Suddenly the attack recommenced. There were more soldiers, and a rattle of firing that broke out farther up the street suggested that the revolutionaries were being attacked in flank. Some of the men seemed to hesitate and began to look behind them, but they got steadier when an officer called out; and Cliffe understood that a detachment had been sent back to protect their rear. In the meantime, the soldiers in front were coming on. They were slouching, untidy fellows, but their brown faces were savage, and Cliffe knew they meant to get in. It was, however, his business to keep them out, and he fired as fast as he could load. When the barrel got so hot that he could hardly touch it, he paused to cool the open breach and anxiously looked about.
The street seemed filled with white figures, but they had opened out, and in the gaps he could see the dazzling stones over which the hot air danced. There was a gleam of bright steel in the sun, and he noticed that the walls were scarred. Raw spots marked where the chipped whitewash had fallen off and the adobe showed through. But there was no time to observe these things; the foremost men were dangerously near. Finding he could now hold his rifle, Cliffe snapped in a cartridge and closed the breach. Then he spent a few tense minutes. The enemy reached the foot of the barrier and climbed up. Rifles flashed from roofs and windows, streaks of flame rippled along the top of the barricade, and one or two of the defenders, perhaps stung by smarting wounds or maddened by excitement, leaped down with clubbed weapons and disappeared. Cliffe kept his place between the table legs and pulled round his cartridge-belt.
The tension could not last. Flesh and blood could not stand it. He understood why the men had leaped down, courting death. He hoped his own nerve was normally good, but if the struggle was not decided soon, he could not answer for himself. He must escape from the strain somehow, if he had to charge the attackers with an empty rifle.
There was a sudden change. The climbing white figures seemed to melt away, and though the rifles still clanged from roofs and windows the firing slackened along the barricade. The troops were going back, running not retiring, and trying to break into houses from which men with rude weapons thrust them out. It looked as if the inhabitants were all insurgents now.
Soon the priest reappeared, and Cliffe left his post and sat down where there was a strip of shade. He had helped to beat off two attacks, but he was doubtful about the third. While he rested, a fat, swarthy woman brought him a cup of caña, and he was surprised when he saw how much of the fiery spirit he had drunk. The woman smiled, and went on to the next man with the cup.
Cliffe wondered how long he had been fighting, for he found his watch had stopped; but the sun was not high yet. After all, the reënforcements he had begun to despair of might arrive in time. While he comforted himself with this reflection, some of the other men dug a trench behind the barricade, and citizens, loading the earth into baskets, carried it off. Cliffe did not know what this was for, but he supposed the baskets would be used to strengthen defenses somewhere else. It was a long time since he had handled a spade, but if they needed his help he could dig. Pulling himself up with an effort, he took a tool from a breathless man and set to work.
After a time a citizen appeared with a bundle of papers and a white flag. An officer signed him to come forward, and taking the papers from him threw them among the men. Cliffe got one, and finding a man who spoke a little English, asked him what the notice meant. The man said it was a proclamation by Gomez, stating that, as the people had serious ground for dissatisfaction with the President's administration and were determined to end it, he must accede to the wish of the leading citizens, who had urged him to form a provisional government. He promised a general amnesty for past offenses and the prompt redress of all grievances.
"So the dog turns on his master!" the translator remarked with bitter scorn. "Altiera was a tyrant, but this rogue would be worse!"
The insurgent leader, standing on top of the barricade, read the proclamation in a loud, ironical voice, and when he tore it up with a dramatic gesture, the roar of mocking laughter that rang down the street showed what all who heard it thought of Gomez's claim. Then people ran out of the houses and pelted the messenger with stones as he hurriedly retired, until a few shots from a roof cleared the street.
"The dog has bought the soldiers! Altiera should have been his own paymaster," the man whom Cliffe had questioned remarked.