The Cruise of the Thetis Part 18

A GALLANT DEFENCE.

It is not to be supposed that so momentous a decision as that mentioned at the close of the last chapter could be arrived at without bringing the occupants of the hacienda face to face with many anxieties, one of the most serious of which was, undoubtedly, the question whether the ammunition for which they had sent would arrive ere the appearance upon the scene of General Valeriano y Nicolan Weyler, with his devastating army of sixty thousand men. If it did, all might possibly be well; but if it did not--well, in that case disaster was practically certain. For nearly a week they hung painfully upon the tenterhooks of suspense, waiting for news; and the only news which reached them was to the effect that the new Capitan-General, with characteristic vigour, had issued the most rigorous instructions for a vigilant patrol of the entire coast line of the island to be maintained, with the express object of preventing any further landing of munitions of war of any description whatsoever, the obvious conclusion at which he had arrived being that if such supplies could be effectually stopped the rebellion must eventually be starved out of existence for want of them. But, after a long week of keenest anxiety, intelligence arrived that Milsom had succeeded in eluding the _guardacostas_, and had landed his cargo in a small cove under the lee of San Domingo Point, on the south coast; and that the moiety of that cargo asked for by Don Hermoso was even then well on its way to the estate. The next day it arrived, and was safely stored, to the great relief of the defenders, who now found themselves possessed of a supply of ammunition ample enough to enable them, with care, to withstand a siege of a month's duration, if need be; while they doubted very much whether General Weyler would be disposed to devote even half that amount of time to their subjugation.

But the ammunition came to hand only just in the nick of time: for on the very day of its arrival the anxious watchers became aware of a faint odour of burning on the breeze; and when at length darkness closed down upon them, the sky to the eastward glowed red, showing that Weyler and his destroyers were at hand. With the dawn the smell of burning became more p.r.o.nounced; the hitherto crystalline clearness of the air was seen to be dimmed by a thin veil of brownish-blue vapour; and the lookout in his eyrie far up the mountain-side signalled that flames and thick smoke were visible in the direction of Consolacion del Sur. As the day progressed the haze with which the air was charged grew thicker, the taint of fire and smoke more pungent, and an occasional vibration of the atmosphere suggested to those who became conscious of it the boom of distant artillery; while with the approach of nightfall the whole of the eastern sky became suffused with a flickering, ruddy light, the lookout up the mountain signalling that the entire country to the eastward, as far as the eye could see, seemed to be in flames.

On the morrow all these signs of destruction became very greatly accentuated: with the pa.s.sage of every hour the atmosphere became more thickly charged with smoke, more pungent with the smell of burning; clouds of black ash darkened the sky from time to time, as they were swept along upon the wings of the strong breeze; dense columns of smoke rising here and there showed where the spoilers were at work upon properties so near at hand that they could now be identified and named; while the frequent rattle and crash of rifle fire seemed to indicate that there were others who, like Don Hermoso, were not prepared to stand supinely by and see their entire possessions destroyed. Work was still being carried on by Don Hermoso's _employes_, but they had been turned- to that morning with the injunction that at the sound of the alarm bell they were to instantly drop their tools and muster before the shed in which the arms were stored. As for Singleton and Carlos Montijo, they had jumped into the saddle at daybreak, and were maintaining a ceaseless patrol of the boundaries of the estate, riding in opposite directions, and encountering each other from time to time, when they would exchange such items of information as they might happen to have gleaned in the interim.

All through the morning the work of destruction proceeded apace: the atmosphere became hourly thicker and more suffocating with smoke; great tongues of flame could occasionally be seen leaping skyward here and there above the tops of trees; dull boomings from time to time told of the blowing up of buildings; intermittent crashes of volley firing, mingled with shouts and yells and shrieks, told that desperate fights were raging--or that, perchance, some ruthless and summary execution was taking place; and by and by, shortly after mid-day, a solitary horseman, mounted upon a steed in a lather of sweat and recognised by Carlos as their next neighbour to the eastward, came galloping over the temporary drawbridge with a warning to Don Hermoso to fly, with all his family and dependents, since Weyler, with his army of butchers, was already approaching in such overpowering strength that nothing could possibly stand before him. The poor fellow gasped out a breathless story of ruthlessly savage murder and destruction, telling how he had seen every atom of his property looted and burnt, every member of his family shot down; and how he had at the last moment escaped by the skin of his teeth, with the horse he rode and the clothes that he stood up in as his sole remaining possessions in the world. He had effected his escape with some mad idea of flying for his life somewhere, he knew not whither; but upon learning that Don Hermoso was resolved to defend his property to the last, the poor fellow--a certain Don Luis Enrile--begged permission to be allowed to remain and a.s.sist in the defence, since he was now a ruined man and had nothing left to live for save revenge.

Naturally, Don Hermoso readily acceded to his request.

The unhappy Don Luis, having drawn, in broken, gasping sentences, the main outlines of his tragical story, was still filling in some of the more lurid details of that morning's happenings upon his farm, when the lookout perched aloft on the hillside signalled the approach of the enemy; and while Carlos dashed off in one direction to sound the alarm bell and occupy his former defence post, Jack rushed off in the other to raise the temporary drawbridge which had been constructed to take the place of the wrecked stone bridge, and which was now the only means of entering upon and leaving the estate. Having raised the bridge, and carefully secured it against any possibility of becoming lowered by accident, Jack climbed the structure to its uplifted extremity, and from thence looked out over the wide plain that gently sloped away toward the east, south, and west of him; and presently he became aware of a loud, confused, rumbling jumble of sound which, when he was presently able to dissect it, resolved itself into a mingled trampling of mult.i.tudinous feet and hoofs, a rumbling and creaking of many wheels, the combined murmur of many human voices, the occasional low, deep, protesting bellow of overdriven animals, the crack of whips, and the continuous shouts of men. The air was still thick with acrid smoke, rendering it difficult to see anything clearly at a distance greater than half a mile; but presently it thickened still more, and Jack recognised that the thickening was produced by a great cloud of dun-coloured dust, out of the midst of which there presently cantered into view a number of Spanish cavalry scouts, a dozen of whom, upon reaching the main road, wheeled to their right and dashed along it toward the point of its junction with the private road leading to Don Hermoso's estate.

Jack considered that the moment had now arrived for him to quit his post of observation, and he accordingly slid down the rail of the bridge until he reached the ground, where he was almost immediately joined by the contingent of labourers which was to operate under him, as before, for the defence of the estate at that point. The wood away to the left, and the bamboo coppice, afforded perfect cover and shelter for the whole of his party; and since each man now knew to an inch where he was required to post himself, everybody was in position and entirely hidden from sight a full minute before the leading couple of the cavalry came into view round the bend of the road leading to the ruined bridge. But no sooner did that leading couple appear than two whiplike rifle reports snapped out from somewhere in front of them, and while one rider dropped forward and collapsed on his horse's neck, the other flung up his arms, tossed away the carbine which he was carrying in his right hand, and reeled out of the saddle to the ground with a crash, while his horse, tossing up his head, wheeled sharply round and dashed off to the rear, dragging his dead rider by the left stirrup. The next instant another pair of scouts swung into view, when again out snapped that ominous, double, whiplike crack. This time one of the two riders, dropping his carbine to the ground, clapped his right hand convulsively to his breast as he swiftly wheeled his horse and galloped off; while the horse of his companion, rearing upright and pawing the air furiously for a moment with his fore hoofs, fell backward with a crash and lay dead, pinning his helpless rider beneath him: whereupon the remainder of the party wheeled their horses, and, das.h.i.+ng in their spurs, took to precipitate flight.

Shortly afterwards, doubtless in consequence of the report of those men, another reconnoitring party, consisting of half a dozen brilliantly- garbed officers, approached, evidently with the idea of inspecting the nature of the defences of the estate, and ascertaining its weak points.

But Jack would have none of it; the moment that they came within point- blank rifle range he opened fire upon them with his sharpshooters, and only three of the half-dozen were able to make good their retreat.

