With the Battle Fleet Part 21

Lagartijillo chico killed the third bull and did no better work. There was a diversion in this fight. A banderillero sat on a chair and made the bull charge at him. The banderillero rose just as the bull reached him, planted his darts in the animal's shoulders and leaped to one side.

It was a beautiful piece of work, and the bluejackets roared their applause. Bill approved the seamans.h.i.+p and said:

"That man on the chair apparently didn't have no more chance than an ice skatin' rink in Zanzibar, not to mention a hotter place, usin' a shorter and uglier word. He s.h.i.+fted his moorin's jest in time. It was too late to repel boarders, but he got away. Fine seamans.h.i.+p for the man! Poor work by the bull! He ran down the moorin' buoy, that was all, and splintered it all t'ell and gone. Ye see the man got the right to choose position and fire at will. That's a great thing. Jest remember that lesson."

In the same fight one of the men took a long pole, ran straight at the bull, planted the pole directly in front of the animal and vaulted clear over him, coming down just as the bull hit the pole. In his descent the man seized the bull's tail and gave it a twist. Bill was delighted.

"Lay aft to the braces! Weather main and lee crojic braces! Hard down there! Lay yer maintops'l to the mast. No! by--! Hard down! He's going to wear sharp 'round and bring up to windward of him! Say, that feller's a sailor all right--every hair a rope yarn, every finger a fishhook and every drop of blood a drop of tar."

Padillo killed the fourth bull and made his usual number of failures.

The fifth bull, Banjo, aroused the sympathy of the crowd. He fought magnificently. He would not be tired out. It came time to kill him.

Padillo went after him with his cape and the bull deftly caught him, lifted him in the air, and he fell beside Banjo and rolled under the animal. Down went the horns to gore him. The cape men fluttered all around. Padillo curled himself up in a ball. The bull stepped this way and that and then charged off after a cape man, leaving Padillo unharmed but his nerve gone. He went after the bull again. He was deathly pale about the mouth. One of his legs trembled violently. Deathlike stillness was over the ring.

Soon the bull began to tear his cape from his hands, a disgrace. Once, twice, three times the bull did this. The Peruvians were enraged. They cried "Shame!" Padillo's father, who was in the ring, tried to explain that it was a bad bull and invited the critics to come and try it themselves. Almost beside himself, Padillo made three rushes at the bull without taking proper aim, in the hope of catching the animal unawares and giving him a death thrust. The fourth time he gave the thrust.

The bull saw him coming, did not lower his head, and just as Padillo placed his sword in the neck the bull raised his head, caught Padillo on his horns, one of them penetrating under the chin and entering the mouth cavity. A cry of horror went up. Padillo fell but got up quickly, and with a look of mighty disgust saw the bull reel away. Then, catching himself by the throat and staggering forward Padillo ran to the enclosure from which the bull had entered, a distance of about twenty feet, the blood streaming from his wound. He dropped just inside the enclosure and word was pa.s.sed around that bull and man had each given the other the death thrust. Tragedy could not have been more complete had it been true, but Padillo went to a hospital and didn't die. There were thousands of Americans who said they really did feel a little sorry for the bull. Bill Watkins explained the poor gunn'ry of Padillo.

"Up in the air! Up in the air! Come down out of the balloon! Say, he's like a landsman at a 13-inch gun with a misfire--don't know what to do with it himself and can't give it away. Take him out of the hood! Give him an air gun! Let him blow soap bubbles! Don't fire until the gun's loaded, sonny! There, the operating lever caught him in the mus.h.!.+ Yer better keep out of the line of fire next time!"

The last bull was killed by Lagartijillo. It was the same story, except that just as the matador gave the deathblow the bull hooked him along his right side and tore his clothes. He had a narrow escape. His wounds were only bruises. As the bull sank down dying fully 200 bluejackets jumped into the ring to follow the example of two who earlier in the fight had leaped in and secured the darts in an animal's neck for momentoes. They swarmed at Yankee Doodle. He saw them coming and as they seized the darts rose to his feet and tried to lunge at some of them. It was too much and he fell as the men began to scatter and died at once.

Bill said:

"Fine work! He tried to repel boarders, and he done it, too! If yer s.h.i.+p's sinkin' and it's yer last gasp don't never fergit to repel boarders. Ye kin go to glory satisfied then. They ought ter named that bull c.u.mberland."

Bill explained the day's events:

"Ye see, the bull ain't got no chance after his ammunition is gone. He was firin' his last 3-inch guns when he got that Padillo feller. It's a case o' destroyers and gunboats fightin' an unarmored cruiser with a short supply o' ammunition. When that gives out the cruiser is bound to go. Some o' the destroyers gets put out, as Bonarillo and Padillo did, but there's no use in goin' t' sea unless ye got full magazines and ain't cut off from your supplies. Oh, yes, there's lots o' things to learn from these bullfights!"

