Chapter Sixteen.
The War-cloud overshadows the Hacienda Montijo.
For the first fortnight or three weeks following the evanishment of Señor Alvaros a considerable degree of uneasiness prevailed at the hacienda Montijo, the inmates of which daily looked for the appearance of some emissary of the Spanish Government, charged with the duty of investigating the circumstances connected with the disappearance of an important Spanish official: and it was recognised that not only would the enquiries of such an individual be difficult to reply to, but also that his presence would incidentally result in the discovery that the members of the Montijo family, instead of being at Fernando Po, were—with one exception—at home again. It was admitted to be a contingency that needed careful yet firm handling, and after much consideration a plan was evolved by Jack and Carlos which it was believed would deal effectively with the difficulty, and the necessary steps were taken. But as day after day passed without bringing upon them the complication which they apprehended, their uneasiness rapidly lessened, until at length a day arrived when the conviction forced itself upon them that the attention of the Spanish Government was so fully occupied with other and much more important matters that the disappearance of Señor Alvaros seemed likely to be permitted to pass without especial notice. And thereupon Jack undertook to pay a visit to Don Ramon Bergera in Havana, with the object of ascertaining, as far as possible, what was the attitude of the Spanish official mind upon the subject. He accordingly set out for Pinar del Rio one morning after early breakfast, and arrived in Havana the same afternoon, intending to return to the hacienda Montijo on the following day. But he remained in Havana a full fortnight, during which he and Don Ramon learned many things—among them, the facts that Señor Alvaros was solely responsible for the arrest and attempted transportation of the Montijos, and also for the seizure of the estate—neither of which acts had been reported to the Capitan-General, or been officially recorded: and that, doubtless because of these important reasons, when he had set out on his last journey to visit the estate which he had thus secretly seized, he had omitted to mention to anyone his intentions, his destination, or the probable duration of his absence, with the result that eventually, when the accumulated arrears of his work at length attracted attention and provoked enquiry, nobody could throw the least light upon his whereabouts. The conviction had therefore at length been arrived at that—the man being well-known as possessing a singularly arrogant, overbearing, and irascible disposition—he had perished in some obscure and, quite possibly, discreditable quarrel; and his post as Governor of La Jacoba Prison had been given to another man. These particulars had been gleaned by dint of very patient and careful enquiry on the part of Don Ramon, so judiciously conducted that not a particle of suspicion had anywhere been raised that any enquiry at all was being made: and with them Jack returned to the hacienda and restored tranquillity to the minds of its inhabitants, for it had now been made clear not only that they might dismiss all apprehension of embarrassing enquiry concerning the fate of Señor Alvaros, but also that nobody was likely to dispute Don Hermoso’s right to retain his own property.
But no sooner were their minds relieved upon this point than they were filled with apprehension on another, namely, poor Señora Montijo’s mental condition, which seemed to steadily grow worse. For the first few months of the unfortunate lady’s affliction she had been very quiet, giving no trouble at all, and appearing to suffer chiefly from complete loss of memory. But now, just at the moment when Jack and Carlos were completing their preparations to take the field with the rebel forces, a change for the worse occurred: her memory returned to her intermittently, bringing with it the recollection of her daughter’s fate, and then, by some peculiar mental process, nothing would console the unhappy mother but the presence and companionship of her son and Jack; and if the lads happened to be both absent when these paroxysms of revived memory occurred, the poor lady quickly became plunged into a condition of such abysmal despair and such maniacal violence that she was for the time being a menace to herself and everybody else. Nobody but Carlos or Jack seemed to have the power of soothing her, and sometimes the combined efforts of both were needed: thus it came about that many months passed, during which the two youths felt themselves constrained to remain within call, and to devote themselves to the task of alleviating the misery of the unhappy lady.
