“We are going to Calvary,” he said to them. “My sufferings are little. The Savior suffered much. He was nailed to the cross. In an instant the bullets will end all my pain.”[14]
A crowd lined the street, for the most part silent, but among the Spaniards were some exclamations of joy. One foreigner, a Scotchman, watching the scene, was moved to cry aloud a brief good-by. A little company of Rizal’s former students at Dapitan stood together and wept.
He looked out upon the bay and the ships.
“How beautiful is the morning, Father! How clear is the view of Corregidor and the Cavite Mountains! I walked here with my sweetheart, Leonora, on mornings like this.”
“The morning to be is still more beautiful, my son,” answered the priest.
“Why is that, Father?” asked Rizal, not quite understanding his confessor’s words.
The officer in charge of the squad stepped between them, and the father’s reply was not heard.
Thus they moved to the place of execution, the dreadful Bagumbayan Field, the spot where so many others had been slain for defying tyranny, where Fathers Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora had given up their lives. To their memory he had dedicated his protest against the beast that had torn them. Now in his own turn he was come to be torn.
A great troop of soldiers had formed a square to [[307]]hold the people back. Artillery was drawn up as if a rescue were feared, and at one side—strange and incongruous spectacle!—a band to sound the national anthem of triumph over this one man. To the governing class the occasion was all holiday. Hundreds of that class stood there, men and women, and uttered cries of animal pleasure when they saw their enemy come bound and helpless to be killed before their eyes.
Neither they nor the engines of death they had evoked seemed to pierce the serenity that wrapped him around. As they reached the field, he stopped before the captain in command and said quietly: