With the appearance of the first of them Jack sprang up on a boulder, and shouted to them to halt; but so eager were the Spaniards to escape from the punishment that had been inflicted upon them at the other end of the defile that it was not until one of the Maxims opened fire upon them that they could be persuaded to stay their precipitate flight. But the sharp, thudding, hammer-like reports of the machine-gun, and the stream of lead that began to play upon them and thin their ranks, soon brought them to a halt, when, flinging down their arms, they cried for quarter, which of course was at once given them. Then, Carlos’ party closing in upon them from the rear, the Spaniards were carefully disarmed, their ammunition taken away from them, and their weapons destroyed by being consumed in a huge bonfire, formed of dry wood collected from the depths of the bush. And while this regrettable but necessary act of destruction was in process of execution, Carlos and Jack went among the prisoners, questioning them as to their number, who was in command, upon what principle they were working, and so on. Unfortunately they were unable to extract very much information, for it appeared that every officer had perished, either in the attack upon the estate, or at the far end of the defile: while the soldiers seemed either too stupid or too ill-informed to be able to give trustworthy replies to any of the questions asked, except that General Weyler had gone back to Havana, and that the operations in the province of Pinar del Rio were being conducted by Generals Bernal and Arolas, who, by strict command of Weyler, were laying the entire country waste, destroying every building of whatsoever description, churches included, on the ground that they afforded possible places of refuge or shelter for revolutionaries; mercilessly shooting down every man, woman, and child found, on the plea that, not having obeyed General Weyler’s concentration order, they were contumacious rebels: that, in short, where this host went they found smiling prosperity, and left behind them a blood-stained, fire-blackened waste. The troops were not acting in concert, or as one body, but in independent detachments, to each of which was allotted the duty of covering a strip of country of a certain width, which strip it was their task to ravage from end to end. The detachment to which the duty of destroying Don Hermoso’s property had fallen had consisted of some three thousand infantry, a troop of cavalry, and a battery of field artillery; and according to the story of the prisoners it had suffered frightfully during the attack, the officer in command having wasted his men most recklessly in his determination to conquer at any cost—indeed, if they were to be believed, with the exception of about half a squadron of cavalry, a few artillerymen, and perhaps fifty men left behind to destroy the buildings, they were the sole survivors of the attack and the pursuit.
The question which now presented itself to Jack and Carlos was: What were they to do with their prisoners, now that they had them?—for that they were a distinctly embarrassing possession was an indisputable fact. In the first place, the unfortunate wretches were by this time suffering acutely from hunger and thirst, but their captors had neither food nor drink to give them; indeed, they had none wherewith to satisfy their own pressing needs. Also, since all the buildings on the estate were doubtless by this time utterly destroyed by fire, there was no place in which to confine them; yet it would obviously be the height of folly to set them free while their comrades were still in the neighbourhood, for that would only mean that they would bring back those comrades to complete the work which they themselves had failed to finish. At length, after a long and anxious consultation, it was agreed that the only possible course was to pen the Spaniards inside the defile, keeping them there by the wholesome dread inspired by the presence of the two Maxims and a strong band of armed men holding the portal, under Carlos’ command; that Jack, with a picked body of fifty armed negroes, should escort Don Hermoso and the Señora back to the house, in the hope that, somewhere among the ruins, at least a partial shelter might be found for the unhappy lady, who, drenched to the skin, was now threatened with a serious attack of fever; and that, after a shelter had been found for her, Jack and his men should reconnoitre the camp of the enemy and endeavour to learn something of their immediate intentions.
This having been arranged, the prisoners were given to understand that they must make themselves as comfortable as they could where they were, for the present, and that any attempt on their part to break out would be visited with immediate and rigorous punishment: after which Jack and his party, accompanied by Don Hermoso and his wife, briskly stepped out on their way down the valley, along the road by which they had so recently come, emerging, about an hour later, into the open space that had been occupied by the warehouses. Some of these, as well as the whole of the negro huts, were found to be nothing but a heap of black and smouldering ruins; while others had been set on fire, but the flames had obviously been extinguished by the pelting rain that had fallen during the latter part of the recent thunderstorm. Those buildings which had happened to contain large quantities of combustible goods had naturally suffered most severely, and were now merely a collection of roofless, smoke-blackened walls; while those which had been empty had suffered comparatively little damage—indeed, in one or two cases, practically none at all, except that the doors had been broken open and partly wrenched off their hinges. One of these was at once utilised as a shelter for Don Hermoso’s wife; and, while the negroes mounted guard round the building, the Don and Jack hurried away toward the house, to ascertain its condition, and, so far as the former was concerned, to endeavour to find a change of clothing for the Señora.
