slightly altered his tactics; and, while instructing his artillery to
persistently shell every bit of timber or other cover that could
possibly afford concealment to the defenders, deployed his infantry into
a column of open order and threw out a strong firing line, with
instructions to them to advance, taking advantage of every bit of cover
that they could find, and shoot at every puff of smoke that they could
see. As on the occasion of the previous attack, many of the Spanish
shells failed to burst; but, notwithstanding this, a few casualties now
began to occur among Jack's party of defenders, and he therefore decided
that the moment had arrived for bringing his twelve-pounder into action.
This gun, accordingly, which Jack had by this time got mounted on a
cleverly-constructed and carefully-masked earth battery, now opened fire
upon the enemy's artillery; and as Singleton had personally laid the
piece, and knew the exact range to practically an inch, he was lucky
enough to dismount and put out of action one of the Spanish guns with
his first shot, while his second swept away every one of the
artillerymen from the gun next to it. His third and fourth shots did
comparatively little damage; but his fifth shell struck one of the guns
fair upon the muzzle, at the precise moment when it was being fired,
with the result that both shells burst simultaneously, completely
shattering the fore part of the gun, as far back as the trunnions, and
scattering death and destruction broadcast among the rest of the
artillerymen. But by this time the Spanish gunners had managed to
locate the position of the weapon that was punishing them so fearfully,
and from that moment they devoted their attention exclusively to it,
with the result that shells began to drop thick and fast about Jack's
ears, smothering and half-blinding him with dust, and occasionally
peppering him pretty smartly with the pebbles and fragments of stone
that were mingled with the earth of which his battery was composed.
Still he gallantly maintained the unequal fight, and actually succeeded
in disabling four out of the six guns ere a splinter of shell struck him
on the temple and knocked him senseless. When he recovered, he found
that darkness was closing down; that he was in his own room and on his
own bed, whither he had been brought by an ambulance party of his men;
and that Mama Faquita, poor Senorita Isolda's nurse, had taken him in
charge, cleaned and dressed his wound, and was looking after him
generally. An intermittent crackle of rifle fire told him that the
attack was still being pressed, but Faquita informed him that there had
been very few serious casualties thus far, and that all was going well.
The old woman would fain have kept him confined to his room; but Jack
knew that with the darkness would come the real danger, and despite his
nurse's vehement protests he not only rose from his bed, but returned to
the spot which his contingent of men were still defending.
Arrived there, he soon found that events had been happening during his
absence. In the first place, it appeared that the remainder of the
gun's crew had continued to work the twelve-pounder, and, after firing
away a perfectly ruinous quantity of ammunition, had actually succeeded
in disabling one of the two remaining Spanish guns; soon after
accomplishing which feat, the twelve-pounder itself had been dismounted
and put out of action by a shell which had completely destroyed the
carriage and at the same time had slain four of the gunners. Whereupon
a little party of sharpshooters, remembering the tactics that Jack had
adopted during the previous attack upon the estate, had exclusively
devoted themselves to a repetition of them, by first of all
exterminating the entire crew of the remaining Spanish gun, and then
rendering it impossible for anyone else to approach the gun to work it.
Meanwhile, the officer in command, finding it useless to try to do
anything with his men, exposed as they were upon the open plain, had
withdrawn them out of gunshot and gone into camp. It was clear that he
proposed to wait until the darkness came to veil his movements.
Jack quite anticipated that the first thing which the Spaniards would
attempt would be to reconnoitre the entire position, with the object of
finding a way to get across the river; and he knew that there were only
two points at which this feat of crossing was possible, namely, those
which Carlos and he were defending. He therefore scribbled a little
note to his friend, warning the latter what to guard against, and
dispatched it by a negro messenger, whom he also instructed to
afterwards call at the house and bring from thence a pair of binocular
glasses which were to be found on a table in his (Jack's) bedroom.
