and shouted to them to halt; but so eager were the Spaniards to escape
from the punishment that had been inflicted upon them at the other end
of the defile that it was not until one of the Maxims opened fire upon
them that they could be persuaded to stay their precipitate flight. But
the sharp, thudding, hammer-like reports of the machine-gun, and the
stream of lead that began to play upon them and thin their ranks, soon
brought them to a halt, when, flinging down their arms, they cried for
quarter, which of course was at once given them. Then, Carlos' party
closing in upon them from the rear, the Spaniards were carefully
disarmed, their ammunition taken away from them, and their weapons
destroyed by being consumed in a huge bonfire, formed of dry wood
collected from the depths of the bush. And while this regrettable but
necessary act of destruction was in process of execution, Carlos and
Jack went among the prisoners, questioning them as to their number, who
was in command, upon what principle they were working, and so on.
Unfortunately they were unable to extract very much information, for it
appeared that every officer had perished, either in the attack upon the
estate, or at the far end of the defile: while the soldiers seemed
either too stupid or too ill-informed to be able to give trustworthy
replies to any of the questions asked, except that General Weyler had
gone back to Havana, and that the operations in the province of Pinar
del Rio were being conducted by Generals Bernal and Arolas, who, by
strict command of Weyler, were laying the entire country waste,
destroying every building of whatsoever description, churches included,
on the ground that they afforded possible places of refuge or shelter
for revolutionaries; mercilessly shooting down every man, woman, and
child found, on the plea that, not having obeyed General Weyler's
concentration order, they were contumacious rebels: that, in short,
where this host went they found smiling prosperity, and left behind them
a blood-stained, fire-blackened waste. The troops were not acting in
concert, or as one body, but in independent detachments, to each of
which was allotted the duty of covering a strip of country of a certain
width, which strip it was their task to ravage from end to end. The
detachment to which the duty of destroying Don Hermoso's property had
fallen had consisted of some three thousand infantry, a troop of
cavalry, and a battery of field artillery; and according to the story of
the prisoners it had suffered frightfully during the attack, the officer
in command having wasted his men most recklessly in his determination to
conquer at any cost--indeed, if they were to be believed, with the
exception of about half a squadron of cavalry, a few artillerymen, and
perhaps fifty men left behind to destroy the buildings, they were the
sole survivors of the attack and the pursuit.
The question which now presented itself to Jack and Carlos was: What
were they to do with their prisoners, now that they had them?--for that
they were a distinctly embarrassing possession was an indisputable fact.
In the first place, the unfortunate wretches were by this time
suffering acutely from hunger and thirst, but their captors had neither
food nor drink to give them; indeed, they had none wherewith to satisfy
their own pressing needs. Also, since all the buildings on the estate
were doubtless by this time utterly destroyed by fire, there was no
place in which to confine them; yet it would obviously be the height of
folly to set them free while their comrades were still in the
neighbourhood, for that would only mean that they would bring back those
comrades to complete the work which they themselves had failed to
finish. At length, after a long and anxious consultation, it was agreed
that the only possible course was to pen the Spaniards inside the
defile, keeping them there by the wholesome dread inspired by the
presence of the two Maxims and a strong band of armed men holding the
portal, under Carlos' command; that Jack, with a picked body of fifty
armed negroes, should escort Don Hermoso and the Senora back to the
house, in the hope that, somewhere among the ruins, at least a partial
shelter might be found for the unhappy lady, who, drenched to the skin,
was now threatened with a serious attack of fever; and that, after a
shelter had been found for her, Jack and his men should reconnoitre the
camp of the enemy and endeavour to learn something of their immediate
intentions.
