While Don Juan cast off the painter, Webster primed the motor and turned it over; with a snort it started, and under Webster's guidance the launch backed swiftly out into the bay, where Don Juan lighted the side-lights and riding-light, and loafed off into the darkness.
About a half a mile off shore Webster throttled down the motor until the launch barely made steerage way. “It would never do to go aboard the steamer before the fracas started ashore,” he explained to Dolores. “That would indicate a guilty knowledge of coming events, and in the event of disaster to the rebel arms it is just possible Senor Sarros might have pull enough, if he hears of our flight six hours in advance of hostilities, to take us off the steamer and ask us to explain. So we'll just cruise slowly around and listen; the attack will come just before dawn; then shortly thereafter we can scurry out to the steamer and be welcomed aboard for the sake of the news we bring.”
She did not answer, and Webster knew her thoughts were out where the arc-lights on the outskirts of Buenaventura met the open country—out where the brother she could scarcely remember and whom, until a month previous, she had believed dead, would shortly muster his not too numerous followers.
In the darkness Webster could hear the click of her beads as she prayed; on the turtle deck forward.
Don Juan Cafetéro sprawled, thinking perchance of his unlovely past and wondering what effect the events shortly to transpire ashore would have on his future. He wished Webster would relent and offer him a drink some time within the next twenty-four hours. In times of excitement like the present a man needs a drop to brace him up.
Five times the launch slipped lazily down the harbour along the straggling two mile water-front; five times it loafed back. The moon, which was in the first quarter, sank. For the hundredth time Don Juan Cafetéro chanted dolorously “The Death of Sarsfield” and the tuneful glories of the late O'Donnel Abu—and then to Webster's alert ear there floated across the still waters the sound of a gentle purring—the music of an auto-truck. He set the launch in toward Leber's little dock, and presently they saw the door of Leber's warehouse open. Men with lanterns streamed forth, lighting the way for others who bore between them heavy burdens.
“They're emplacing the machine guns in the motor-truck,” he whispered to Dolores. “We will not have to wait long now. It's nearly four o'clock.”
Again they backed out into the bay until they could see far out over the sleeping city to the hills beyond in the west. Presently along the side of those hills the headlight of a locomotive crept, dropping swiftly down grade until it disappeared in the lowlands.
A half-hour passed; then to the south of the city a rocket flared skyward; almost instantly another flared from the west, followed presently by a murmur, scarcely audible, as of a muffled snare drum, punctuated presently by a louder, sharper, insistent puck-puch-puch-puch that, had Webster but known it, was the bark of a Maxim-Vickers rapid-fire gun throwing a stream of shells into the cantonments of the government troops on the fringe of the city.
Webster's pulse quickened. He was possessed of that feeling which actuates a small boy to follow the fire-engines. “There goes the 'tillery to the south, sor,” Don Juan called, and even as he spoke, a shell burst gloriously over the government palace, the white walls of which were already looming over the remainder of the city, now faintly visible in the approaching dawn.