By the time that the messenger returned with the glasses it had grown
intensely dark: for to the natural obscurity of night there was added
the further obscuration caused by the smoke with which the atmosphere
was laden; while, to still further intensify the blackness, a heavy
thunderstorm was working up against the wind, the combined result being
a darkness in which it was literally impossible to see one's hand before
one's face. Jack was at first inclined to anathematise the darkness;
but when at length he was enabled to fully realise the intensity of it
he felt much more disposed to bless it, for, having moved about half a
dozen paces away from his post, and experienced some difficulty in
finding his way back, he began to comfort himself with the reflection
that the enemy, utterly strange to the country as they were, could do
nothing until light enough should come to at least enable them to see
where to put their feet.
Yet Jack was mistaken in so supposing, for as the time went on he became
aware of certain sounds out there on the plain which seemed to indicate
pretty unmistakably that, despite the darkness, the Spaniards were
busily employed. When the moaning and sighing of the night wind among
the branches of the trees, the rustle of the bamboos, and the clash of
the palm leaves subsided for an instant, allowing more distant sounds to
reach his ears, he intermittently caught what seemed to be the sounds of
picks and shovels at work at no very great distance; moreover, there
were lights flitting about the distant camp, and much movement there,
though what it portended Jack was quite unable to discover, even with
the help of his night glasses. At length, however, the period of
darkness came to an end, for sheet lightning began to flicker and quiver
among the densely packed clouds low down on the western horizon, at
first for an instant only and at comparatively long intervals, but soon
increasing greatly in vividness and rapidity: and then the young
Englishman perceived, to his disgust and alarm, that the Spanish
soldiers had availed themselves of the obscurity not only to entrench a
strong body of riflemen to right and left of their own end of the ruined
bridge, but also to advance a long, light platform, or gangway, mounted
on the wheels of one of the disabled field pieces, which they seemed to
be preparing to throw across the gap in the bridge as soon as they could
get sufficient light to enable them to run it into position; indeed,
they were actually engaged in moving it forward at the very moment when
Jack discovered its existence.
To bring up his men, and place them in a position among the bamboos
which would enable them to frustrate this bold attempt to span the river
was the work of but a minute or two for Jack; then he immediately opened
a hot fire upon the working party who were engaged in moving forward the
gangway. But no sooner had he done this than he found how seriously the
conditions had changed for the worse during those two hours of total
darkness; for now the Spaniards who had established themselves in the
trenches were so close at hand that the cover of the bamboos was no
longer an efficient defence, and casualties among the defenders became
disconcertingly frequent. Furthermore, it soon appeared that the
Spaniards had got two strong hauling parties sheltered behind a couple
of low earthworks, and that these people, by means of two stout ropes
attached to the gangway, were steadily and with much skill hauling the
thing toward the required position. Jack soon saw, however, that it
would be quite impossible for the hauling parties to haul it far enough
forward to enable it to be dropped into position across the gap in the
ruined bridge: a moment must come, sooner or later, when the concealed
men who were dragging upon the ropes would be obliged to leave their
cover and push the platform the remaining portion of the distance; and
he quickly determined to reserve his energies and his ammunition until
that moment.
The time quickly arrived. A single bugle blast appeared to be the
signal for the entrenched Spanish riflemen to concentrate their fire
upon the clump of bamboo brake wherein Jack had hidden his men, and at
the same instant about a hundred infantry-men sprang from behind their
sheltering earthwork and made a dash at the platform, their every
movement being clearly visible by the light of the vivid electric
discharges which had by this time become practically continuous. With
the utmost resolution they seized the light structure and started to run
it forward toward the gap in the bridge; but--Jack having by this time
instilled into his dusky troops the virtue of coolness and deliberation
in fighting--the next moment they were swept back to cover by a
perfectly withering fire that placed nearly half of them _hors de
combat_.