Meanwhile, the rebellion, which had arisen in the first instance in the province of Santiago, was for some time confined to the eastern end of the island. At the moment of its outbreak Spain had a garrison of some seventeen thousand men in Cuba, which was an amply sufficient force to have stamped out the rising, had the authorities dealt with it energetically. But they either could not, or would not, see, until it was too late, that serious trouble was impending; and when at length this fact was recognised, and the garrison raised to some thirty thousand men, the rebellion had made such headway that the rebels already had a force of four thousand men in the field, with Maximo Gomez as its Commander-in-chief, and Antonio Maceo as second in command. At this time, however, very few whites had actually taken up arms in the revolutionary cause, for Gomez was a native of San Domingo, while Maceo was a mulatto, and the whites in Cuba entertained the same objection to serving under coloured men that is to be found practically all the world over. But this was more than compensated for by the great accession of coloured recruits attracted to the insurgent ranks by the appearance of Maceo in a position of authority. At the same time secret committees were formed in every town in Cuba for the purpose of preaching the gospel of revolt, with the result that the whole province of Santiago and the greater part of Puerto Principe quickly became aflame.
General Martinez Campos, the Capitan-General of the island, at length began to realise the increasing gravity of the situation, and sent to his home government a report to the effect that, in consequence of the rapid spread of the rebellion, it would be absolutely necessary to occupy every province of the island in force, and to vigorously attack the insurgents wherever met with in the field; and that, to do this effectively, he must have still more troops. Accordingly, more troops were dispatched, with the result that by the end of the year 1895 the Spanish arms in Cuba totalled no less than one hundred thousand men, while the rebel strength had increased to ten thousand, who, however, were very badly in need of arms, ammunition, and stores. Consequently Milsom, in the Thetis, was kept busy at this time picking up supplies wherever he could get them, and then smuggling them into the island with a boldness and ingenuity that completely baffled all the efforts of the Spaniards to detect him.
The proportion of Spanish troops to the revolutionary forces was at this time, it will be observed, as ten to one. This, on paper, appears to be enormous, yet it was not so in reality: for, whereas the Cubans were all native to the soil and inured to the climate, and were, moreover, familiar with the topography of the country, the Spanish soldiers were mostly young, raw recruits, poor shots, quite new to service in the Tropics, unacclimatised, of poor stamina, and therefore peculiarly liable to fall victims to the fever and dysentery which follow upon exposure to tropical rain. Moreover, they were badly fed, and worse looked after; the great disparity between the strength of the two forces was consequently much more apparent than real. Then, too, the Spanish officers were mostly of very indifferent quality: they suffered from the same climatic disabilities as their men; the heat enervated them to such an extent that they could not be induced to take the least trouble about anything, or undertake the least labour; they made no attempt to improve the quality of their men’s shooting; they were lax in the enforcement of discipline—save, perhaps, in the exaction of a proper measure of respect from their subordinates; they were strangers to the island and quite ignorant of its topography, and they were too indolent to attempt to learn anything of it; and, lastly, the maps with which they had been supplied were even worse than useless, for they were absolutely misleading. Thus the insurgents experienced no difficulty in eluding the pursuit of the Spanish forces, and in luring them, time after time, into carefully prepared traps, from which escape was only possible at the cost of heavy loss.
The insurgents were careful that news of their oft-repeated successes against the Spanish troops should be published throughout the island, despite the desperate efforts of the authorities to suppress it; and, as a consequence, new recruits were constantly being added to their ranks. The insurrectionary movement grew apace; and at length a provisional Government was formed, with the Marquez de Cisneros at its head, as President of the Cuban Republic. The first act of the new Government was to divide up the entire island into different districts; and over each district was appointed a civilian as Prefect. It was of course only natural that the Prefecture of the Pinar del Rio district should be offered to Don Hermoso Montijo; but when he was made fully acquainted with the views of the provisional Government he declined it, for he considered that these views on certain points were so extreme as to render the Government unpopular, and to bring absolute ruin upon a very important section of the community, the planters to wit. One of the proposals of the new Government was to impose certain taxes for the purpose of raising funds wherewith to carry on the revolutionary movement, and to this there could of course be no reasonable objection; but when it was further proposed that non-payment of those taxes should be punished by the destruction of the buildings and crops and the seizure of the live stock of defaulters, Don Hermoso asserted that such action was altogether too drastic, and savoured too much of tyranny to meet with his approval, and he firmly declined to associate himself in any way with it, electing to continue instead to serve the movement, as heretofore, by lavish contributions of money, and the assistance of the yacht.