This having been arranged, the prisoners were given to understand that
they must make themselves as comfortable as they could where they were,
for the present, and that any attempt on their part to break out would
be visited with immediate and rigorous punishment: after which Jack and
his party, accompanied by Don Hermoso and his wife, briskly stepped out
on their way down the valley, along the road by which they had so
recently come, emerging, about an hour later, into the open space that
had been occupied by the warehouses. Some of these, as well as the
whole of the negro huts, were found to be nothing but a heap of black
and smouldering ruins; while others had been set on fire, but the flames
had obviously been extinguished by the pelting rain that had fallen
during the latter part of the recent thunderstorm. Those buildings
which had happened to contain large quantities of combustible goods had
naturally suffered most severely, and were now merely a collection of
roofless, smoke-blackened walls; while those which had been empty had
suffered comparatively little damage--indeed, in one or two cases,
practically none at all, except that the doors had been broken open and
partly wrenched off their hinges. One of these was at once utilised as
a shelter for Don Hermoso's wife; and, while the negroes mounted guard
round the building, the Don and Jack hurried away toward the house, to
ascertain its condition, and, so far as the former was concerned, to
endeavour to find a change of clothing for the Senora.
At the first glimpse, the house, when they reached it, appeared to have
suffered very severely, for many of the windows were broken, and the
once immaculately white walls were streaked and blackened here and there
by fire and smoke: and when they entered the building, everything was
found in a most shocking state of confusion; the furniture was
overturned and much of it was broken, a great deal of it was
irretrievably damaged by fire, great holes had been burnt here and there
in the flooring, cupboards and bureaus had been broken open and their
contents scattered, apparently in a search for money or valuables; many
small articles of value were missing, pictures were slashed and torn,
poor Dona Isolda's grand piano had but one leg left and was otherwise a
complete wreck, and some priceless china vases and bowls that had been
the glory of the drawing-room were lying on the floor, shivered to
atoms. But a little closer inspection revealed that while an immense
amount of damage had been done--much of it through pure wantonness and
lust for destruction--the building itself was practically intact, the
roof was still weatherproof, and some of the rooms were in quite
inhabitable condition; while there were many articles of furniture and
dress, as well as many utensils of various kinds, that could still be
made serviceable. Among the inhabitable rooms were the bedroom used by
Don Hermoso and his wife, as also those usually occupied by Carlos and
Jack; indeed, it appeared as though the spoilers had confined their
destructive efforts almost entirely to the front part of the house.
Under these circumstances, as there were no signs of the enemy in the
immediate neighbourhood, Don Hermoso lost no time in hurrying back to
his wife and getting her up to the house and into bed, that being all he
could do at the moment to combat the fever which had seized upon her.
This much having been accomplished, Jack set his negroes to search among
the wreckage for anything in the nature of food which might perchance
have escaped destruction, while he, single-handed, set off to
reconnoitre the camp of the enemy, out on the plain. His shortest route
thereto was by way of the position which Carlos had so resolutely
defended; and he chose this because, the enemy having forced the passage
of the river at this spot, he believed he would there find the means of
crossing most easily himself. He had scarcely traversed a hundred yards
from the house ere he began to encounter evidences of the severity of
the fight that had waged throughout the afternoon and evening of that
disastrously eventful day, in the shape of dead and wounded men, the
former lying stark and cold in the light of the moon, some of them with
limbs disposed as though they merely slumbered, while the contorted
bodies of others showed that they had passed away in the throes of
mortal agony; some with eyes decently closed, others with their
sightless eyeballs upturned until only the whites were visible: while
from the lips of the wounded there issued one low, continuous moan of:
"Water--water! For the love of God, water!" It was a pitiable sight
beyond all human power of description, and as Jack looked round him and
beheld those units of slain and tortured humanity a great and righteous
anger took possession of him against the arrogant Power that had been
the cause of all this anguish and misery--to say nothing of what was
enacting elsewhere--rather than surrender its grip upon the fair island
that it had neither the will nor the ability to wisely govern--the Power
that had deliberately entered upon a vindictive war against those whom
it had goaded to rebellion.