Meanwhile sounds of hot and sustained firing had gradually breezed up in
the direction of the position which Carlos was defending, and ere long
it became evident that there also the attack was being pressed; and
although the sounds of strife thitherward were soon almost swallowed up
in the long, continuous crash and crackle of the rifle fire that was
being maintained by the entrenched troops upon Jack's party, the young
Englishman could not avoid the suspicion that his friend was being
somewhat hardly pressed; for whenever a momentary lull occurred in the
firing in front of him, Jack could not only hear that the volume of
firing in Carlos' direction was fully maintained, but it seemed to him
that it was steadily increasing! And presently a breathless messenger
arrived from Carlos, begging Jack to spare the former as many men as he
possibly could, to help in driving back a body of Spanish troops who had
actually succeeded in forcing a passage across the river! In response
to this request Jack of course instantly detached every man he could
possibly spare, retaining less than fifty to aid him in defending his
own position: but the news which he had just received made it perfectly
clear to him that the defence was practically at an end; for if Carlos
had been unable to prevent the Spaniards from forcing the passage of the
river, it was in the highest degree unlikely that he would be able to
stem the rush, much less drive it back. Jack at once began to consider
what was the best course to pursue under the new conditions; and, as he
thought, a plan began to gradually unfold itself in his mind. The
estate, he felt, was lost, for if only a sufficient number of the
Spaniards could once get across the river to hold Carlos' force at bay
for five minutes, by the end of that time a reinforcement would have
crossed strong enough to sweep the defenders out of existence: nothing,
therefore, in that case could save the estate from destruction, but it
might be possible to visit upon the destroyers a heavy retribution.
Jack's mind was thus occupied when another messenger arrived from Carlos
to tell him that all was lost, and that Carlos, with the remnant of his
party--with whom were Don Hermoso and his wife--was retreating up the
valley, hotly pursued by a strong party of Spanish soldiers; while other
Spaniards were in possession of the house and the several outbuildings,
which they were obviously preparing to set on fire: and the message
concluded by requesting Jack to follow with his party, and join the
fugitives, if possible.
Now it happened that Carlos' retreat up the valley chimed in excellently
well with the scheme which was beginning to take shape within Jack's
brain; the latter therefore lost no time in collecting together his
little band of riflemen and leading them through the wood, round by the
rear of the house and outbuildings, and along a bush path, to a spot at
which he could intercept and join the retreating party, and at which,
moreover, owing to the nature of the ground, he believed he could pretty
effectually check the pursuit, and cover the retreat of the main body of
the defenders. As he pressed forward at the head of his own scanty
contingent the sounds of occasional shots told him that Carlos was still
maintaining a good running fight: but, as the path which he was
following constituted a short cut to the spot which he desired to reach,
he soon left those sounds in his rear, and, pressing rapidly forward, at
length arrived at the main path; and, aided by the lightning, which was
now flashing incessantly, contrived to place his men in ambush behind a
number of big boulders that studded the almost perpendicular sides of
the bush-clad hill, just as the leading files of the retreating party
came into view round a bend of the path.
Jack saw with satisfaction that the retreat was being conducted in good
order. First came a body of some fifty well-armed negroes, who were
keeping a wary eye about them, to guard against the possibility of being
ambuscaded by some portion of the enemy who might have pushed on and got
in front of them--although such a thing was scarcely likely to have
happened; then came the Senora, in a hammock suspended from a pole borne
on the shoulders of two stout negroes, with Don Hermoso and Senor
Calderon walking, one on either side of her; and behind these again came
the main body of the retreating defenders, with the two Maxim guns in
their midst, and with Carlos bringing up the rear in charge of a party
of about twenty riflemen, who were covering the retreat by frequently
facing round and exchanging shots with the pursuers. As these last came
into view, Jack rose from his place of ambush--at the imminent risk of
being shot by his friends before they could recognise him--and made the
fact of his presence and that of his party known, bidding the others
pass on and leave the heaviest of the covering work to him. Their
losses, Jack could see, had been terribly heavy, and they looked weary
to death with their long hours of fighting: yet he was gratified to
observe that, with very few exceptions, the men carried themselves as
resolutely as ever, and displayed the effect of his training by taking
the fullest advantage of every particle of cover, dodging behind rocks,
boulders, trunks of trees, and clumps of bush; taking as careful aim as
though they were shooting in a match; re-loading, and then flitting from
cover to cover to take up a fresh position.