Then Bill s.h.i.+fted his quid and joined the crowd going out. The bluejackets didn't care much for the sport. Some of them left after the third fight and there was a steady stream from the ring afterward. Those who remained had this one comment:

"One feller got it in the neck--got the hook, all right!"

The writer holds no brief for the defence of bull fighting, but he wishes to say that the exhibition, with the goring of horses left out, was no more disgusting than a prize fight between two bruisers. Any contest that has the letting of blood as its chief feature may be called sport if its devotees so choose. This fight was no more brutal than shooting at bears from a safe distance and was not half so cruel as wounding a deer and allowing it to drag itself away and die in suffering. The bulls were in pain from the darts and showed it from time to time, but in their rage forgot the pain after an instant or two.

Giving them a thrust in the heart was no more cruel in the way of killing than it is to hang up a turkey or a chicken, cut its throat and let it bleed to death.

Death came almost in an instant to the bulls. The fighters risked their lives dozens of times. The bull had a fair show at them. Their quick movements, hairbreadth escapes, showed that nerve and rare skill were required. Compared with prize fighting where two sluggers cover themselves with blood, and when one is staggering about from exhaustion the other gives him a blow that makes him unconscious--well, the writer says unhesitatingly that he prefers the Peruvian bull fight. It all depends, you see, upon the point of view.

Only a limited party could be the guests of the Government on the Oroya Railroad trip. It was known as the official party. An unofficial party with an engine and a pa.s.senger car followed. This Oroya Railroad was started by Henry Meiggs, the defaulting partner of Ralston in California who fled to Chile, got rich and paid up his debts. In 1869 he went to Peru and started this railroad.

Peru had money to spend then. Meiggs finished the road up the mountains as far as Chicla in 1876, and then the money gave out. More than $26,000,000 had been spent going eighty-eight miles. Later the Peruvian Corporation finished the road to Oroya, on the other side of the Andes, and connections have been made with the road to the famous Cerro de Pasco mines, owned by Mr. Haggin and other American millionaires. Two other branches have been built and ultimately it is planned to extend the road to the headwaters of the Amazon in Peru, so as to give the country on the east of the Andes an outlet to the Atlantic Ocean for its products.

The highest place on the line is Galera tunnel, under Mount Meiggs. It is 15,665 feet high. The distance is 106 miles from Callao. There is not an inch of down grade in the climb. There are no less than fifty-seven tunnels. Bridges over chasms and foaming cascades and the River Rimac, whose course the road follows, are numbered by the score. For forty-seven miles it is a steady climb beside the Rimac torrent in a desolate country, with the mountains red and bare. There is no rainfall in that district.

Then you come to where the river is hemmed in by mountain gorges, and you have to climb by means of switchbacks. Up you go, tilting this way and that, beyond two layers of clouds. The sides of the mountains become green. You are now in the land of the ancient Incas. Abandoned terraces that lose themselves in the clouds flank scores of mountain sides. The Incas raised their products there by some system of irrigation.

Fine specimens of trees appear, fruit orchards with chirimoyas, palta, nispero and pacay, and willow and pepper trees in abundance. The flowers begin to greet you, the heliotrope, solanaceas, spurge and cacti all around. Back and forth you seesaw with ma.s.sive, towering mountains above you and several lines of tracks far below you. Now and then you come upon a little town thousands of feet in the air.

Then you reach a place where a smelter sends its blasts up in the skies, and you begin to see what supports this road. A footpath or trail climbs the ravines, and you see scores of llamas bearing their burdens and driven by the native Indians. A hundred cascades, some of them with the beauty of Yosemite's Bridal Veil leap with their spray down the sheer cliffs. The lights and shadows paint the bare rocks delicate hues, such as you cannot see even in a sunset glow.

You come to the famous Verrugas bridge, 575 feet long and 225 feet high, in its day the greatest feat of railroad engineering ever known. You are now in a belt twelve miles long where no tourist can live, for there the Verrugas fever rages. It is one of those strange local diseases found occasionally in the world peculiar to a small zone and baffling to medical science.

You see crucifixes all along the route. Still you climb and climb and you see ragged edges of mountains above you which you know you will surmount. You come to a dead stop against the face of a mountain thousands of feet high. You back away up its side, and little by little, twisting and turning you lift yourself above another cloud layer.

The air gets cold, a dash of rain comes as you pa.s.s through the clouds.