The next step of the insurgent leaders was also one of which Don Hermoso very strongly disapproved, and against which he passionately pleaded—in vain, with the result that a certain feeling of estrangement, not very far removed from enmity, arose between him and the leading spirits of the revolution. The latter, it appeared, had conceived the idea that so long as industry was permitted to flourish in the island, so long would Spain be able to find the necessary funds for the maintenance of a large army in Cuba; but that the moment industry ceased, the fountain of revenue must run dry, and the troops must be withdrawn. They therefore determined to march their forces right through the island to Havana, destroying everything before them; and this terrible resolution they carried into effect, with the result that their track became a long line of burnt cane fields and fire-blackened buildings, the owners of which, whether Spaniards or Cubans, foes or sympathisers, were of course absolutely ruined. The Capitan-General, with ten thousand men, vainly strove to check this terrible advance, but the insurgents easily eluded him and forced their way into the western provinces; with the result that the home Government superseded Campos, sending out in his stead General Don Valeriano y Nicolan Weyler, a man of wide military experience, and possessing a sinister and unenviable reputation for energy and relentless severity.
The dispatch of such a man as General Weyler to Cuba was undoubtedly due, in a very great measure, to the fact that the United States of America, keeping a watchful eye upon the struggle going on, as it were, at its very doors, manifested a rapidly increasing disposition to sympathise with the insurgents, fighting gallantly for their liberty against an almost overwhelming force. This exhibition of sympathy, which the Americans took no especial pains to conceal, was highly offensive to Spain, and unquestionably went far toward strengthening her determination to suppress the revolution by force of arms; wherefore she not only dispatched General Weyler to Cuba, but also sent with and after him troops sufficient to raise the Spanish army in the island to the number of two hundred and thirty-five thousand men, including guerrillas and volunteers.
Meanwhile, Antonio Maceo, with a force of nearly four thousand men, had penetrated so far west as the province of New Filipipa, where he established himself in a stronghold among the fastnesses of the Sierras de los Organos, or Organ Mountains, from which he swept down at frequent intervals, first upon one town in the neighbourhood and then upon another, harassing and cutting up the Spanish garrisons in them, and generally making of himself a thorn in the flesh of Weyler. The spot in which he had established himself was distant only some ten miles, as the crow flies, from the hacienda Montijo; and he had no sooner made himself comfortable in his new quarters than he surprised and slightly discomposed the inhabitants of the casa by paying them a flying visit. He had been one of the most determined advocates, and the most ruthless executant, of the Republican Government’s policy of destructive suppression of the island’s industries, and Don Hermoso’s firm opposition to that policy had created something very nearly approaching to bad blood between the two; but now, when it was too late, he probably recognised the disastrous mistake that had been made, for it soon became apparent that the chief, if not the sole, object of his visit was to endeavour to regain Don Hermoso’s good opinion. But the attempt was not wholly successful; and he did not repeat his visit. The presence of Maceo and four thousand very imperfectly disciplined guerrilla troops, most of whom were coloured men, not too careful in their discrimination between friend and foe, was a double menace of a very serious character to Don Hermoso: for, on the one hand, they were certain, sooner or later, to attract a large body of Spaniards to the neighbourhood, for the purpose of hunting them down; while, on the other, should the patriots find themselves hard pressed, it was quite on the cards that they might take it into their heads to sweep down upon the estate and destroy it utterly, in order to prevent the possibility of the Spaniards seizing it and operating therefrom against them. These two possibilities were anxiously discussed over the dinner-table of the casa Montijo; and it was finally decided that on the following day steps should be taken to put the estate into a condition of defence against both parties.
