“Good-bye,” said Appleby simply. “I shall hope for your prosperity.”
He laid his foot in the stirrup, and Maccario swept off his hat.
“While there is one of the Sin Verguenza left you will never be without a friend in Cuba,” he said.
Appleby swung himself to the saddle, Harper mounted clumsily, and there was a beat of hoofs; but in a minute or two Appleby drew bridle, and twisted himself round in his saddle. With the two church towers rising high above it against the paling sky Santa Marta lay, still gleaming faintly white, upon the dusky plain behind him, and he fancied he could see Maccario standing motionless in the gap between the houses where the last fight had been. A cheerful hum of voices and a tinkle of guitars drifted out with a hot and musky smell from the close-packed town, and he turned his eyes away and glanced at the tall black cross on a rise outside the walls. Anthony Palliser of Northrop slept beneath it among the Sin Verguenza.
Then the crash of the sunset gun rose from the cuartel, and there was a roll of drums, the drums of the cazadores beaten by insurgent hands, and with a little sigh Appleby shook his bridle. He could picture his comrades laughing over their wine in the cafés, or mingling with the light-hearted crowd in the plaza, but he would never meet their badinage or see them sweeping through the smoke and dust again.
“It was pleasant while it lasted, and who knows what is in front of us now?” he said.
Harper, lurching in his saddle, laughed a little. “Well,” he said, “one gets accustomed to changes in this country, and I can hear the sea.”
“Then you have good ears. We may have trouble before we reach it,” said Appleby dryly.
They pushed on through the coolness of the night until the stars were growing dim in the eastern sky, and then rested in a little aldea until dusk came round again. The Sin Verguenza were masters of the country round Santa Marta, but sympathies were as yet divided in the region between it and the sea, and Appleby decided that it was advisable to travel circumspectly. Events proved him right, for two days later they narrowly avoided an encounter with a company of loyalist troops, and spent the next week lying close by day, and plodding by bypaths through the cane at night, while it became evident to both of them that they would never have reached the coast without the credentials with which Maccario had supplied them.
They found it was watched by gunboats when at last they reached a lagoon among the mangrove swamps, and were assured that it would be perilous to attempt to get on board a steamer in any of the ports. A small vessel with arms was expected, but when Appleby heard that she might not arrive for a month, and perhaps land her freight somewhere else, he decided to buy a fishing barquillo and put to sea at once. Harper concurred in this, and said there was little doubt that they would intercept one of the steamers from Havana.