CHAPTER XVII
At last Strawbridge's adventure had come to a focus. He sat, galled and dusty, on his English mount and stared at the distant metallic gleam which encircled the southern and western segments of the horizon. That thin, shining arc was the junction of the Orinoco and the Rio Negro. Against its shimmer arose a single spire, so tiny and so far away that the drummer had to scrutinize it with particularity before he could make it out at all. So this was the upshot of all their riding and burning and thirsting—for these sweat-caked peons to advance against a church steeple!
Half a dozen different impressions clamored for the American's attention. Just behind him officers were barking their soldiers into two squads. A little farther to the rear, the men were pulling themselves from their wives and mistresses, to join the ranks again. There was something elemental and unashamed in the passion of their parting. They were much the same color as the sand they trod. They might have been figures sprung out of the heat and travail of the melancholy llanos, as indeed they were. They clung to each other, these earth-colored peons; they sobbed, they kissed each other with unrestraint, absorbed in their griefs. There was something wide and impersonal in this passionate outpouring of their misery. They were mummers depicting completely what every lover feels on parting with his love. Some inhibition, some reserve seemed to melt in Strawbridge's mind, and with a trembling tenderness he thought of the señora. He could see her delicate face looking at him sorrowfully. Such a sense of pathos filled him that he wondered if it did not forbode some evil to him. Perhaps he was about to be killed; else why should the señora's sad face appear to him so vividly?
Strawbridge became aware of a horseman coming up, on his left. It was Coronel Saturnino, his face a mask of dust. For once the colonel seemed keen and alive. His black eyes, in this dust mask, were full of fire, but the dusty mouth was set in its inevitable sardonic quirk.
"I rode over to suggest that you hang a carbine to your saddle." He smiled.
Strawbridge looked down at his pommel doubtfully.
"I thought perhaps if I went in as a neutral—"
"Pues, you are likely not to come out at all."
"Then you think I had better carry a gun?"
"It's safer." The colonel beckoned a soldier to him and gave an order that sent the man to the rear, to return presently with a carbine for Strawbridge. While the peon strapped it to the drummer's saddle, the colonel's black eyes, with their look of chronic amusement, passed over his recruits.
"These peons are going out to fight for their freedom," he observed with his tone of satire. "They are perpetually going out to fight for their freedom. Different saviors rise up—a Miedo, a Fombombo. Now it is Saturnino, and only the Holy Virgin knows who next will be leading these tatterdemalions to freedom!" With sardonic wrinkles in his dust mask he looked at the drummer.
Strawbridge tried to shift his leg so it would not touch the hard carbine. He was somehow incensed at Saturnino's tone.
"What better thing can they fight for than their freedom?"
The colonel shrugged.
"Probably nothing. It makes a very exciting game for gentlemen—these peons wanting to be free. What finer thing could a peon do than to entertain a caballero?"
Strawbridge stared at the dust mask.
"Good God, Saturnino! Is that all this is to you?—an entertainment, a game?"
The officer shrugged again.
"Pues, of course it isn't business." He paused with a quizzical look, and then went on: "But what I really rode over to tell you is, I am dividing the men into two squadrons. I will lead one in a frontal attack on the casa fuerte. The other, Lieutenant Rosales will lead around by the river. It will make its way through the wharves and attack the casa fuerte from the rear."
Strawbridge had become attentive, and nodded to these plans.
"You may go along with either of the parties," invited the colonel, "or you may stay here with the women until the fight is over."
"No, certainly not! I'll go by the river," chose Strawbridge, at once.
The colonel nodded, and smiled once again through his grime.
"As you will; and may luck wait on your courage! Adios!"
The two men reached across the necks of their stolen horses and shook hands.
"Same to you, colonel, and so long," said the drummer, somewhat moved.
Saturnino suddenly jerked his horse in a curvette, and saluted easily as the big English animal plunged with him back toward his line.
The drummer turned his own mount and rode toward Rosales's column. Lieutenant Rosales was a smallish, sharp-featured youth whose eyes were surrounded with such dark rings that they showed through the dust. Strawbridge remembered having seen him before, in the plaza. Now he was going to fight under this little roué, perhaps die under his command. He felt as if he were going to fight with a crowd of street gamins. It was a mean adventure.