It was of course quite impossible for him, unaided, to ameliorate
appreciably a hundredth part of the physical anguish of the men who lay
there writhing and groaning on the sodden ground; but there was one poor
wretch who managed to attract his attention--a Spanish soldier who, the
lower part of his body paralysed, supported himself upon one hand while
he mutely pointed with the other to his open mouth and protruding
tongue, and who seemed to be the very living embodiment of torturing
thirst. The mute appeal in this poor creature's eyes was so movingly
eloquent that the young Englishman simply could not pass on and
callously leave him in his torment. He therefore stooped and, laying
the man's arms over his shoulders, lifted the poor fellow on to his back
and carried him a little way to where a depression in the ground had
been converted by the rain into a pool some three or four yards in
diameter, from which several wounded men were already slaking their
fiery thirst; and there he laid him down within reach of the precious
liquid, and stood for a moment to watch the poor creature suck down
great draughts of the thick, muddy water!
There were scores of other unfortunates in sight whose sufferings were
probably as acute as those of the poor wretch whom Jack had just helped,
and who had an equally strong claim upon his compassion, but stern
necessity demanded that he should neglect them in favour of the mission
which he had set out to execute; also, he recognised that his first duty
was to secure the safety of his friends. He therefore perforce steeled
his heart, and pushed on toward the point at which the Spaniards had
effected the passage of the river, and where he consequently expected to
find the means of getting across. It was a gruesome journey, if a short
one, for every yard that he advanced the dead and wounded lay more
thickly piled together, until at length, by the margin of the river, the
prostrate bodies of friend and foe were so closely intermingled that he
found it difficult to progress at all without trampling them under foot,
while the now still night air positively reeked with the odour of blood!
It was awful beyond the utmost that the young Englishman's imagination
had ever pictured, and as he glanced about him with shrinking gaze and
rising gorge he again mentally execrated the leader to whose savagery
all those unspeakable horrors were due.
But now at last he was at the river, and now also he saw by what means
the Spaniards had finally succeeded in accomplishing the task of forcing
the passage of the barrier. A single glance at the contrivance was
sufficient to prove that the assailants possessed among them at least
one skilled engineer, for spanning the stream Jack saw an
extraordinarily light yet strong bridge, constructed entirely of bamboos
so lashed and braced together as to be capable of sustaining the weight
of a continuous column of men, two abreast, over its entire length. It
was fashioned upon the principle of the bowstring girder, and was
considerably longer than was actually needed--which Jack accounted for
by the fact that the Spaniards had been allowed no opportunity to gauge
the actual width of the river, and had therefore been obliged to guess
at it; yet, so light did it appear to be that he believed thirty men
might easily have handled and placed it in position. He quickly passed
across it, finding it perfectly firm to the tread, and then set out to
cross the open plain toward the distant camp. He had still his night
glasses with him, and as he went he frequently made use of them, as much
to avoid the risk of being detected by the sentries as to observe what
was passing in the camp; but from the outset he failed to detect the
presence of any sentries whatever, and gradually it began to dawn upon
him that the occupants of the camp, believing the defenders of the
estate to be not only absolutely and irretrievably beaten, but also in
panic-stricken flight, had not deemed it necessary to post any sentries
at all, and were all sleeping in fancied perfect security. And this in
fact he found to be actually the case, when at length, with the
observance of every possible precaution, he actually stood within the
precincts of the camp and looked about him. There was not a light in
any one of the many tents round him; the watch fires had burnt low, and
in some cases had died out altogether; not a soul was moving from one
end of the camp to the other, and all round him were sleeping men! He
waited only long enough to assure himself that this was actually the
case, and then, withdrawing as carefully as he had come, he hurried back
to where he had left his fifty men resting in one of the least damaged
of the warehouses, and roused them with the intimation that they were
required for instant action. Then, briefly acquainting them with what
he had done and what he proposed to do, and ordering them to load their
weapons, he marched them out across the bamboo bridge on to the plain,
where he bade them take open order and, crouching low on the grass,
advance upon the camp, exposing themselves as little as possible, since
should but one person in the camp awake and detect them, all this labour
would be lost.
