Chapter Eighteen.
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 pronounced; 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 passage 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 employés, 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 assist 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 multitudinous 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, dashing 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 shelled 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 shell 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 shell every bit of timber or other cover that could possibly afford concealment to the defenders, deployed his infantry into a column of open order and threw out a strong firing line, with instructions to them to advance, taking advantage of every bit of cover that they could find, and shoot at every puff of smoke that they could see. As on the occasion of the previous attack, many of the Spanish shells failed to burst; but, notwithstanding this, a few casualties now began to occur among Jack’s party of defenders, and he therefore decided that the moment had arrived for bringing his twelve-pounder into action. This gun, accordingly, which Jack had by this time got mounted on a cleverly-constructed and carefully-masked earth battery, now opened fire upon the enemy’s artillery; and as Singleton had personally laid the piece, and knew the exact range to practically an inch, he was lucky enough to dismount and put out of action one of the Spanish guns with his first shot, while his second swept away every one of the artillerymen from the gun next to it. His third and fourth shots did comparatively little damage; but his fifth shell struck one of the guns fair upon the muzzle, at the precise moment when it was being fired, with the result that both shells burst simultaneously, completely shattering the fore part of the gun, as far back as the trunnions, and scattering death and destruction broadcast among the rest of the artillerymen. But by this time the Spanish gunners had managed to locate the position of the weapon that was punishing them so fearfully, and from that moment they devoted their attention exclusively to it, with the result that shells began to drop thick and fast about Jack’s ears, smothering and half-blinding him with dust, and occasionally peppering him pretty smartly with the pebbles and fragments of stone that were mingled with the earth of which his battery was composed. Still he gallantly maintained the unequal fight, and actually succeeded in disabling four out of the six guns ere a splinter of shell struck him on the temple and knocked him senseless. When he recovered, he found that darkness was closing down; that he was in his own room and on his own bed, whither he had been brought by an ambulance party of his men; and that Mamá Faquita, poor Señorita Isolda’s nurse, had taken him in charge, cleaned and dressed his wound, and was looking after him generally. An intermittent crackle of rifle fire told him that the attack was still being pressed, but Faquita informed him that there had been very few serious casualties thus far, and that all was going well. The old woman would fain have kept him confined to his room; but Jack knew that with the darkness would come the real danger, and despite his nurse’s vehement protests he not only rose from his bed, but returned to the spot which his contingent of men were still defending.
Arrived there, he soon found that events had been happening during his absence. In the first place, it appeared that the remainder of the gun’s crew had continued to work the twelve-pounder, and, after firing away a perfectly ruinous quantity of ammunition, had actually succeeded in disabling one of the two remaining Spanish guns; soon after accomplishing which feat, the twelve-pounder itself had been dismounted and put out of action by a shell which had completely destroyed the carriage and at the same time had slain four of the gunners. Whereupon a little party of sharpshooters, remembering the tactics that Jack had adopted during the previous attack upon the estate, had exclusively devoted themselves to a repetition of them, by first of all exterminating the entire crew of the remaining Spanish gun, and then rendering it impossible for anyone else to approach the gun to work it. Meanwhile, the officer in command, finding it useless to try to do anything with his men, exposed as they were upon the open plain, had withdrawn them out of gunshot and gone into camp. It was clear that he proposed to wait until the darkness came to veil his movements.
Jack quite anticipated that the first thing which the Spaniards would attempt would be to reconnoitre the entire position, with the object of finding a way to get across the river; and he knew that there were only two points at which this feat of crossing was possible, namely, those which Carlos and he were defending. He therefore scribbled a little note to his friend, warning the latter what to guard against, and dispatched it by a negro messenger, whom he also instructed to afterwards call at the house and bring from thence a pair of binocular glasses which were to be found on a table in his (Jack’s) bedroom.