The men under Rosales sat stolid and quiet on their mules and horses. Saturnino's sarcasm revisited the drummer's mind: "These peons are perpetually fighting for their freedom, under this savior and that. They've been at it upward of four centuries. Now I'm leading them," and he had laughed.
A gust of pity shivered through the American's bowels for these stolid men, arming and seeking a leader for four centuries, and led by Saturnino, a man to whom their travail was a game!
At that moment the sickly-looking officer whipped out his sword and barked an order, and the next moment the cavalry set off at a gallop through the heat and dust. The drummer fell into the ranks. He twisted in his saddle for any easement he could find. His carbine added a new pain to his riding. It banged his thigh with a strange adroitness. Within ten or fifteen minutes a dust rose up among so many galloping horses which made the air almost unbreathable. These petty tortures so harassed the drummer that he looked forward to actual fighting as a relief. To avoid the dust he swung his horse out of line and spurred him to the van of the column. By the time the American was even with Lieutenant Rosales, he had reached clean breathing, and he expanded his lungs with a sense of great relief. But the peons, the dirt-colored men who after four hundred years of rebellion were now playing Coronel Saturnino's game, these peons rode resolutely in the heat and dust without breaking line. The thin-faced officer with the black circles about his eyes stared fixedly ahead.
Presently the troopers galloped up another long swell in the desert, and when they reached its crest Strawbridge was shocked to see how close they were upon the city of San Geronimo. He could see the red roofs of the adobes, a wireless tower run up like a spider-web, and the very bells in the campanile. Around the street entrances were swarms of people in a state of excitement. Some rushed into their houses; others went flying into the llanos—straggling figures bound for no other goal than to escape the coming storm.
Strawbridge watched the scene curiously, as if he were some idle spectator. Presently Rosales drew his sword, swung his men out of line with the main entrance, and veered toward the west, toward the stretch of water which was growing more and more enormous as they approached it.
Horses and mules, on they went, faster and faster. There was a wide space between the town and the river, to give play to the overflow in the rainy season. Into this space Rosales headed. The hoofs of the cavalcade made a dull drumming in the sand. Far down the river bank, opposite the business part of town, Strawbridge could see the big freight goletas from Trinidad and Ciudad Bolívar, hastily making sail to escape the tempest.
Suddenly, from somewhere over on their right, came a hard blow in the air. The flat plains lent no resonance. It was simply a crash—a sharp, terrific impact. It was followed by another, by twos and threes, by some indeterminable number. They hammered terrifically at Strawbridge's ear-drums with a sense of devastating power. The Federals in the casa fuerte were cannonading Coronel Saturnino.
The cannonading must have been an agreed signal between the colonel and Rosales. At its roar the lieutenant yelped at his men and flung his column headlong into the open space along the wharves of San Geronimo.
Strawbridge went with them. He rode inexpertly, swaying dangerously on his English mount. With his left hand he jerked at his carbine, trying to get it out of its holster, with his right he clung to the pommel of his saddle. He peered ahead, and the whole wharf-side seemed rushing at him, shaken by the terrific vibrations of the horse. The few stragglers left in sight skurried about to avoid the cavalry charge. Far ahead, puffs of smoke came out at barred windows in the adobes. At that moment the rumble of hoofs in the sand turned into a crashing clatter. The horses had struck the cobblestones of the wharf. An increased heat from the glare of the hot cobbles pinched the drummer. More smoke puffs blew out at the windows. It occurred to the drummer that these were peons firing on the cavalry.
A long row of palms were planted straight down the middle of the playa. As these palms vibrated toward him, the drummer glimpsed the head and shoulders of a man, pointing a rifle, high up in a clump of leaves. A little thrill went over him. He swung his carbine toward the figure.
"Hey, look at that scoundrel up that palm! Blow him out of there!" He pointed his gun without thinking of using it. "Blow him out, I say."
Half a dozen riders heard and looked. They swung up their carbines and fired as they galloped. Strawbridge could see the spatter of the bullets against the big leaves; next moment the head and shoulders made a limp lurch forward, and the figure of a man dropped out of the palm and turned over and over in the air. With a primitive satisfaction the drummer watched the fall. He had wiped out an enemy. He stared down the playa. Far down where the quay narrowed with distance, a line of men were marching through the sunshine. He could see the glitter of their bayonets and their intense shadows moving in front of them. At sight of these federal soldiers the carbines about Strawbridge began a staccato snapping. The distant line of soldiers stopped, knelt, aimed, like a little row of toys in the brilliant sunshine. Then came the faint crack of their volley.