It took the little band of adventurers a full hour to accomplish the
passage across the plain; and when at length they arrived within about
fifty yards of the camp, Jack caused the signal to be passed along the
line for all hands to lie prone in the grass, while he went forward
alone to satisfy himself that everything was still as he had left it.
Then, as he had done some two hours previously, Jack crawled right into
the heart of the camp and gazed carefully about him. Everything was
still perfectly quiet, save that from certain of the tents there issued
sounds advertising the fact that there were noisy sleepers within. Then
Singleton rose cautiously to his feet and lifted his right hand above
his head. The next minute fifty armed negroes, under his whispered
directions, were moving about the camp, silent-footed as cats,
collecting the piled arms and every other weapon which they could find,
and concealing them among the long grass at a safe distance from the
camp. Then, this done, Jack raised his revolver above his head and
fired a single shot into the air; at the sound of which the startled
occupants of the tents came tumbling out, one over another, to learn
what the disturbance was about, and to seize their weapons. But,
instead of their piled arms, their eyes fell upon fifty stalwart negroes
facing them with levelled rifles, and Jack beside them with a revolver
in each hand.
Such an unexpected sight naturally caused the Spaniards to pause in
their rush, of which circumstance Singleton took advantage to thrust one
of his revolvers back into his belt, and then raise his hand, with a
command for silence. The Spaniards, their eyes still heavy with sleep,
and disconcerted by the discovery that every one of their weapons had
mysteriously vanished, obeyed readily enough, whereupon Jack requested
the officer in command to step forward.
A barefooted man, in shirt and trousers only, and carrying in his hand
the sheathed sword of a Spanish infantry captain, which he had evidently
snatched from his tent pole as he sprang from his camp bed, stepped
forward, and, announcing himself as the senior surviving officer,
demanded to know who Jack was, and what he wanted.
"I am," said Jack, "the commander of a body of negroes, of whom you see
a detachment before you. We are in arms against Spain, as are thousands
more of the inhabitants of this island, because we very strongly object
to the cruel tyranny and oppression with which we have been governed,
and demand our freedom. Your march through the country has been marked
by violence and outrage of every conceivable description, and you have
left in your track nothing but death and desolation. The measure of
your iniquity is full, and Cuba will endure no more. Your General
Weyler has declared a war of extermination against Cubans, and you who
execute his murderous mandate must pay the penalty. Yet, since it would
be manifestly unfair to punish the innocent for the guilty, and since I
am convinced that many of you have only obeyed your general's orders
most unwillingly, I will spare those of you who will surrender, and
execute only those who, by refusing, exhibit a readiness to persist in
their iniquitous deeds. And do not look for any help from your comrades
yonder; they triumphed temporarily, achieving a victory by sheer force
of numbers, but since you and they parted company they have fallen into
a trap--and now those who still live are prisoners. Will you join them;
or will you go the way of those others who have to-night laid down their
lives at the behest of a man who knows not the meaning of mercy? Let
those among you who are willing to surrender throw up their hands." The
officer turned and looked behind him: every man under his command had
thrown his hands above his head! It was enough; his humiliation was
complete. Drawing his sword from its scabbard, he placed the point on
the ground; then, bending the blade into the form of a bow, he gave the
hilt a sudden, peculiar thrusting jerk, and the blade snapped in twain.
Then, tossing the hilt from him, he exclaimed, in a tone of concentrated
bitterness, "I surrender!" and burst into tears of anger and
mortification.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
THE END OF THE STRUGGLE.
The prisoners, about a hundred in number, many of whom were less than
half-dressed, were now allowed five minutes wherein to retire to their
tents and assume their clothing; after which they were formed up four
deep, and marched off in the direction from which Jack and his party had
come, a young, swift-footed negro having been dispatched on ahead with a
note from Singleton for Carlos, informing the latter of the capture of
the camp and its occupants, and suggesting that he should bring his
prisoners down to the compound adjoining the warehouses.
