XVIII
Shortly before dawn the next morning the train stopped at the quarry-siding of Piedras Blancas, where the cooks of a squadron of Meruel Reds were preparing broth and maté with water from the railway tanks.
“There you are, lad,” the driver said, as he bade Hi good-bye. “Here’s a wheen good law-and-order men to give yon marauding Manuel his paiks. More power to ye, sons,” he cried, raising his voice. “And hang yon idolatrous Deeck Turpin on a sour apple-tree.”
On leaving the train, Hi slipped through the crowd of quarry men and soldiers, out of the siding to the road. Men and horses were coming from their billets in the village. The cliff of the quarry loomed out white: the stone dust made the village like moonlight or a flour mill.
Turning rapidly away downhill, he came to a grassy bank, where he breakfasted on food which the girl had provided. As he ate, all that expanse of the plain came into light and colour from the morning: he could see.
There, far away, was Santa Barbara, glittering under a smudge of mist, which hung over the violet of the sea. There, less than half way to the city, was the hill to which he had been struggling all these days. That heave of hill, topped by the church tower, one pinnacle of which was a statue of Our Lady, was the hill of Anselmo, distant. . . . He could not say how far distant it was, in that deceptive light: “Ten miles,” they had said, but it might well be fifteen. “Oh, for a telescope or a pair of glasses,” he said, “then I could see if the White army is there. That is where it must be.”
As he turned towards Anselmo, he heard the sergeants of the Meruel Reds calling the roll at the siding.
“Those fellows are here for no good,” he thought. “I’ll get along to Don Manuel before I am stopped.”
The sun strode up out of the sea to give to the country a beauty, unspeakable to one who had been for a week in the gloom of the forest. To the joy of the light was added a beauty of overwhelming blossom, so great that the soul of the earth seemed to be exulting in the sun.
“I shall reach Don Manuel after all,” he said. “I shall be actually with him when we save Carlotta from the prison. And, oh, thank God, after all, I have helped a little, for Rust has gotten through.”