At 10,000 feet high a sharp pain runs through your ears. You take several long gasps of breath and it pa.s.ses away. A slight headache comes at 12,000 feet. It pa.s.ses away and finally you reach the tunnel and emerge on the other side of the Andes with the snow all about you and you throw a few s...o...b..a.l.l.s and start back. Your head begins to feel strange. At 13,000 feet it aches violently. The ache is as near like the morning-after headache as can be. In the official party not one person escaped it. Half a dozen strong men became sick at the stomach and had violent attacks of vomiting. The mountain sickness was on. Other men were laid out in the cars prostrate.

At this stage came a complication. Heavy rains had been falling below and word was telegraphed that there were four washouts and the party would have to stay in the mountains all night. The faces of the railroad officials became grave. To keep that party at the height of 13,000 feet all night might prove almost fatal to some. It was this trip which brought on the illness that ultimately killed the late Dr. Nicholas Senn.

Word was sent that by care the train might descend as far as 10,000 feet. A handcar was sent on as a pilot and in the darkness and snow that train was piloted down those mountain declivities, where the least slip of the earth would have sent it hurtling down cliffs thousands of feet.

The pace was only five miles an hour.

The sickness did not diminish until at 11 o'clock at night Tamboraque was reached, where the unofficial party of officers which had not gone up the full height was stalled. There was one inn with four beds and ninety men to occupy them. The unofficial party was in full possession.

They had organized the Society of the Llama, Landslide Chapter. They had a merry night. The official party, sick, worn out, turned in to sleep in car seats. The next morning by walking around landslides and meeting trains in the gaps the party was got down to Callao. Several did not get over the mountain illness for three days. It was a magnificent trip in the grandest scenery in the world, but mountain sickness, all concurred, was worse than seasickness.

By way of return entertainment by the fleet a dinner was given to President Pardo on the Connecticut, and then a fleet reception was held on the same s.h.i.+p the day before sailing. This morning President Pardo boarded the Peruvian cruiser Almirante Grau and the fleet thundered out twenty-one guns on each s.h.i.+p in unison. The Grau pa.s.sed out to sea and orders were signalled from the flags.h.i.+p to get under way. Then the fleet pa.s.sed by President Pardo in the best of style, each s.h.i.+p firing a salute as it went by. It made a fine spectacle. The honors were the same as paid to President Roosevelt in Hampton Roads, President Penna at Rio and President Montt at Valparaiso.

President Pardo sent his thanks by wireless and got a fine reply of appreciation from Admiral Evans, and it was good-by to Peru, with the sounds of cheers coming over the water and the sight of fluttering handkerchiefs from thousands; the last salute.

True it was Peru had remembered, and those who had called on Dr. Polo, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, began to realize the significance of the fact that in his office there hangs just one picture. It is the portrait of an American statesman--James G. Blaine.

CHAPTER XI

TARGET SHOOTING AT MAGDALENA BAY

High Tension on the Fleet--Effect of Target Shooting on Man-o'-War Crews--Splendid Advantages of Magdalena Bay--Making the Targets and Clearing for Action--Why They Are All Nervous.

_On Board U. S. S. Louisiana, Battle Fleet_, MAGDALENA BAY, March 22.

When Admiral Evans's fleet arrived in Magdalena two days ahead of schedule time there was undoubtedly a sense of relief in official circles in Was.h.i.+ngton over what was practically the termination of the long cruise to the Pacific, and also one of gratification because the s.h.i.+ps, as Admiral Evans notified the Navy Department, were in better condition than when they left Hampton Roads and ready for any duty within an hour's notice.

On the fleet there was no sense of relief over the safe and prompt arrival. That was taken as a mere matter of course. It is true every one was a little proud over the performance of the fleet and glad that it had shaken itself into a h.o.m.ogeneous unit and was in first cla.s.s fighting condition, not as separate battles.h.i.+ps but as a fleet. In the matter of cruising the fleet at last was as one s.h.i.+p and lots of useful things had been learned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Copyright by A. Dupont_

Rear Admiral Robley D. Evans]

On the s.h.i.+ps the arrival was marked by just the opposite feeling from relief and gratification. The officers and men frankly were not in a placid state of mind. All were under an intense tension. They were what might be called wrought up. What, you say, American men-o'-wars men in a nervous condition--one that actually showed itself in their work and their play? No, not in their play, for there wasn't any. Well, but sea fighters nervous? Not a mother's son of them would admit such a thing.

Preposterous! Men with nerves on wars.h.i.+ps? Well, perhaps not nerves as the ordinary person speaks of these anatomical cutups, but certainly something was the matter with all hands. Evidences of what the cub reporter would call suppressed excitement were plenty everywhere on every s.h.i.+p.

What was it all about? What was the matter? The answer is very simple and short:

The time to begin shooting had come--that was all.

But why get worked up over that, you ask? Shooting is what a navy is for. Of course; and in the old days real shooting was done only in time of war. The navy no longer waits for war to learn how to shoot. Twice a year it has exhaustive target practice--once for what is called record and once for battle practice.