The effect appalled Strawbridge. A peon on the drummer's right reeled from his saddle; ahead of him a horse reared and fell, flinging his rider on the cobbles, under the hoofs of the horses. The drummer saw the wretch thresh about as he was broken upon the stones.
For answer the insurgents deployed the width of the playa, between the houses and the palms, and charged. Horses, mules, howling peons, and chattering carbines roared down the quay. The Federals fired one more volley, then suddenly broke and fled. They scurried in every direction. Their little human speed was so puny that the horses overhauled them like giants. A feeling of tremendous strength filled Strawbridge. He was a Gulliver plunging down on Lilliputians. He selected a man to kill. The Federal sprinted desperately, but his short legs seemed barely to move in front of the English stallion.
The chase became a vertigo. A hard pulse pounded in Strawbridge's ears. Never before had he known the terrific excitement of hunting a man down and killing him. The drummer's adroitness and horsemanship sharpened to the delight of murder. He cleared his carbine and aimed at the runner. He meant to hit him in the cross of his canteen strap. He pulled the trigger....
A terrific concussion almost bowled over the drummer and his horse. It displaced the whole platoon. Strawbridge whirled, and saw the roofs of the adobes lined with federal troops, firing down on the cavalry.
Men and horses fell beneath continuous volleys. The squadron was falling back toward the river. The men acted as if they struggled in the teeth of a furious wind-storm. Suddenly some of them wheeled off toward the river. Rosales was behind his men, howling and spewing Spanish oaths. He beat the fugitives with the back of his sword. In the uproar the hatchet-faced lieutenant, leaning forward toward the enemy, pointed at the roofs. He might have been trying to reach the crashing rifles with the tip of his saber. He was howling for his men to charge. A flame of sympathy went through Strawbridge for this indomitable knave of an officer. He headed his stallion about in the careening column. He shouted a mixture of English and Spanish:
"Adelante! Bore into 'em! Pronto! Wipe 'em out—the hellions!"
The powerful horse might have been a stanchion shoring up the column. His mere lunge turned three or four fugitives toward the enemy. This whirling movement became the focus of a renewed charge. Every man took courage from Strawbridge, from the thin-faced reprobate who led them. The column flung itself into the teeth of the fire from the roofs.
The stink and sting of powder-gas jabbed up Strawbridge's nose. The Federals on the roof shone dimly behind a mist of smokeless powder. As Strawbridge charged in, he could see the face of a man staring at him, and the circle of a rifle muzzle under his right eye. The cavalry plunged in against the mud walls. Horses smashed against them, reared, fell, or squatted trembling at this blank obstruction. What for? Strawbridge did not know. He was furiously angry. He meant to strike.
Rosales had directed his charge toward the lowest roof in the whole playa side. It was not more than eight feet high. The focusing of his fire on this point had cut down the defense just here and left a gap in the line of defenders. As Rosales dashed up to this building, he caught the adobe eaves and succeeded in drawing himself up to the roof. A Federal seemed to discharge a gun through his head, but the daredevil pressed on, with his automatic going. Half a dozen, a dozen other llaneros followed. A score gained footing on the low roof. They were amazing horsemen. The Federals were not deployed on the roofs. They could fire only from the ends of their columns. The knot of cavalry on the red tiles grew, expanded, pressed back the feeble ends of the enemy. The fight had transferred itself from the streets to the house-tops—the classic stage for South American battles.
In the midst of this extraordinary manœuver, Strawbridge found himself trying to scramble up the corner of a building. He could not take off from the saddle. From the ground he could just reach the eave. He clung to the hot adobe and pulled with all his strength, kicking and pawing at the corner with knees and feet. Now and then a bullet flicked adobe dust into his face. With a desperate kick he did succeed in hanging a toe over the cornice. Just as he was wriggling his heavy body up on the roof, something about his hold broke. He dropped broadside from where he sagged, falling about five feet and landing in the litter which collects about Spanish-American huts.
The big drummer lay inert, and cursed with every blasphemy to which he could lay his tongue. He cursed Federals, insurgents, house, sun, dust. He invoked the Deity to consign each to its particular hell. He lay in burning dust, swearing at a mud wall not six inches from his nose.