Now there were three—and only three—possible ways of approach to the estate, the first being by the main road from Pinar del Rio; the second by the cross-country route which Jack and Carlos had followed when riding into Pinar del Rio on the occasion of their intervention in the James B. Potter incident; and the third by the route which Alvaros was supposed to have taken on the occasion of his flight, this being the road from the mountains by which Maceo had travelled. This last was an exceedingly difficult route, so difficult, indeed, that there were several spots at which it could be made absolutely impassable with very little difficulty, the most suitable of all, perhaps, being at the waterfall near which Alvaros was supposed to have met his death. At this spot the road—or, rather, path—crossed the ravine by way of an enormous overhanging rock which jutted out from the hillside immediately over the place where the stream flung itself down into the gorge beneath; and, even so, it needed a man with a steady head and good nerves to traverse it, for it was necessary to get from the overhanging rock across a chasm of nearly twelve feet in width to another large rock on the opposite side. A careful examination of this spot convinced Jack that a few pounds of blasting powder, judiciously placed beneath the overhanging mass of rock, would send it hurtling down into the gorge beneath and thus effectually bar all passage in that direction; and this was immediately done. The carriage road from Pinar del Rio could be almost, as easily defended, for, at a few yards from the main road, the private road giving access to Don Hermoso’s estate was carried across a wide stream by means of a single-arched masonry bridge, which bridge could be readily destroyed by means of dynamite; and Jack soon made all the arrangements for its destruction, if necessary, at a moment’s notice. As for the cross-country road, it, too, led across a stream, much too deep and swift to be forded, and only passable at the point where Jack, Carlos, and their guide, Carnero, had jumped their horses across it. The country on the far side was open for more than a mile, affording not sufficient cover to shelter a rabbit, much less a man; and Jack was of opinion that a Maxim, mounted in a small earthwork which might be thrown up by a few men in less than an hour, would prove amply sufficient to defend the passage against any force that would be likely to be sent against them. Three days, therefore, after Maceo’s visit to the hacienda saw their preparations for defence complete, save in the important matter of the Maxims and their ammunition; and two of these, together with a number of rifles, came to hand some three weeks later, Jack having undertaken to proceed to the Laguna de Cortes and there await the arrival of the Thetis with another cargo of contraband of war which she was to land at that spot. The stuff had been purchased with Don Hermoso’s money, and Jack therefore felt justified in appropriating as much of it as he considered might be required. He also commandeered one of half a dozen very handsome twelve-pounder field guns, together with a considerable quantity of ammunition. And when he got back with his spoils he took upon himself the duties of musketry instructor to the negroes on the estate, who were knocked off work an hour earlier every evening for the purpose; and, by dint of the exercise of almost inexhaustible patience, he contrived to make very excellent marksmen of a good percentage of them.
Meanwhile, with the exception above referred to, events, so far as those on the estate were concerned, pursued the even tenor of their way; nothing in the least out of the common happened, and the Señora Montijo’s mental condition had by this time so far improved that the society of Carlos and Jack was no longer necessary to her welfare.
But they both remained on the estate, for the war had now come almost to their own door, and their services were as likely to be useful where they were as anywhere else. News came to them at irregular intervals, and there by and by reached them the intelligence that, in order to isolate Maceo and prevent his return to the eastern provinces of the island, General Weyler was constructing a trocha, or entrenchment, with blockhouses and wire entanglements all complete, from Mariel on the north coast to Majana on the south—that is to say, across the narrowest part of the island—some sixteen or seventeen miles in length. The next news to hand was that the trocha was completed, and manned by twenty thousand men! And the next was that Weyler was marching ten thousand troops through the province, with the object of finding and destroying Maceo and his men—and any other rebels, actual or suspected, whom they might chance to find! Jack and Carlos felt that the time had arrived for them to hold themselves on the qui vive.
