Before night there was a visit from el capitan—our district captain, who was stationed at the nearest village. We always knew, when he came clattering up the avenue, armed to the teeth, with a whole staff at his heels, that he “meant business,” which, so far as our experience extended, was the collection of a fine, or fee. In those days (twenty years ago) Cuba was in the merciless grasp of the military. The civil guard, as it was called, promenaded the rural districts in pairs, dressed in striped blue linen with scarlet trimmings. Year in and year out, in fact week in and week out, for I am sure at least four times a month, two guardia civiles crossed our fields in some direction, with no apparent purpose; but they walked past with wonderful regularity, rarely pausing for even a drink of water, or speaking unless spoken to. What they were after, what good they ever did, what good they could have done, I do not know. At every railroad-station—and between us and Havana, stations were almost in sight of each other—when the train halted, a couple of guardia civiles walked through; there was a fiction that their business was to examine the cedulas (passes) of strangers and suspiciously appearing persons—a document that every soul in Cuba was required to procure, and have renewed yearly, paying a round sum every time—but in all my journeyings I never saw the guardias speak to any one, much less ask for a paper. Our capitan had nothing to do with the guardia civiles; his was another branch of the service, whose ramifications, like the octopus, spread and squeezed the life out of the people, and drove them at last to desperation and a sickly revolt. The rural captains were advisers, counselors, exponents of the law, registrars, judges, and executioners, besides being military commanders. Their power was almost absolute; but the pay was so small (I believe it was only two onzas—thirty-four dollars—a month) it could not house and feed the man, much less his wife and children, mother and mother-in-law, sisters and sisters-in-law, and a stray cousin or aunt; for it was not only a disgrace for a woman to earn her own bread, but a stinging reproach upon every male relative, collateral or otherwise she had. It is apparent, therefore, that these poorly paid men had a hard time make ends meet; and they resorted to many devices that in any other country, or with any other people, would have been a disgrace far beyond allowing an able-bodied woman to make her own living. I presume the home government believed, or pretended to believe, that a captain’s salary was all he needed and all he received, but everybody knew that the wealthy planters were black-mailed and unjustly fined to an outrageous extent; and there existed a system of extortion and oppression that no honest government would have countenanced, and to which none but an ignorant, down-trodden people would have submitted.
To resume: before night our capitan came clattering up. Leaving his mounted staff at the door, he entered, and, after depositing sword and pistols very ostentatiously on the parlor table, proceeded to business. “There was firing on this plantation to-day.”—“Yes, Henry shot some wild dogs on the outskirts of the field.” We were then informed, by a recent decree (they had a recent decree every day, and for every emergency under the sun), that no private individual was allowed a gun or pistol. To my startled question, “But, in case of self-defense?” the reply came, “They can have a sword or knife.”—“One can’t hunt wild dogs, that threaten to overrun us, with swords and knives!” He was inexorable: we must deliver to him all the fire-arms on the plantation, to be sent to headquarters at Matanzas. I had a feeling that Mr. Captain’s pretended mission was not his true purpose; but, being disgusted with his way of doing business, womanlike, I acted with more haste than discretion.
Henry stood on the veranda with tearful eyes, and watched the procession gallop down the avenue. “What will papa say when he finds all the guns are gone?” he asked. I was too exasperated to care.
CHAPTER XIX.
NEW CHINESE—COOLIE REBELLION—ZELL’S BRAVERY—CHINESE LABOR CONTRACT—VICIOUS INSECTS.
In a few days Lamo returned, bringing Zell, whom he summoned to Havana to interpret from English into Spanish; and Ramon, a Chinese, whose term of service on the plantation was drawing to a close, to interpret from Spanish into Chinese; also thirty-five newly imported coolies. The new crowd presented a grotesque appearance. Beardless, and with long pig-tails, loose blouses, and baggy breeches, they looked like women. Stolid, quiet, and undemonstrative as Indians, they tumbled out of the wagon that had been sent to the depot for them. Having been months on the voyage, packed in a coolie-ship, and fed on light rations of tea and rice, they were in no physical condition to work, or to endure the showers that were already beginning to be of daily occurrence; so some light occupation in the vicinity of the house was assigned to them, and when a poor fellow rubbed his stomach, rolled up his eyes, and patted his head, he was forthwith marched to the infirmary and dosed. From long privation on ship, with the stimulation of climatic change, they were so voracious that, if permitted to eat all the food craved, they would have gorged themselves to death.
A moderate allowance was meted out three times daily, which disappeared with marvelous rapidity, leaving them muttering and discontented. Coming as they did from various districts, and speaking different dialects, they could not always communicate intelligibly with each other, and it required under the best of circumstances two interpreters to reach the ear of Lamo.
For many days the Chinese, now giving unmistakable tokens of refractory discontent, were our chief topic of thought and conversation. We could not understand their constant complaints, and so worried along, hoping that time, which heals most things, would adjust matters. Unwilling to allot them any regular occupation, we dared not allow them to saunter at their own sweet will under the mango-trees, now laden with unripe fruit; so, on the whole, life was almost as much of a burden to us, with this new discontented element, as it was to the Chinese themselves.
Long ago formal application had been made, through the grasping captain, for the return of our arms from Matanzas, but without any response. We watched with ever-increasing anxiety the gradual recovery of strength, coupled with angry insubordination, in the new ranks. The climax arrived, as is usually the case, in an unguarded moment. One morning Lamo and Henry, who for weeks had hovered around the house, rode off to visit a neighbor.
Suddenly our ears were assailed by a low, rumbling noise in the distance, which rose rapidly to shouts and unearthly yells. Before I could rise from my seat to make inquiry, Zell rushed in breathless. “Chinese is riz! Don’t be skeered—I’ll git my gun.” And from under his own bed he hastily pulled out an old blunderbuss. The doors and windows of the house were quickly barred, and with a calm self-possession—the thought of which almost makes me turn pale now—I stood outside the rear door. The Chinese were in full rebellion: stripped to the middle, their swarthy bodies glistening in the hot sun, they rushed with savage impetuosity up the road, leaped the low stone fence that surrounded the cluster of plantation-buildings, of which the massive dwelling-house formed the center, brandishing their hoes in a most threatening manner, and yelling like demons, as with hastily grasped rocks from the fences they pelted the retreating overseer. Ramon rushed from his bench at the carpenter-shop, and did his best to stem the tide; but they brushed him by in their determined assault upon the overseer, who, while issuing them full rations, would not yield to their demand for an unlimited supply of food.
When the howling horde had completely invaded the inclosure, and showed no abatement of their frenzy, I called to Ramon to ring the bell. Seizing the rope, he gave it a succession of rapid strokes.