By the time that the messenger returned with the glasses it had grown intensely dark: for to the natural obscurity of night there was added the further obscuration caused by the smoke with which the atmosphere was laden; while, to still further intensify the blackness, a heavy thunderstorm was working up against the wind, the combined result being a darkness in which it was literally impossible to see one’s hand before one’s face. Jack was at first inclined to anathematise the darkness; but when at length he was enabled to fully realise the intensity of it he felt much more disposed to bless it, for, having moved about half a dozen paces away from his post, and experienced some difficulty in finding his way back, he began to comfort himself with the reflection that the enemy, utterly strange to the country as they were, could do nothing until light enough should come to at least enable them to see where to put their feet.
Yet Jack was mistaken in so supposing, for as the time went on he became aware of certain sounds out there on the plain which seemed to indicate pretty unmistakably that, despite the darkness, the Spaniards were busily employed. When the moaning and sighing of the night wind among the branches of the trees, the rustle of the bamboos, and the clash of the palm leaves subsided for an instant, allowing more distant sounds to reach his ears, he intermittently caught what seemed to be the sounds of picks and shovels at work at no very great distance; moreover, there were lights flitting about the distant camp, and much movement there, though what it portended Jack was quite unable to discover, even with the help of his night glasses. At length, however, the period of darkness came to an end, for sheet lightning began to flicker and quiver among the densely packed clouds low down on the western horizon, at first for an instant only and at comparatively long intervals, but soon increasing greatly in vividness and rapidity: and then the young Englishman perceived, to his disgust and alarm, that the Spanish soldiers had availed themselves of the obscurity not only to entrench a strong body of riflemen to right and left of their own end of the ruined bridge, but also to advance a long, light platform, or gangway, mounted on the wheels of one of the disabled field pieces, which they seemed to be preparing to throw across the gap in the bridge as soon as they could get sufficient light to enable them to run it into position; indeed, they were actually engaged in moving it forward at the very moment when Jack discovered its existence.
To bring up his men, and place them in a position among the bamboos which would enable them to frustrate this bold attempt to span the river was the work of but a minute or two for Jack; then he immediately opened a hot fire upon the working party who were engaged in moving forward the gangway. But no sooner had he done this than he found how seriously the conditions had changed for the worse during those two hours of total darkness; for now the Spaniards who had established themselves in the trenches were so close at hand that the cover of the bamboos was no longer an efficient defence, and casualties among the defenders became disconcertingly frequent. Furthermore, it soon appeared that the Spaniards had got two strong hauling parties sheltered behind a couple of low earthworks, and that these people, by means of two stout ropes attached to the gangway, were steadily and with much skill hauling the thing toward the required position. Jack soon saw, however, that it would be quite impossible for the hauling parties to haul it far enough forward to enable it to be dropped into position across the gap in the ruined bridge: a moment must come, sooner or later, when the concealed men who were dragging upon the ropes would be obliged to leave their cover and push the platform the remaining portion of the distance; and he quickly determined to reserve his energies and his ammunition until that moment.
The time quickly arrived. A single bugle blast appeared to be the signal for the entrenched Spanish riflemen to concentrate their fire upon the clump of bamboo brake wherein Jack had hidden his men, and at the same instant about a hundred infantry-men sprang from behind their sheltering earthwork and made a dash at the platform, their every movement being clearly visible by the light of the vivid electric discharges which had by this time become practically continuous. With the utmost resolution they seized the light structure and started to run it forward toward the gap in the bridge; but—Jack having by this time instilled into his dusky troops the virtue of coolness and deliberation in fighting—the next moment they were swept back to cover by a perfectly withering fire that placed nearly half of them hors de combat.