They were not kept very long in suspense. A few days later, as they were about to sit down to dinner, a negro peon presented himself, with the report that a large body of Spanish troops, having marched down the road from Pinar del Rio, were at that moment pitching their camp on the plain, some two miles away; and just as the party had finished their meal, and were on the point of rising from the table, the beat of horses’ hoofs, approaching the house, was heard, with, a little later, the jingle of accoutrements; and presently footsteps, accompanied by the clink of spurs and the clanking of a scabbard, were heard ascending the steps leading to the veranda. The next moment the major-domo flung open the door and, with the announcement of “Capitan Carera”, ushered in a fine, soldierly looking man, attired in a silver-braided crimson jacket and shako, and light-blue riding breeches, tucked into knee-boots adorned with large brass spurs.
The newcomer bowed with easy courtesy as he entered, and then paused, apparently taken somewhat aback as his eye fell on the Señora. He quickly recovered himself, however, and, addressing himself to Don Hermoso, asked if he might have the honour of a few minutes’ private speech with the owner of the estate; to which Don Hermoso replied by conducting his visitor to the room in which he was wont to transact his business. The interview was very brief, and when it was ended the soldier bowed himself out and, descending the steps, took his horse from the orderly who had accompanied him: then, mounting, he went clattering away down the private road leading through the tobacco fields to the highway, and thence to the distant camp.
“Well, what is the news, Pater?” demanded Carlos, as Don Hermoso presently returned to the dining-room, looking very pale and agitated.
“The news, my son, is this,” answered Don Hermoso, his voice quivering with anger: “General Echaguë, who is in command of the troops which have just encamped in our neighbourhood, has sent a message to me regretfully intimating that it will be his duty to destroy this house, together with all its warehouses and outbuildings of every description, to prevent its seizure by the rebels who are known to be in this neighbourhood. And, as an act of grace, he gives me until noon to-morrow to remove my household and belongings to such a place of safety as I may select!”
“Oh! he does, does he?” retorted Carlos. “Awfully kind of him, I’m sure! And what answer did you return to the message?”
“I simply replied that I thanked General Echaguë for the time given me, and that I would do my utmost to complete my preparations by the hour named,” answered Don Hermoso.
“That is all right!” commented Carlos grimly. “I think we can complete our preparations by noon to-morrow. What say you, Jack?”
“I say,” answered Jack, “that we can not only complete our preparations in the time given us, but have plenty of time for play afterwards. As a matter of fact, our preparations are practically complete already. We have nothing to do except blow up the bridge, and that we will do as soon as you, Don Hermoso, and the Señora are far enough on your way to Pinar to be safe from pursuit. Then we will teach these arrogant Spaniards a much-needed lesson on the desirability of modifying their tyrannical methods.”
“What do you mean, Jack?” demanded Don Hermoso. “Do you imagine for a moment that I will seek safety in flight, and leave you two lads to defend my property for me?”
“No, Señor, I don’t mean that at all,” answered Jack. “What I mean is this: the natural situation of the place is happily such that, with the preparations already made for its defence, and perhaps one or two more which we can easily make to-morrow morning, we can without difficulty hold the estate against a much stronger force than that encamped on the plain below; and therefore there is not the slightest reason why you should not remove the Señora from the turmoil and excitement of the fight which is sure to come to-morrow.”
“I see,” said Don Hermoso. “It is the same thing, however, stated in different words. ‘The turmoil and excitement of the fight’, as you put it, will scarcely be perceptible here, in the house, and will therefore not be likely to have any injurious effect upon my wife, who must be induced to remain indoors while we are arguing the point with the Spaniards. I shall therefore remain and take my share of the risks with you.”
And from this resolution Don Hermoso was not to be moved.