At the first glimpse, the house, when they reached it, appeared to have suffered very severely, for many of the windows were broken, and the once immaculately white walls were streaked and blackened here and there by fire and smoke: and when they entered the building, everything was found in a most shocking state of confusion; the furniture was overturned and much of it was broken, a great deal of it was irretrievably damaged by fire, great holes had been burnt here and there in the flooring, cupboards and bureaus had been broken open and their contents scattered, apparently in a search for money or valuables; many small articles of value were missing, pictures were slashed and torn, poor Doña Isolda’s grand piano had but one leg left and was otherwise a complete wreck, and some priceless china vases and bowls that had been the glory of the drawing-room were lying on the floor, shivered to atoms. But a little closer inspection revealed that while an immense amount of damage had been done—much of it through pure wantonness and lust for destruction—the building itself was practically intact, the roof was still weatherproof, and some of the rooms were in quite inhabitable condition; while there were many articles of furniture and dress, as well as many utensils of various kinds, that could still be made serviceable. Among the inhabitable rooms were the bedroom used by Don Hermoso and his wife, as also those usually occupied by Carlos and Jack; indeed, it appeared as though the spoilers had confined their destructive efforts almost entirely to the front part of the house. Under these circumstances, as there were no signs of the enemy in the immediate neighbourhood, Don Hermoso lost no time in hurrying back to his wife and getting her up to the house and into bed, that being all he could do at the moment to combat the fever which had seized upon her.
This much having been accomplished, Jack set his negroes to search among the wreckage for anything in the nature of food which might perchance have escaped destruction, while he, single-handed, set off to reconnoitre the camp of the enemy, out on the plain. His shortest route thereto was by way of the position which Carlos had so resolutely defended; and he chose this because, the enemy having forced the passage of the river at this spot, he believed he would there find the means of crossing most easily himself. He had scarcely traversed a hundred yards from the house ere he began to encounter evidences of the severity of the fight that had waged throughout the afternoon and evening of that disastrously eventful day, in the shape of dead and wounded men, the former lying stark and cold in the light of the moon, some of them with limbs disposed as though they merely slumbered, while the contorted bodies of others showed that they had passed away in the throes of mortal agony; some with eyes decently closed, others with their sightless eyeballs upturned until only the whites were visible: while from the lips of the wounded there issued one low, continuous moan of: “Water—water! For the love of God, water!” It was a pitiable sight beyond all human power of description, and as Jack looked round him and beheld those units of slain and tortured humanity a great and righteous anger took possession of him against the arrogant Power that had been the cause of all this anguish and misery—to say nothing of what was enacting elsewhere—rather than surrender its grip upon the fair island that it had neither the will nor the ability to wisely govern—the Power that had deliberately entered upon a vindictive war against those whom it had goaded to rebellion.
It was of course quite impossible for him, unaided, to ameliorate appreciably a hundredth part of the physical anguish of the men who lay there writhing and groaning on the sodden ground; but there was one poor wretch who managed to attract his attention—a Spanish soldier who, the lower part of his body paralysed, supported himself upon one hand while he mutely pointed with the other to his open mouth and protruding tongue, and who seemed to be the very living embodiment of torturing thirst. The mute appeal in this poor creature’s eyes was so movingly eloquent that the young Englishman simply could not pass on and callously leave him in his torment. He therefore stooped and, laying the man’s arms over his shoulders, lifted the poor fellow on to his back and carried him a little way to where a depression in the ground had been converted by the rain into a pool some three or four yards in diameter, from which several wounded men were already slaking their fiery thirst; and there he laid him down within reach of the precious liquid, and stood for a moment to watch the poor creature suck down great draughts of the thick, muddy water!