Meanwhile the main body of troops gradually debouched into view upon the plain--a motley crowd of infantry clad in rags so effectually bleached and discoloured by exposure to rain and sun that it would probably have puzzled their own officers to name the various regiments to which they belonged; about one hundred cavalry; and three batteries of field artillery: the whole accompanied by an enormous number of baggage, ambulance, and ammunition wagons, water carts, and nondescript vehicles of every imaginable description, and an immense lowing, bellowing, and bleating herd of captured cattle, sheep, and goats, many of which seemed to be half-mad with terror. Mounted officers in scores dashed frantically to and fro among this medley of men, vehicles, and animals; and finally, when the herd of cattle was at length separated from the main body and driven off, a detachment of some three thousand men, and one battery of guns, with a proportion of the wagons and other vehicles, halted on the plain, with the evident intention of attacking the estate, while the remainder of the body went forward.

The attack began immediately. A puff or two of white smoke had revealed to the reconnoitring parties the lurking-place of those who had fired upon them, and they had of course pointed out the spot to the artillerymen as that upon which they were to concentrate their fire; with the result that immediately the guns were wheeled to action front, they opened a hot fire upon the bamboo coppice. But, as on the occasion of the previous attack, no sooner had the reconnoitring parties withdrawn than Jack moved his sharpshooters from their cover of bamboo to that of a line of artfully constructed earthworks, which, while far enough removed from the bamboos to be perfectly safe from the artillery fire which he felt certain would be immediately opened upon them, equally commanded the road leading to the ruined bridge, and enabled him to effectually check all endeavours to reconnoitre that point of approach. The result was that after the bamboos had been fiercely sh.e.l.led for some ten minutes, without producing a single casualty among the defenders, another reconnoitring party, believing that that particular patch of cover had been pretty effectually cleared, boldly galloped forward, under cover of the continued sh.e.l.l fire, to examine the spot which, from the resolution with which it had been defended, they felt convinced must be one of the keys of the position. And there is little doubt that they were as much surprised as disgusted to be received with a volley, from a totally different and not easily discernible point, which caused them to again retire precipitately, leaving nearly two-thirds of their number behind them.

Finding himself thus persistently foiled, the officer in command slightly altered his tactics; and, while instructing his artillery to persistently sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.l struck one of the guns fair upon the muzzle, at the precise moment when it was being fired, with the result that both sh.e.l.ls 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 punis.h.i.+ng them so fearfully, and from that moment they devoted their attention exclusively to it, with the result that sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.l 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 quant.i.ty of ammunition, had actually succeeded in disabling one of the two remaining Spanish guns; soon after accomplis.h.i.+ng which feat, the twelve-pounder itself had been dismounted and put out of action by a sh.e.l.l 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 repet.i.tion 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 gla.s.ses which were to be found on a table in his (Jack's) bedroom.

By the time that the messenger returned with the gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.ses. 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 const.i.tuted 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.s. 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 cras.h.i.+ng 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sage 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 ma.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce between the rock walls thence narrowing gradually to about four feet, and thus forming a kind of pa.s.sage 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 p.r.o.nounced 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, gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce, backed by dense scrub; and Jack's plan was that Carlos, with about fifty men, should enter the defile, pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage 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 splas.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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, m.u.f.fled 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 pa.s.sed 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.

With the appearance of the first of them Jack sprang up on a boulder, 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 embarra.s.sing 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 s.p.a.ce 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 quant.i.ties 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, s.h.i.+vered 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 l.u.s.t 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sed away in the throes of mortal agony; some with eyes decently closed, others with their sightless eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.s 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 compa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sage 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 accomplis.h.i.+ng the task of forcing the pa.s.sage of the barrier. A single glance at the contrivance was sufficient to prove that the a.s.sailants 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 fas.h.i.+oned 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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sure 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 gra.s.s, 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 pa.s.sage across the plain; and when at length they arrived within about fifty yards of the camp, Jack caused the signal to be pa.s.sed along the line for all hands to lie p.r.o.ne in the gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.s 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 circ.u.mstance 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.