“He would have been shot to-morrow,” said Appleby.
The girl laid her hand upon his arm, and led him into the lighted room, where, as it happened, a dance was just commencing. They took their places among the rest, and nothing unusual happened for several minutes. Then there was a shout from the patio and a tramp of feet, and the dancing ceased. Asking vague questions, the guests streamed down the stairway, and when Appleby and Nettie Harding, who followed, stopped among the rest at a turning Morales was standing in the patio very grim in face beside the Alcalde, with two dusty and evidently very apprehensive cazadores before him.
“To the cuartel, and tell the Sergeant Antonio to turn out ten men at once. I will consider your reward to-morrow,” he said, and turned to the Alcalde. “It would be well, señor, if you sent word to the civiles.”
Then he smiled at the guests, who made room for him as he approached the stairway and stopped close by Appleby, who felt the girl’s hand tremble a little on his arm.
“I am sorry that you should be disturbed by this affair,” he said; and Appleby wondered whether it was altogether by chance that the officer’s glance was turned in his direction.
“Two of my men have allowed an Insurgent to escape them, for which they will be rewarded. It is, however, evident that he had a friend who cut his bonds, and when we find him that man will also be duly compensated.”
The little vindictive flash in the dark eyes was very significant, and one or two of the guests, Loyalists as they were, moved rather further out of Morales’ way than was necessary as he went back up the stairway.
[XII — PANCHO’S WARNING]
A WEEK had passed since the Alcalde’s ball, when Appleby awakened late one night from a restless sleep at the hacienda San Cristoval. He had shut the lattices of his window because the moonlight streamed in, and it is not advisable for white men to sleep under that pale radiance in the tropics; and the room was almost insufferably hot, which Appleby surmised was the cause of his awakening. He was, however, anxious to get to sleep again, for his post was no sinecure, and he usually rose in the early morning.
Cuba was in a very unsettled state just then, steeped in intrigue and overrun with spies, while among Loyalists and Insurgents alike faction plotted against faction. Both were divided by internecine jealousies, and the mixed population of native-born Cubans of Iberian blood, Spaniards from the Peninsular and the Canaries, Chinamen, negroes, and mulattoes, appeared incapable of cohesion. Stability of purpose is not a prominent characteristic of the Latins, and while the country drifted in discord towards anarchy, a similar state of affairs existed on a smaller scale at the hacienda San Cristoval. The men who by the favor of the military rulers were allowed to take Harding’s pay apparently disdained continuous effort, and desisted from it to discuss politics on every opportunity; while knives were not infrequently drawn in defence of their somewhat variable convictions.