The rear-guard under Carlos had not passed much more than a hundred
yards ahead when the leading files of the pursuers appeared round the
bend of the path, breathless, from the fact that the retreating party
had no sooner disappeared round the elbow than the Spaniards had broken
into a run, taking advantage of the circumstance that they were for a
moment out of sight of the enemy to shorten the distance between
themselves and the pursued. As the vanguard of some twenty pursuing
Spaniards dashed round the bend they dropped on one knee and raised
their rifles to their shoulders, availing themselves of the lightning
flashes to take aim at the little crowd of retreating figures
imperfectly seen here and there through the overhanging and swaying
branches.
The Cruise of the Thetis--by Harry Collingwood
CHAPTER NINETEEN.
TRAPPED!
Never for a moment did they suspect the existence of the little body of
men concealed among the ferns and undergrowth and boulders, some sixty
feet up the precipitous side of the hill round the base of which they
were winding, until, before the quickest of them could pull trigger,
there rang out above them an irregular volley, aimed with such deadly
precision that every man of them went down before it, and were there
found, blocking the path, when their comrades arrived upon the scene a
minute or two later. As these in turn swung round the bend and came
upon the prostrate forms, they naturally halted and proceeded to examine
the bodies, with the view of separating the living from the dead; with
the result that there was almost instantly a crowd of about a hundred
Spanish soldiers bunched together in the narrow path, some of them
performing ambulance work, but the majority simply waiting for an
opportunity to pass. This was altogether too good a chance to be
neglected; and, waiting only until the jostling crowd in the pathway was
at its thickest, Jack raised a whistle to his lips and blew a single,
shrill note.
The call was instantly answered by a crashing volley from the concealed
negroes, which took such murderous effect upon the crowd below that
scarcely a dozen men were left upon their feet; and those who were
untouched were so utterly demoralised that they incontinently turned
tail and retreated upon the main body, shouting: "Back! back! There is
an ambuscade round the bend of the road; and we shall be slaughtered to
a man if we go forward!" Whereupon the Spanish officer in charge of the
pursuit--who was prudently remaining with the main body, instead of
pushing forward with the vanguard--at once halted his men, and proceeded
to enquire what all the confusion was about. The truth was that,
finding himself on strange ground, following a narrow, winding, bush
path, with a deepening ravine on his right, and a precipitously steep
hillside on his left, overgrown with ferns and scrub thick enough to
give perfect cover to an unlimited number of men; and with a furious
thunderstorm raging, which promised to speedily develop into something
very considerably worse than what it already was, he had no stomach for
continuing the pursuit, and was only too glad of an excuse to call a
halt and allow the enemy to go upon his way without further molestation.
On the other hand, Jack, having satisfied himself that he had at least
checked the pursuit, gave the word to his men to move forward; and,
taking a short cut over the spur of the hill, they soon found themselves
once more in the path, and close upon the heels of their companions.
As Jack's party presently overtook what had originally been the rear-
guard, Carlos dropped into the rear and joined his friend, and the two
youths seized the opportunity to effect an exhaustive interchange of
news, and to relate to each other the most stirring episodes in the
defence of their respective positions. The young Cuban explained the
means adopted by the Spaniards to force a passage across the river, and
how he had eventually been overpowered and forced to retire; and then
Singleton unfolded to Carlos his views upon the subject of how to deal
with the enemy, could the latter be induced to follow them to a certain
spot up among the hills which Jack described and Carlos remembered.
This spot they were now rapidly approaching. It consisted of a nearly
straight defile, about half a mile in length, with a bend in its middle
just sufficient to shut out the view of one end of it from the other.