The tearing volleys of rifle shots were drawing a little away from where Strawbridge lay. The quest of the peons for liberty was withdrawing itself somewhat. Presently the American made an effort to get out of his burning bed. He stirred, and found to his discomfiture that one of his arms was numb. He wondered anxiously if he had broken it.
He used his good arm, made shift to sit up, then got to his feet. Then he was surprised to see that his numb hand was bloody. A closer examination showed that the bones in his palm had been shattered by a bullet. That was what flung him from the roof. He looked at his hand in dismay, turning it over and back. It did not seem to belong to him. He began swearing again, mentally. What a hell of an accident to happen to him! For him, Thomas Strawbridge, to get shot! What a damnable piece of luck! He continued damning his luck, with quivering earnestness. He could not realize that it was his hand, attached to his wrist. He kept looking at it. The hand did not pain him in the least. It had no sensation at all.
There had been a certain order kept by the peon cavalry, of which Strawbridge had not been aware. Now, as he looked about, he saw the insurgents' horses trotting in a dark group far down the playa. They were under the care of hostlers, which the hair-splitting plans of Saturnino no doubt had arranged for, for just such an emergency as this. Naturally, Strawbridge's English stallion had vanished with the herd.
Near at hand lay men and horses, dead and wounded. One mule, shot through the back, was dragging itself by its fore feet. Strawbridge picked up his carbine with his good hand and ended its struggles.
For a few minutes the drummer stood looking at this dead mule, at a dead peon some ten steps farther east, then at a sort of windrow of mules and horses and peons where the cavalry had hesitated before charging.
These were the men whom Strawbridge had seen, only an hour before, embracing and weeping over their loves; now they lay in all sorts of twisted and grotesque postures; already the green flies were buzzing about the mouths their sweethearts had kissed. Such was the outcome of their fight for liberty. This was the freedom they had found, these brown exhalations of the llanos, who rose up out of the earth, fought, struggled, plotted, murdered, and sank into the llanos again. And all their pain and fury had ever done in four centuries was to exchange one dictator for another....
A profound weariness came over Strawbridge. The crotches of his legs, which the horse had skinned, began burning again. An unlocalized throbbing set up in his wounded arm. A fly came buzzing about, and the drummer waved it away. Then he examined his wound again, and as he looked he grew sick at heart. He would be crippled for the rest of his life. Never before had a mishap befallen his big, comfortable body, and now his hand was gone and he could never have it again. This seemed to Strawbridge the most tragic thing which had happened in the battle of San Geronimo—that he, who was such a busy man, who needed his hand so much, should have lost it.
With an American's dread of germs he wanted to tie up his wound, to prevent infection. With this object in view, he looked anxiously about over the shambles.
The wharf was deserted by the living. The small drogistas which usually are found along Latin-American streets were all shut like blind eyes. Sounds of the fighting, a little softened, came from the direction of the casa fuerte. A rather wild notion came to Strawbridge to follow the soldiers and obtain his dressing from the medical corps of the insurgents; then he recalled that they had no medical corps. They had brought along with them a priest to save the dead, but they had not even a first-aid pack for the wounded.
Beyond the row of palms down the center of the playa, the drummer presently observed a goleta, one of those curious Orinocan schooners with preternaturally tall masts, and a little square sail swung down under her jib. She was lying close to the bank, and evidently was stuck on a sand-bar, for her owner was on deck, trying, with a long spar, to pry her off.
This sort of craft often carried passengers on the river, and the American felt sure she would possess some of the simpler surgical aids. So he picked up his carbine and set off at a painful pace to the waterside.
When the drummer had passed the row of palms and appeared moving definitely toward the schooner, the man on deck stopped poling. He peered through the glare, at the American, and next moment dashed out of sight below deck.
His action cheered Strawbridge. The drummer felt that the skipper had understood the situation and had rushed below for his surgical dressings, to have them ready by his arrival. This thoughtfulness put a little better heart into the wounded man as he moved shakily along through the glare and heat. He could not help thinking of the inherent courtesy in all Venezuelans. It was perhaps not sincere every time, thought the American, but it was as soothing as a poultice.
As Strawbridge moved gratefully toward the goleta, the skipper reappeared on deck with a stick; no, it was an outrageously long gun. He leveled it at the drummer and fired point-blank. The bullet whistled past the American's ear, and plunked into a heap of balata balls behind him.
