“Will you shoot me in the front, please?”
“It cannot be,” said the captain. “I have orders to shoot you in the back.”
“But I was never traitor to my own country nor to Spain.”
“My duty is to comply with the orders I have received.”
“Very well, then; shoot me as you please.”[15]
He asked that the soldiers be instructed to aim not at his head but his heart, and that he should not be compelled to kneel but might receive his death standing. These requests the captain granted.
Into the square he marched, between two batteries of artillery, a company of cavalry in front, another behind. With him still went the priests, Fathers Estanislao March and José Villaclara, and behind them the man that had been his counsel in the mock trial, Luis de Andrade. Rizal stepped to the place [[308]]where he was to die and looked out over the blue sea, bright in the sunlight. And then for the first time the iron composure seemed shaken. It may have been some thought of his lost youth, or the terror of the scene that reached out at him like something coldly palpable. A shiver seemed to go over him; the mortal man that he had so long suppressed in him reasserted itself; and one great sigh seemed to burst from his heart.
“O Father, how terrible it is to die! How one suffers! Father, I forgive every one from the bottom of my heart; I have no resentment against any one: believe me, your reverence!”
The next instant the spasm had passed. The will with which he had ruled himself so long came back to its accustomed empire. He was himself again and stood erect, with no twitching of his lips and no fear in his eyes.
The executioners marched upon the field.