This defile was simply a cleft in the stupendous mass of rock that
formed a great spur of the mountain on the left-hand side of the path,
and was undoubtedly the result of some terrific natural convulsion of
prehistoric times, which had rent the living rock asunder, leaving a
vertical wall on either side, the indentations in the one wall
accurately corresponding to the projections on the other. At the lower
extremity--that is to say, the extremity which the fugitives were now
approaching--access to the defile was gained by means of a sort of
portal, less than six feet wide, the space between the rock walls thence
narrowing gradually to about four feet, and thus forming a kind of
passage about fifty feet long; beyond which the rock walls gradually
receded from each other until, at the other extremity of it, the defile
was nearly a hundred feet wide. The walls were unscalable throughout
the entire length of the defile, which abruptly ended in a rough and
torn rock face some two hundred feet in height. This rock face could
scarcely be described as unscalable, because it was so rough that,
although practically vertical, the projections on it were so numerous
and pronounced that an active man could climb it without much
difficulty, if uninterfered with; but if the summit and flanks happened
to be held by even a small force of men armed with rifles, to climb it
would at once become an absolute impossibility. Outside the entrance
there was a small, open, grassy space, backed by dense scrub; and Jack's
plan was that Carlos, with about fifty men, should enter the defile,
pass through it to its upper extremity and scale the rock face there,
holding it against the Spaniards, and thus checking their further
advance, while Jack, and the remainder of the negroes, with the two
Maxims, should secrete themselves in the scrub and remain in hiding
until the entire Spanish force had passed into the defile, when they
would emerge and block the entrance with the two Maxims, thus bottling
up the Spaniards and compelling them to surrender--or be annihilated.
By the time that Singleton had completely unfolded his plans to Carlos,
the vanguard of the fugitives had reached the entrance to the defile,
where they halted, awaiting further instructions; whereupon Carlos ran
forward and, picking his fifty men, led them through the portal, while
Jack, taking command of the remainder, caused them to carefully drag and
lift the two Maxims into concealment, obliterate all trace of the
passage of the guns into the scrub, and afterwards conceal themselves
therein--the Senora, Don Hermoso, and Senor Calderon remaining with the
party. They had scarcely hidden themselves, and removed all signs of
their presence to Jack's satisfaction, when the storm which had been
threatening for so long a time burst with terrific fury, the air being
continuously a-glimmer with the flickering and quivering of lightning
flashes, while the very ground beneath their feet seemed to quake with
the deafening, soul-shaking crash of the thunder; and the rain, breaking
loose at last, descended in such cataractal volumes that, even partially
sheltered as most of them were by the dense foliage of the scrub amid
which they cowered, every soul of them was wet to the skin in less than
a minute. And in the midst of it all, Jack, peering out from his
hiding-place a few feet from the path, saw the wretched Spanish soldiery
go splashing and squelching past, too wet, and altogether too utterly
tired and miserable apparently, to take any notice of where they were
going, and seemingly anxious only to press forward in the hope of
somewhere finding shelter.
There were about six hundred of them; and by the time that they had all
passed into the defile the storm had nearly spent itself. The rain had
ceased, the lightning flickered only occasionally, and then low down
toward the horizon; the thunder had dwindled to a low, hollow, muffled
rumbling, and the clouds overhead had broken up and were drifting fast
away, revealing a nearly full moon sailing high overhead, in the strong,
silvery light of which the saturated vegetation glittered.
As the last Spaniard disappeared within the portal, Singleton cautiously
emerged from his hiding-place, and, forcing his way through the sodden
herbage, peered round the angle of the rock, watching the movements of
the retiring foe. He waited patiently until the rearmost files had
penetrated a good hundred yards up the defile, and then he raised his
hand, waving it as a signal for his men to come forth. The next instant
the place was alive with men. Fifty willing hands dragged forth the
Maxims and planted them fair and square in the portal, pointing up the
ravine, the ammunition boxes were opened and bands of cartridges placed
in position: rifles were loaded; and ere the last of the Spaniards had
passed round the bend and out of sight every preparation to give them a
warm reception upon their return was complete.
The watchers by the portal had not very long to wait. The enemy were
not out of sight much more than ten minutes when a solitary rifle shot
cracked out at the head of the defile and came echoing down its rocky
sides; then another one; then three or four more; until at length a
brisk fusillade was proceeding, accompanied by a good deal of confused
shouting. This lasted for the best part of an hour, when there came
first a lull in the firing, and then the sound of many approaching feet,
following which a disorderly crowd of Spanish soldiers appeared doubling
down the defile, in full flight toward the entrance.