Strawbridge stopped and stared, bewildered. The skipper was feverishly reloading his extraordinary gun. It seemed to be some sort of single-shot arrangement. The drummer was amazed, and suddenly outraged.
"Here!" he shouted. "What the hell do you mean?"
The master of the schooner lifted his weapon again, to correct his faulty shot, when the salesman instinctively dived behind some bags of tonka-beans. He peered over the tops, still scarcely able to believe his senses, when the captain fired again and something nicked the American's hat.
At this second discharge the drummer went furious. To be fired on casually and without any provocation whatever! With his good arm, he flung his carbine along the top of the bags leveled down, and fired at the captain. At his first movement, however, the sailor had dropped down and disappeared below the garboard of the schooner.
The American fired two vicious shots at the place where the captain must have been prone. Then he glared at the vacant deck, with the bitterest sense of injury he had ever known. To be fired upon when he was seeking aid and comfort—to be shot at like a rat!
His feeling of injury became so intense he burst out cursing the invisible sailor, loading him with every obscene and profane qualification. With his carbine leveled over the bags, he swore furiously for two or three minutes. Then he began to repeat his oaths, and presently fizzled out through a mere sense of rhetoric. Then he damned his enemy for a coward, and invited him to stand up like a man and get killed.
Passed a slight interim, and a voice behind the gunwale, but considerably removed from where the fellow had disappeared, called out, "Señor!"
Through some strange reaction, this placating "Señor" added fuel to Strawbridge's wrath. He broke out again, howling, swearing, and urging the captain to get up and be shot.
But the captain conducted his end of the conversation from cover.
"Señor," he repeated without any resentment in his tone, "are you not a revolutionista?"
"No!" yelled Strawbridge. "I'm a decent American citizen down in this hell-fired country...." He continued this strain upward half a minute.
When he became silent again, the hidden one ejaculated mildly:
"Caramba! How should I know you were an Americano, señor?"
"Well,—by God!—you ought to look who you're shooting at!"
"Up this Orinoco valley, señor, if you look too long before you shoot, you may not get to shoot at all."
"Huh! I bet you knew I was an American all the time."
"No, really, señor! Why should I shoot at an Americano?"
Strawbridge could think of no reason why any one should want to shoot at an American. During the silence which followed, the sailor asked in a placating tone:
"May I stand up, Señor Americano? This deck is very warm indeed."
The drummer relinquished his notion of killing the man.
"All right, get up," he conceded. "We're not doing any good like this." And Strawbridge walked out from behind the tonka-beans at the same time the captain sat up and then stood.
The sailor was a brown man, dripping with sweat, and with smudges of pitch on his clothes which he had got from the seams in the deck. He had a good-humored face, rather scared just now, and he looked curiously at Strawbridge as he mopped his face and neck with a red handkerchief.
"Will you come aboard my ship, señor?" he inquired courteously, getting his spar again and running it out to where Strawbridge could by wading a little reach the end of it. The drummer walked aboard.
The moment the drummer stepped on deck, the captain began hastily:
"Now, señor, if you would be kind enough to lend me a little help ... I am trying to float the Concepcion Inmaculada."
"What's the rush?" asked the salesman, looking at his wounded hand.
The fellow swung his weight against the spar.
"Caramba! If the revolutionistas catch me here, they will strip my poor Concepcion Inmaculada to her last sheet."
"Steal your stuff!" echoed Strawbridge. "What makes you think so!"
"Lightning of God!" cried the shipmaster. "They are ladrones, bandits, cutpurses! Come, give a poor man a hand, señor!" He was shoving now with all his strength.
"You're wrong about that!" defended the drummer, warmly. "I know those fellows. Came up here with 'em." He doubled up his good fist and began making strong, convincing selling gestures with it.
"You can take this from me, señor," he said: "The revolutionists are just as high-toned a set of men as you'll find in Venezuela. I honestly believe General Fombombo has higher ideals than any public man I ever knew, and as for that Coronel Saturnino—say! you got to hand it to him for courtesy and politeness! So don't get all fussed about your boat. You're safe as a church, right here." Strawbridge paused impressively, and then asked, "Say, can you do anything for this damned hand of mine!"
The captain was convinced. Perhaps of all the men in the world the American salesman has a style of talk the most sincere in sound. The captain visibly put by his doubts of the revolutionists, and then looked at the hand.
