Methuen said: “Look here, sir! You’ve got us, there is no mistake about
that. It seems to me you’ve two courses before you, and they are these:
Either, you can kill us, more or less barbarously, in which case you
will raise a most pestilential hunt at your heels; or, you can put us up
to ransom. Now neither Calvert here, nor myself, are rich men; but if
you choose to let us go with sound skins, we’re prepared to pay ten
thousand Chilian dollars apiece for our passports. Now, does that strike
you?”
Garcia finished rolling his cigarette, and lit it with care. He inhaled
a deep breath of smoke.
“Señor,” he said (the words coming out from between his white teeth with
little puffs of vapour), “you do not appear to understand. You fight as
a soldier of fortune, and I am merely in arms as a patriot. I am no
huckster to traffic men’s lives for money, nor am I a timorous fool to
be scared into robbing a culprit of his just dues.”
“Very well, then,” said Methuen, “murder the pair of us.”
Garcia smiled unpleasantly. “You may be a very brave man,” said he, “but
you are not a judicious one. To a judge less just than myself this
insolence might have added something to your punishment; but as it is I
shall overlook what you have said, and only impose the penalty I had
determined upon before you spoke.”
He lifted his thin yellow fingers, and drew a fresh breath of smoke.
Then he waved the cigarette towards the magnolia tree in the centre of
the _plaza_. “You see that bough which juts out towards the chapel?”
“It’s made for a gallows,” said Methuen.
“Precisely,” said the guerilla, “and it will be used as one inside ten
minutes. I shall string one of you up by the neck, to dangle there
between heaven and earth. The other man shall have a rifle and
cartridges, and if, standing where he does now, he can cut with a bullet
the rope with which his friend is hanged, then you shall both go free.”
“I hear you say it,” said Methuen. “In other words you condemn one of us
to be strangled slowly without chance of reprieve. But what guarantee
have we that you will not slit the second man’s throat after you have
had your sport out of him?”
Garcia sprang to his feet with a stamp of passion, and the chair rolled
over backwards. “You foul adventurer!” he cried. “You paid man-killer!”
and then he broke off with a bitter “Pah!” and folded his arms, and for
a minute held silence till he got his tongue in hand again. “Señor,” he
said coldly, “my country’s wrongs may break my heart, but they can never
make me break my word. I may be a hunted guerilla, but I still remain a
gentleman.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Methuen.
“We will now,” continued Garcia icily, “find out which of you two will
play which part. Afterwards I will add another condition which may lend
more skill to what follows. I will not coerce you. Kindly choose between
yourselves which of you will hang and which will shoot.”
My comrade shrugged his shoulders. “I like you, Calvert, old man,” said
he, “but I’m not prepared to dance on nothing for you.”
“It would be simplest to toss for exit,” I said.
“Precisely; but, my dear fellow, I have both hands trussed up, and no
coin.”
“Pray let me assist you,” said Garcia. “Señor Calvert, may I trouble you
for an expression of opinion?”
He leant over the edge of the _piazza_, and span a dollar into the air.
I watched it with a thumping heart, and when for an instant it paused, a
dazzling splash of brightness against the red-tiled roof, I cried:
“Heads!”
The coin fell with a faint thud in the dust a yard from my feet.
“Well?” said Methuen.
“I congratulate you, old fellow. I swing.”
He frowned and made no reply. Garcia’s voice broke the silence.
“_Bueno_, Señor Methuen,” he said. “I advise you to shoot straight, or
you will not get home even now. You remember I said there was still
another condition. Well, here you are: you must cut your friend down
with a bullet before he is quite dead, or I’ll string you up beside
him.”
Methuen let up a short laugh. “Remember what I said about that fellow in
‘the Mikado,’ Calvert? You see where the ‘humour’ comes in? We’ve had
that coin spun for nothing. You and I must change positions.”
“Not at all. I take what I’ve earned.”
“But I say yes. It works this way: I took it that the man who was
hanging stood a delicate chance anyway, and I didn’t feel generous
enough to risk it. But now the Señor here has put in the extra clause,
the situation is changed altogether. You aren’t a brilliant shot, old
man, but you may be able to cut me down with a bullet if you remember
what you’re firing for, and shoot extra straight. But it’s a certain
thing that I couldn’t do it if I blazed away till Doomsday. The utmost I
could manage would be to fluke a pellet into your worthy self. So you
see I must wear the hemp, and you must apply your shoulder to the rifle
butt. Laugh, you fool,” he added in English. “Grin, and say something
funny, or these brutes will think we care for them.”
But I was incapable of further speech. I could have gibed at the
prospect of being hanged myself, but the horror of this other ordeal
turned me sick and dumb. And at what followed I looked on mutely.
There was a well at one side of the plaza, and the earless man went and
robbed the windlass of its rope. With clumsy landsman’s fingers he
formed a noose, took it to the great magnolia tree, and threw the loose
end over the projecting branch. The bell of the little white chapel
opposite went on tolling gravely, and they marched my friend up to his
fate over the sun-baked dust. They passed a thong round his ankles; the
earless man fitted the noose to his throat; a dozen of the guerillas
with shouts and laughter laid hold of the hauling part of the line; and
then a voice from behind fell upon my ear. Garcia was speaking to me.
With a strain I dragged my eyes away from the glare of the _plaza_, and
listened. He was smiling wickedly.
“——, and so your pluck has oozed away?” he was saying, as the cigarette
smoke billowed up from between the white walls of his teeth. “Well, of
course, if you do not care for the game, you can throw up your hand at
once. You’ve only to say the word, and you can be dangling on that bough
there inside a couple of minutes. It’s quite strong enough to carry more
fruit than it will bear just now. But it’s rather hard on your friend
not to try——”
My wits came to me again. “You dolt!” I cried; “how can I shoot with my
arms trussed up like this? If the whole thing is not a mockery, cut me
adrift and give me a rifle.”
He beckoned to one of his men, and the fellow came up and cut off the
lashings from my wrists and elbows; and then, with a sour smile, he
motioned to some of the others, who drew near and held their weapons at
the ready. “I dare wager, Señor Calvert,” he said, “that if you’d me for
a mark you would not score a miss. So I wish to insure that you do not
shoot in this direction.” He raised his voice, and shouted across the
baking sunlight: “Quite ready here, _amigos_. So up with the target.”
* * * * *
Now up to this point I am free to own that since our capture I had cut a
pretty poor figure. I had not whined, but at the same time I had not
seen my way to put on Methuen’s outward show of careless brazen courage.
But when I watched the guerillas tighten on the rope and sway him up
till his stretched-out feet swung a couple of hand-spans above the
ground, then my coolness returned to me, and my nerves set like icicles
in their sockets. He was sixty yards away, and at that distance, the
well-rope dwindled to the bigness of a shoemaker’s thread. Moreover, the
upper two-thirds of it was almost invisible, because it hung before a
background of shadows. But the eighteen inches above my poor friend’s
head stood out clear and distinct against the white walls of the chapel
beyond, and as it swayed to pulsing of the body beneath, it burnt itself
upon my eyesight till all the rest of the world was blotted out in a red
haze. I never knew before how thoroughly a man could concentrate
himself.
They handed me the rifle, loaded and cocked. It was a single-shot
Winchester, and I found out afterwards, though I did not know it then,
that either through fiendish wish to further hamper my aim, or through
pure forgetfulness, they had left the sights cocked up at three hundred
yards. But that did not matter; the elevation was a detail of minor
import; and besides, I was handling the weapon as a game shot fires,
with head up, and eyes glued on the mark, and rifle-barrel following the
eyes by instinct alone. You must remember that I had no stationary mark
to aim at. My poor comrade was writhing and swaying at the end of his
tether, and the well-rope swung hither and thither like some contorted
pendulum.
Once I fired, twice I fired, six times, ten times, and still the rope
remained uncut, and the bullets rattled harmlessly against the white
walls of the chapel beyond. With the eleventh shot came the tinkle of
broken glass, and the bell, after a couple of hurried nervous clangs,
ceased tolling altogether. With the thirteenth shot a shout went up from
the watching crowd. I had stranded the rope, and the body which dangled
beneath the magnolia tree began slowly to gyrate.
Then came a halt in the firing. I handed the Winchester back to the
fellow who was reloading, but somehow or other the exploded cartridge
had jammed in the breach. I danced and raged before him in my passion of
hurry, and the cruel brutes round yelled in ecstasies of merriment. Only
Garcia did not laugh. He re-rolled a fresh cigarette, with his thin
yellow fingers, and leisurely rocked himself in the split-cane chair.
The man could not have been more unmoved if he had been overlooking a
performance of Shakespeare.
At last I tore the Winchester from the hands of the fellow who was
fumbling with it, and clawed at the jammed cartridge myself, breaking my
nails and smearing the breech-lock with blood. If it had been welded
into one solid piece, it could scarcely have been firmer. But the thrill
of the moment gave my hands the strength of pincers. The brass case
moved from side to side; it began to crumple; and I drew it forth and
hurled it from me, a mere ball of shapeless, twisted metal. Then one of
the laughing brutes gave me another cartridge, and once more I
shouldered the loaded weapon.