There were scores of other unfortunates in sight whose sufferings were probably as acute as those of the poor wretch whom Jack had just helped, and who had an equally strong claim upon his compassion, but stern necessity demanded that he should neglect them in favour of the mission which he had set out to execute; also, he recognised that his first duty was to secure the safety of his friends. He therefore perforce steeled his heart, and pushed on toward the point at which the Spaniards had effected the passage of the river, and where he consequently expected to find the means of getting across. It was a gruesome journey, if a short one, for every yard that he advanced the dead and wounded lay more thickly piled together, until at length, by the margin of the river, the prostrate bodies of friend and foe were so closely intermingled that he found it difficult to progress at all without trampling them under foot, while the now still night air positively reeked with the odour of blood! It was awful beyond the utmost that the young Englishman’s imagination had ever pictured, and as he glanced about him with shrinking gaze and rising gorge he again mentally execrated the leader to whose savagery all those unspeakable horrors were due.
But now at last he was at the river, and now also he saw by what means the Spaniards had finally succeeded in accomplishing the task of forcing the passage of the barrier. A single glance at the contrivance was sufficient to prove that the assailants possessed among them at least one skilled engineer, for spanning the stream Jack saw an extraordinarily light yet strong bridge, constructed entirely of bamboos so lashed and braced together as to be capable of sustaining the weight of a continuous column of men, two abreast, over its entire length. It was fashioned upon the principle of the bowstring girder, and was considerably longer than was actually needed—which Jack accounted for by the fact that the Spaniards had been allowed no opportunity to gauge the actual width of the river, and had therefore been obliged to guess at it; yet, so light did it appear to be that he believed thirty men might easily have handled and placed it in position. He quickly passed across it, finding it perfectly firm to the tread, and then set out to cross the open plain toward the distant camp. He had still his night glasses with him, and as he went he frequently made use of them, as much to avoid the risk of being detected by the sentries as to observe what was passing in the camp; but from the outset he failed to detect the presence of any sentries whatever, and gradually it began to dawn upon him that the occupants of the camp, believing the defenders of the estate to be not only absolutely and irretrievably beaten, but also in panic-stricken flight, had not deemed it necessary to post any sentries at all, and were all sleeping in fancied perfect security. And this in fact he found to be actually the case, when at length, with the observance of every possible precaution, he actually stood within the precincts of the camp and looked about him. There was not a light in any one of the many tents round him; the watch fires had burnt low, and in some cases had died out altogether; not a soul was moving from one end of the camp to the other, and all round him were sleeping men! He waited only long enough to assure himself that this was actually the case, and then, withdrawing as carefully as he had come, he hurried back to where he had left his fifty men resting in one of the least damaged of the warehouses, and roused them with the intimation that they were required for instant action. Then, briefly acquainting them with what he had done and what he proposed to do, and ordering them to load their weapons, he marched them out across the bamboo bridge on to the plain, where he bade them take open order and, crouching low on the grass, advance upon the camp, exposing themselves as little as possible, since should but one person in the camp awake and detect them, all this labour would be lost.
It took the little band of adventurers a full hour to accomplish the passage across the plain; and when at length they arrived within about fifty yards of the camp, Jack caused the signal to be passed along the line for all hands to lie prone in the grass, while he went forward alone to satisfy himself that everything was still as he had left it. Then, as he had done some two hours previously, Jack crawled right into the heart of the camp and gazed carefully about him. Everything was still perfectly quiet, save that from certain of the tents there issued sounds advertising the fact that there were noisy sleepers within. Then Singleton rose cautiously to his feet and lifted his right hand above his head. The next minute fifty armed negroes, under his whispered directions, were moving about the camp, silent-footed as cats, collecting the piled arms and every other weapon which they could find, and concealing them among the long grass at a safe distance from the camp. Then, this done, Jack raised his revolver above his head and fired a single shot into the air; at the sound of which the startled occupants of the tents came tumbling out, one over another, to learn what the disturbance was about, and to seize their weapons. But, instead of their piled arms, their eyes fell upon fifty stalwart negroes facing them with levelled rifles, and Jack beside them with a revolver in each hand.
Such an unexpected sight naturally caused the Spaniards to pause in their rush, of which circumstance Singleton took advantage to thrust one of his revolvers back into his belt, and then raise his hand, with a command for silence. The Spaniards, their eyes still heavy with sleep, and disconcerted by the discovery that every one of their weapons had mysteriously vanished, obeyed readily enough, whereupon Jack requested the officer in command to step forward.