"Caramba! that's a bad punch!"
"Yeh, tough luck."
A faint suspicion crossed the brown man's mind.
"You were not fighting, señor? You are not a revolutionista yourself?"
"Hell, no! I got this following the troops around. I wanted to see how they worked."
"Cá! Are you a military attaché, Señor Americano?"
The ship-owner was visibly impressed, but Strawbridge straightened.
"Say, do I look like a damn diplomatic lounge lizard sunning himself in some South American post! By God, I'm a man! I'm an American salesman down here investigating a point of business. I sell hardware, myself. I make this territory once a year. What's your line!"
The captain of the Concepcion Inmaculada opened his eyes at a man who so scorned a governmental position. His respect mounted. In fact, the captain was born into the South American cult of respect for office. He had never before met the North American's thoroughgoing contempt for politics and politicians, nor was he aware of the fact that it is barely respectable to be anything less than a senator in the United States—and often not that.
So now the sailor introduced himself with circumspection to so important a personage. He was Noe Vargas, commander of the Concepcion Inmaculada, sailing out of Coro. He had cruised up the Orinoco to buy tonka-beans and balata, and would carry them to Curaçao to be reshipped to Holland. In fact, a large part of the beans and balata which Strawbridge saw lying on the wharf was consigned to the Concepcion Inmaculada, if only Noe could succeed in lading his vessel.
All this information was delightful to Strawbridge. In fact, this was the first conversation which he had really enjoyed since coming to Venezuela. And while Captain Vargas was not particularly fond of talking of sago, copra, cassava, guarapo, and such articles of commerce, he was flattered that so great a man as Strawbridge should deign to listen to him.
As they talked, Captain Vargas made shift to bind up Strawbridge's hand. He had no surgical linen, but he thought the tail of one of his shirts would do. Strawbridge objected, on the score of germs. The captain assured him these were impossible, because only the day before he had washed this shirt, which he proposed to use, in the Orinoco, and it was a well-known fact that running water purified itself once every thousand yards.
"And think how pure the Orinoco must be, señor," added the captain, "for the Orinoco had flowed for thousands and thousands of miles!"
So Strawbridge went below, into a smelly cabin. The captain found the shirt he meant, in a bag of dunnage, pulled it out, cut off the tail, and bound up the drummer's hand.
The two men were still talking business when they returned to the deck. Strawbridge had excited himself somewhat by explaining that if the revolutionists took San Geronimo it would mean for him an order of thousands of rifles and cases of ammunition. This meant a rich commission. The skipper and the drummer stood on deck, listening to the gun-shots which would decide the American's commission. The reports came in gusts.
Strawbridge peered in the direction of the fighting. He tiptoed and moved about the deck, but all he could see was the haze of semi-smokeless powder hanging over the city in the direction of the casa fuerte. Presently the captain ejaculated:
"Caramba! To think that this fighting may put a fortune in your pocket!"
The drummer nodded.
"It may do it. Damn it! I hope Saturnino wins!"
Both men stared cityward. The volley-firing had almost died out. In its place came a desultory snapping which gave Strawbridge the impression of some person shooting the last few rats in a corn-bin. Now a rat would be found behind a plank—bang! Then two would start from a covert—bang! bang! These were the sounds which came from the city. Single reports at irregular intervals. There was something dreadful and cold-blooded about it.
Suddenly Captain Vargas pointed.
"Mire! Yonder they come out of the calle! Look!"
Sure enough, through the palms the drummer saw a line of soldiers march out of a street into the playa. Captain Vargas turned and ran below for a telescope. The drummer screwed up his eyes against the glare and peered without breathing. He was trying to find out whether he was thousands of dollars winner, or whether his side had lost. In the heat the soldiers and the quay danced and shimmered. It was impossible to tell whether they were Federals or rebels. However, the crowd fell into a definite arrangement. A line of men were standing up against the low adobe walls, while another line stood opposite to them in the playa.
A kind of crawling went over Strawbridge. His heart began to beat heavily, and he stared at the scene with fascinated eyes. At that moment Captain Vargas hurried up on deck with the telescope.