The mark was easier now. The struggles of my poor friend had almost
ceased, and though the well-rope still swayed, its movements were
comparatively rhythmical, and to be counted upon. I snapped down the
sights, put the butt-plate to my shoulder, and cuddled the stock with my
cheek. Here for the first time was a chance of something steadier than a
snap-shot.
I pressed home the trigger as the well-rope reached one extremity of its
swing. Again a few loose ends sprang from the rope, and again the body
began slowly to gyrate. But was it Methuen I was firing to save, or was
I merely wasting shot to cut down a mass of cold dead clay?
I think that more agony was compressed for me into a few minutes then
than most men meet with in a lifetime. Even the onlooking guerillas were
so stirred that for the first time their gibing ceased, and two of them
of their own accord handed me cartridges. I slipped one home and closed
the breech-lock. The perspiration was running in a stream from my chin.
Again I fired. Again the well-rope was snipped, and I could see the
loosened strands ripple out as a snake unwraps itself from a branch.
One more shot. God in heaven, I missed! Why was I made to be a murderer
like this?
Garcia’s voice came to me coldly. “Your last chance, Señor. I can be
kept waiting here no longer. And I think you are wasting time. Your
friend seems to have quitted us already.”
Another cartridge. I sank to one knee and rested my left elbow on the
other. The plaza was hung in breathless silence. Every eye was strained
to see the outcome of the shot. The men might be inhuman in their
cruelty, but they were human enough in their curiosity.
The body span to one end of its swing: I held my fire. It swung back,
and the rifle muzzle followed. Like some mournful pendulum it passed
through the air, and then a glow of certainty filled me like a drink. I
knew I could not miss that time; and I fired; and the body, in a limp
and shapeless heap, fell to the ground.
With a cry I threw the rifle from me and raced across the sunlit dust.
Not an arm was stretched out to stop me. Only when I had reached my
friend and loosened that horrible ligature from his neck, did I hear
voices clamouring over my fate.
“And now this other Inglese, your excellency,” the earless man said.
“Shall we shoot him from here, or shall we string him up in the other’s
place?”
But the answer was not what the fellow expected. Garcia replied to him
in a shriek of passion. “You foul, slaughtering brute,” he cried,
“another offer like that and I’ll pistol you where you stand. You heard
me pass my word: do you dream that I could break it? They have had their
punishment, and if we see one another again, the meeting will be none of
my looking for. We leave this _puebla_ in five minutes. See to your
duties. Go.”
The words came to me dully through the heated air. I was almost mad with
the thought that my friend was dead, and that the fault was mine,
_mine_, mine alone!
I listened for his breaths; they did not come. I felt for a heart-throb;
there was not so much as a flutter. His neck was seared by a ghastly
ring. His face was livid. And yet I would not admit even then that he
was dead. With a cry I seized his arms, and moved them first above his
head till he looked like a man about to dive, and then clapped them
against his sides, repeating this an infinite number of times, praying
that the airs I drew through his lungs might blow against some
smouldering spark of humanity, and kindle it once more into life.
The perspiration rolled from me; my mouth was as a sandpit; the heavy
scent of the magnolia blossoms above sickened me with its strength; the
sight departed from my eyes. I could see nothing beyond a small circle
of the hot dust around, which waved and danced in the sunlight, and the
little green lizards which came and looked at me curiously, and forgot
that I was human.
And then, of a sudden, my comrade gave a sob, and his chest began to
heave of itself without my laborious aid. And after that for a while I
knew very little more. The sun-baked dust danced more wildly in the
sunshine, the lizards changed to darker colours, the light went out, and
when next I came to my senses Methuen was sitting up with one hand
clutching at his throat, looking at me wildly.
“What has happened?” he gasped. “I thought I was dead, and Garcia had
hanged me. Garcia——No one is here. The _puebla_ seems deserted. Calvert,
tell me.”
“They have gone,” I said. “We are alive. We will get away from here as
soon as you can walk.”
He rose to his feet, swaying. “I can walk now. But what about you?”
“I am an old man,” I said, “wearily old. In the last two hours I have
grown a hundred years. But I think I can walk also. Yes, look, I am
strong. Lean on my arm. Do you see that broken window in the chapel?
When I fired through that, the bell stopped tolling.”
“Let us go inside the chapel for a minute before we leave the village,”
said Methuen. “We have had a very narrow escape, old man. I—I—feel
thankful.”
There was a faint smell of incense inside that little white-walled
chapel. The odour of it lingers by me still.