Meanwhile sounds of hot and sustained firing had gradually breezed up in the direction of the position which Carlos was defending, and ere long it became evident that there also the attack was being pressed; and although the sounds of strife thitherward were soon almost swallowed up in the long, continuous crash and crackle of the rifle fire that was being maintained by the entrenched troops upon Jack’s party, the young Englishman could not avoid the suspicion that his friend was being somewhat hardly pressed; for whenever a momentary lull occurred in the firing in front of him, Jack could not only hear that the volume of firing in Carlos’ direction was fully maintained, but it seemed to him that it was steadily increasing! And presently a breathless messenger arrived from Carlos, begging Jack to spare the former as many men as he possibly could, to help in driving back a body of Spanish troops who had actually succeeded in forcing a passage across the river! In response to this request Jack of course instantly detached every man he could possibly spare, retaining less than fifty to aid him in defending his own position: but the news which he had just received made it perfectly clear to him that the defence was practically at an end; for if Carlos had been unable to prevent the Spaniards from forcing the passage of the river, it was in the highest degree unlikely that he would be able to stem the rush, much less drive it back. Jack at once began to consider what was the best course to pursue under the new conditions; and, as he thought, a plan began to gradually unfold itself in his mind. The estate, he felt, was lost, for if only a sufficient number of the Spaniards could once get across the river to hold Carlos’ force at bay for five minutes, by the end of that time a reinforcement would have crossed strong enough to sweep the defenders out of existence: nothing, therefore, in that case could save the estate from destruction, but it might be possible to visit upon the destroyers a heavy retribution.
Jack’s mind was thus occupied when another messenger arrived from Carlos to tell him that all was lost, and that Carlos, with the remnant of his party—with whom were Don Hermoso and his wife—was retreating up the valley, hotly pursued by a strong party of Spanish soldiers; while other Spaniards were in possession of the house and the several outbuildings, which they were obviously preparing to set on fire: and the message concluded by requesting Jack to follow with his party, and join the fugitives, if possible.
Now it happened that Carlos’ retreat up the valley chimed in excellently well with the scheme which was beginning to take shape within Jack’s brain; the latter therefore lost no time in collecting together his little band of riflemen and leading them through the wood, round by the rear of the house and outbuildings, and along a bush path, to a spot at which he could intercept and join the retreating party, and at which, moreover, owing to the nature of the ground, he believed he could pretty effectually check the pursuit, and cover the retreat of the main body of the defenders. As he pressed forward at the head of his own scanty contingent the sounds of occasional shots told him that Carlos was still maintaining a good running fight: but, as the path which he was following constituted a short cut to the spot which he desired to reach, he soon left those sounds in his rear, and, pressing rapidly forward, at length arrived at the main path; and, aided by the lightning, which was now flashing incessantly, contrived to place his men in ambush behind a number of big boulders that studded the almost perpendicular sides of the bush-clad hill, just as the leading files of the retreating party came into view round a bend of the path.
Jack saw with satisfaction that the retreat was being conducted in good order. First came a body of some fifty well-armed negroes, who were keeping a wary eye about them, to guard against the possibility of being ambuscaded by some portion of the enemy who might have pushed on and got in front of them—although such a thing was scarcely likely to have happened; then came the Señora, in a hammock suspended from a pole borne on the shoulders of two stout negroes, with Don Hermoso and Señor Calderon walking, one on either side of her; and behind these again came the main body of the retreating defenders, with the two Maxim guns in their midst, and with Carlos bringing up the rear in charge of a party of about twenty riflemen, who were covering the retreat by frequently facing round and exchanging shots with the pursuers. As these last came into view, Jack rose from his place of ambush—at the imminent risk of being shot by his friends before they could recognise him—and made the fact of his presence and that of his party known, bidding the others pass on and leave the heaviest of the covering work to him. Their losses, Jack could see, had been terribly heavy, and they looked weary to death with their long hours of fighting: yet he was gratified to observe that, with very few exceptions, the men carried themselves as resolutely as ever, and displayed the effect of his training by taking the fullest advantage of every particle of cover, dodging behind rocks, boulders, trunks of trees, and clumps of bush; taking as careful aim as though they were shooting in a match; re-loading, and then flitting from cover to cover to take up a fresh position.
The rear-guard under Carlos had not passed much more than a hundred yards ahead when the leading files of the pursuers appeared round the bend of the path, breathless, from the fact that the retreating party had no sooner disappeared round the elbow than the Spaniards had broken into a run, taking advantage of the circumstance that they were for a moment out of sight of the enemy to shorten the distance between themselves and the pursued. As the vanguard of some twenty pursuing Spaniards dashed round the bend they dropped on one knee and raised their rifles to their shoulders, availing themselves of the lightning flashes to take aim at the little crowd of retreating figures imperfectly seen here and there through the overhanging and swaying branches.
