine!” The ironic respect had given
place to the contemptuous _tu_. “_Ójala_ we had earlier guessed thy wit,
to ease the weariness of the siege. Tell me, boy—_is this thy fraile?_”
The question came like a bullet.
“I know not, Excellency,” said Vicente, hesitatingly. “Of that size he
was, but his face I saw not well.”
“But it is his voice!” cried Lina impetuously. “And had he the hood, I
would know if it is his face—for the _capucho_ covered him well.”
“Little animals!” growled the captain, starting as if to spring at them.
But then, commanding himself, he said sullenly: “Until what will your
Excellency carry this farce? Am I to be _burlado_ by lying brats of the
street? With these gentlemen I have passed the time since I came off
duty.”
“It is true, señor _generál_,” declared the others, who had nervously
watched their spokesman, the ranking officer among them. “We have all
been together since——”
“_Alto!_” interrupted Rodil sternly. “You must bring me better witnesses
than your tongues. For by my faith, I would see this joke of the
moustache played through. _Sargento_, search this captain of the wits.”
“For pity, _mi generál_! Shame me not thus!” And the officer fell on his
knees.
For answer, Rodil only stretched his lean finger grimly. The sergeant,
awkward at disrespectful approach to his superior, laid his hand upon the
arm of the risen captain, and in another moment lay sprawling upon the
floor. Baca was a young and muscular man; and almost in the same motion
with the blow he sprang at the window.
The dumbfounded privates had no time to reach him; but Vicente, in a
flash of rage, flung himself at his legs, and the tall officer crashed
upon the floor. Before he could rise a dozen soldiers were upon him, and
Rodil, his slender sword quivering at half-arm, faced the four other
officers.
“There is nothing in his pockets, Excellency,” announced the sergeant.
“_Claro!_ For he who changes his face so soon can as well change his
clothing. In his shoes, then.”
There was a renewed scuffle; but in a moment a cry of exultation—and the
sergeant dragged a thin, soiled paper from Baca’s stocking.
“Still given to jests, _capitan mio_—that you walk on the mines which are
to blow the rebels up at the next assault. It is a clever diagram, and
Salom would have paid thee well for it, I warrant. _Hola!_”
For the door let in four soldiers and their petty officer; and over the
arm of the latter hung the long gray-brown habit of a Franciscan friar.
“It was between the mattresses of the señor _capitan_ Baca,” announced
the sergeant. “And as for these little ones, I am their witness—for to my
patrol passed first a tall fraile, and soon came running this womanling
after him for her brother, who was very sick.”
“And the boy is he to whom I carried a cup of broth—and I found him well
fevered,” spoke up one of the soldiers, scared at his own thick voice
before the grim general.
“It is enough,” interrupted Rodil. “I give thanks to God that there are
patriots yet—and eyes in them, too. These children stay with me. For the
Señor Captain Baca, and for these gentlemen who ‘were with him all the
time,’” he continued with grim terseness, “sunrise against the wall of
San Felipe. Until then, your heads answer for theirs!”
* * * * *
That is all there is to tell of the habit of the fraile—except that it
served for a shroud to the traitor who had masqueraded in it.
But already was the beginning of the end. The desertion of the Comandante
Ponce de Leon, who had dropped over the wall and fled to the enemy, gave
to the insurgents plans and information of fatal importance. Then Riera,
the other comandante, turned traitor too, and delivered to the foe the
castle of San Rafael.
Resistance was no longer possible, even to “the Spartan of Peru.” On
the 11th of January he entered into correspondence which ended with the
honorable and advantageous capitulation of Callao, January 23, 1826. Of
the original 2,800 soldiers only three hundred and seventy-six remained,
and a scant seven hundred citizens of all the former thousands. There was
little left save glory—but of that so proud a share as was earned by no
other man of either side in the war of the colonial rebellion. For that
matter, history has few pages like the resistance of Spain’s last fort in
America.
When Rodil, in full uniform, boarded the English frigate “Briton” to
sail away to the long years and high honors that awaited him in Spain,
he carried with the banners of his favorite regiments a boy and girl who
seemed less embarrassed by their fine new dress than by the attention
which everywhere greeted “the little orphans of Callao.”
The Great Magician.
The Great Magician.