With the arrival of the prisoners and their armed escort within half a
mile of the spot where the bamboo bridge crossed the river, they began
to come upon the first evidences of the recent fight, in the shape,
first, of widely scattered units, and then of little groups of two or
three dead or wounded. The first they were obliged to leave, for the
moment; but the wounded were, by Jack's orders, now sought for and
succoured, so far as succour was possible by unskilled hands, by being,
in the first instance, borne closer to the river, and having their fiery
thirst temporarily assuaged, and, later on, by having their wounds
dressed, so far as the conveniences available permitted. With so large
a number of wounded, this labour of mercy necessarily occupied a
considerable amount of time, so that it was broad daylight when at
length Jack conducted his prisoners into the compound and marched them
into an empty and partially ruined storehouse which Carlos had already
caused to be prepared for their reception, the prisoners which the young
Cuban had brought down from the defile having already been lodged in an
adjoining building. Then came the question of feeding the hungry--a
very formidable task, considering that practically all the food on the
estate had been destroyed by fire on the preceding night. This
difficulty, however, was overcome by Jack revisiting the captured camp
with a party of a dozen of the least exhausted negroes, and collecting a
wagon-load of foodstuffs which, with half a dozen oxen, they drove on to
the estate by way of the lowered drawbridge. Then, with infinite
labour, the wounded were once more sought out, and carried into one of
the storehouses which had suffered least from the fire, where they were
attended to, so far as they could be, by a band of their compatriots who
had volunteered for the service, and who had given their parole that
they would not again take up arms against the Cubans. And next came the
terrible task of burying the dead, which was also done, under Jack's
supervision, by the prisoners, kept in a proper state of submission by a
strong guard of armed negroes. It was by this time considerably past
mid-day: at least half of the negroes, who had fought so stubbornly and
well in defence of the estate, had had an opportunity to snatch a few
hours' sleep, and were consequently in a condition to again mount guard
over the prisoners; and then, and only then, did Jack and Carlos retire
to their rooms, and flinging themselves, still dressed, upon their beds,
sink at once into absolute oblivion.
The two young men were aroused about nine o'clock that night to partake
of food, when they learned that Don Hermoso had taken over the direction
of affairs; also, that the wounded were for the most part doing well,
having been taken in hand by a Spanish surgeon who, himself one of the
wounded, had been brought in from the field of battle, and, having been
attended to by Mama Faquita, was now sufficiently recovered to be able
to do duty. This was a quite unexpected bit of good news for the two
young men; but there was bad news also for them, in the fact that the
unfortunate Senora Montijo was in a state of such high fever that the
Spanish doctor was deeply concerned as to her condition, which became
still more critical as the night wore on.
Before again retiring to rest, Jack "went the rounds", as he expressed
it, and saw for himself that everything was satisfactory; and he did the
same the first thing upon rising the next morning. Then he, Don
Hermoso, and Carlos held a consultation as to how the prisoners were to
be disposed of, the difficulty of feeding and controlling so large a
number being one that was likely to grow daily: and it was finally
decided that, as the rest of the army had by this time passed on, and
were scarcely likely to return over the same ground, the sound
prisoners, together with those of the wounded who were so slightly hurt
as to be able to travel, should be set at liberty and escorted for some
few miles on the road to Pinar del Rio by a strong band of armed
negroes, whose duty it would be to see that the released men did not
attempt to rejoin the main army; that as soon as those were disposed of,
the estate--which was practically destroyed, and therefore could not
very well be further injured--should be abandoned to the Spanish doctor
and such assistants as he could persuade to remain with him to look
after the wounded; and that, as soon as the Senora's health would
permit, Don Hermoso, Carlos, and Jack should attach themselves to one of
the guerrilla bands who were hanging upon the skirts of the main Spanish
army and harassing it night and day. The only difficulty in the way of
this programme was the question of what to do with the Senora; but this
was disposed of by a suggestion from Jack that the lady should be
conveyed to the Laguna de Cortes, where the _Thetis_ was due to arrive
in about a fortnight, and be put on board the yacht.