Morales let his hand fall on the hilt of his sword. “Then there is only one course open to me. I place these men in your custody, sergeant, and until you hand them over in the guardroom at Santa Marta you will be answerable for them.”
The sergeant made a little sign, two men moved forward, and in another minute Appleby and Harper went down the stairway and saw a section of cazadores waiting in the patio.
[XXIV — RESPITED]
A FAINT light was creeping in through the narrow window when Appleby awoke in a little upper room in the cuartel at Santa Marta. Worn out by the tense anxiety he had undergone he had at last slept restlessly, and for a moment or two he was only sensible that his surroundings were unfamiliar. Simply as he had lived at San Cristoval the room seemed unusually bare, while his limbs ached a little, and he wondered why he was lying on a thin strip of matting, and what Harper, who lay close beside him, apparently asleep, was doing there.
Then he shook himself into wakefulness as memory came back, and the events of the preceding night arranged themselves before him. He remembered his brief trial by Morales and a handful of officers, who deferred to him—for Santa Marta was under martial law—the written process declaring his offences, and the smile in Morales’ dark eyes when he admitted that he had nothing to urge in extenuation. One point alone he contested, and that was that he and Harper had supplied the insurgents with arms from San Cristoval, but the process proved that rifles had been carried into the factory, and his assertion that it was done without his knowledge only called forth a smile of incredulity. Then came the sentence, which Appleby listened to with the unconcern of desperation, and Harper, standing with great hands clenched and face dark with passion, answered with a torrent of furious invective in luminous American and Castilian, until two cazadores dragged him away.
Appleby shivered, and rising softly walked to the window as he remembered that the day that was breaking was the last he would ever see. He flung the lattice open, and his face grew grim as he looked out upon the town. It was as yet, for the most part, dim and shadowy, and two square church towers rose blackly against a sky of paling indigo, but here and there a white wall glimmered faintly, and a pearly lustre suffused the east. While he watched it became streaked with crimson, for in the tropics dawn comes suddenly, and by and by a long shaft of brightness streamed up into the sky. Then the city emerged from the shadow, and once more shone dazzlingly white in the morning sun.
It awoke as suddenly, for men rise early in that country to work while it is cool, and a ringing of bugles rose from beyond the flat roofs clear and musical, while the white walls flung back the patter of feet, and the hum of voices became audible. Appleby listened with a dull hopelessness that was too intense for bitterness to the stir of reawakening life, though the contrast between his lot and that of the men whose voices he heard had its effect on him. They were going out to their toil, and would in due time sleep again, but before that day was over he would be at rest forever. Then as somebody went by below singing a little light-hearted song he turned away with a groan, and saw that Harper was watching him.
“You haven’t much use for singing,” he said.
Appleby sat down with his back against the wall, and laughed somewhat hollowly. “No,” he said. “The only appropriate music would be a requiem.”
“Well,” said Harper reflectively, “I don’t quite know, though I’m free to admit that I’m feeling a good deal more anxious than I care about. I was thinking, and didn’t sleep much last night, and it kind of seems to me the Spaniards have about enough on their backs just now.”