Strawbridge turned, almost jerked the instrument from the Venezuelan, and fumbled at it with his good hand and the wrist of his wounded arm. The captain helped him, and he peered through the glass. Views of palms, of blank walls, of roofs and rolling clouds swung back and forth, up and down; then abruptly appeared a line of men standing against a wall. At the very first glimpse Strawbridge's whole ventral cavity seemed to collapse. At the head of the unhappy column stood Lieutenant Rosales. The drummer could make out even his sharp, dusty features. A figure in a cassock stood in front of the lieutenant, holding up a cross. A nervous spasm swung the lense out of line. When he refocused it, Lieutenant Rosales had disappeared from the head of the column, and an ordinary peon stood next. A solitary rifle report reached the Concepcion Inmaculada.
Strawbridge stopped looking and with a shaking hand handed the glass to the captain. His mouth was so dry he could scarcely speak.
"That ... that ... that was ... Rosales...."
"Your friend?"
Strawbridge nodded.
"Then the insurgents have lost!"
Strawbridge nodded again. Then he went to a coil of rope in the shade of the mainsail and sat down. The slow reports came to him from the end of the playa—bang!—bang!—bang! Rosales ... Saturnino ... Gumersindo ... the peons, the indomitable peons who had ridden out with their lives in search of liberty. The banging would never, never cease.
The horror, the pathos of it shook the drummer. He leaned forward on his knees and let his head go limply in his folded arms. He did not care whether he lived or died. From the end of the playa the slow reports assaulted his ears. After a while they stopped. There was a singing in his ears as if he had taken quinine. Presently Captain Vargas said, "They are coming down here." Strawbridge paid no attention. All of his friends on that brave adventure were gone. Gumersindo, with his strange philosophy, was no more, nor the mocking Saturnino, nor the kindly priest. Captain Vargas was saying, "Remember, mi amigo, you are my first mate, if any one should ask. You have been on the Concepcion Inmaculada all the time. You and I did not fly as the other cowardly vessels did, because we felt that Justice, God, and the federal forces must win."
Strawbridge looked up at the captain and nodded mechanically. He could feel that his face was putty-colored. The two men ceased talking and watched the approach of the federal troops.
As Strawbridge stared at the marching men he scrutinized the officer at the head of the column, a graceful figure of medium height, with slender waist and broad shoulders. This man had just executed a whole column of insurgents, but he bore his bloody deed with a light heart. He walked jauntily, with his visor tipped up and a hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword.
The drummer tried to make out the features of this man upon whom his own fortunes, even his own life, rested so heavily. He peered intently through the downpour of sunshine. As he looked, a queer illusion took place. The face of the strange officer seemed to melt and change into the features of Coronel Saturnino. A kind of exaltation shone through the dust on this handsome and familiar face. The drummer was shocked at such a resemblance to his executed friend. Then, in the ranks, he espied the black face of Gumersindo. Strawbridge thought he was going mad. At that moment the officer at the head of the column whipped out his sword and saluted the drummer on deck.
"Bravo, Señor Strawbridge!" he shouted joyfully. "I have heard how you stopped a panic and headed a cavalry charge against the ambuscade on the roofs. Mire, mis bravos! There stands the man who won the battle of San Geronimo!"
Under his violent revulsion, the drummer could scarcely breathe. He gaped and stared.
"What! What! Are those our troops! My God! I thought you were all dead—executed. I thought I saw poor Rosales facing a firing-squad!"
Saturnino lost his ebullience.
"You mean at the end of the playa?"
"Yes."
"That was Rosales. When his forces gained the casa fuerte by a most gallant charge from the flank, he then tried to hold the fort against my own troops." Saturnino's voice took a metallic tang: "I had to win the stronghold by fighting half my own troops. That young whelp's insurrection almost frustrated my plans."
Strawbridge was dumbfounded.
"You mean ... he deserted you in battle?... turned on you in the midst of battle?"
Saturnino waved a hand.
"For a long time there has been a plot brewing in Canalejos, against General Fombombo. It came to a head in Rosales...." He shrugged. "Cá! You can scarcely blame a joven of spirit from playing the game. If he had won...." Saturnino looked at the town and the wide river. "Caramba! he would have won a nucleus for a state of his own, thrust in between federal and insurgent territory. Cá! It was quite a stroke. I think I will give the lad a military funeral. Such souls as his have made the Latin race great." Just then the colonel's eyes fell on the drummer's bandaged hand.
"Ola, mi amigo! I see you are wounded!"