A sharp command, and the little garrison had fixed bayonets; another command, and they were in line of squads; before the auto-truck could be swung sideways to permit a machine gun to play on the Sobranteans in close formation, the latter had thrown out a skirmish fine and were charging; while from the guardhouse window, just inside the gate, a volley, poured into the unprotected rear of the truck following its passage through the gate, did deadly execution. The driver, a bullet through his back, sagged forward into his steel-clad citadel; both machine-gun operators were wounded, and the truck was stalled. The situation was desperate.
“I'm a gone goose,” mourned Don Juan Cafetéro, and he leaped from the shambles to the ground, with some hazy notion of making his escape through the gate. He was too late. Two men, riding tandem on a motorcycle with a machine gun in the specially constructed side-car, appeared in the entrance and leaped off; almost before Don Juan had time to dodge behind the motor-truck to escape possible wild bullets, the machine gun was sweeping the oncoming skirmish line. Don Juan cheered as man after man of the garrison pitched on his face, for the odds were rapidly being evened now, greatly to the pleasure of the men charging through the gate to support the machine gun. Out into the arsenal yard they swept, forcing the machine-gun crew to cease firing because of the danger of killing their own men; with a shock bayonet met bayonet in the centre of the yard, and the issue was up for prompt and final decision.
Don Juan's Hibernian blood thrilled; he cast about for a weapon in this emergency, and his glance rested on the body of the dead officer beside the gate. To possess himself of the latter's heavy “cut-and-thrust” sword was the work of seconds, and with a royal good will Don Juan launched himself into the heart of the scrimmage. He had a hazy impression that he was striking and stabbing, that others were striking and stabbing at him, that men crowded and breathed and pressed and swore and grunted around him, that the fighting-room was no better than it might have been but was rapidly improving. Then the gory fog lifted, and Doctor Pacheco had Don Juan by the hand; they stood together in the arsenal entrance, and the little Doctor was explaining to the war-mad Don Juan that all was over in so far as the arsenal was concerned—the survivors of the garrison having surrendered—that now, having the opportunity, he, Doctor Pacheco, desired to thank Don Juan Cafetéro for his life. Don Juan looked at him amazedly, for he hadn't the slightest idea what the Doctor was talking about. He spat, gazed around at the litter of corpses on the arsenal lawn, and nodded his red head approvingly.
In an incredibly short space of time the news that the arsenal had been captured and that Sarros was besieged in the palace spread through the city. The sight of the red banner of revolution floating over the arsenal for the first time in fifteen years brought hundreds of willing recruits to the rebel ranks, as Ricardo Ruey had anticipated; these were quickly supplied with arms and ammunition; by ten o'clock a battalion had been formed and sent off, together with the machine-gun company, to connect with the San Bruno contingent advancing from the south to turn the flank of the government troops, while the equipping of an additional battalion proceeded within the arsenal. As fast as the new levies were armed, they were hurried off to reinforce the handful of white men who had, after clearing the arsenal, advanced on the palace and now, with machine guns from the arsenal commanding all avenues of escape from the trap wherein Sarros found himself, were calmly awaiting developments, merely keeping an eye open for snipers.
Thus the forenoon passed away. By one o'clock Don Juan Cafetéro—who in the absence of close-range fighting had elected himself ordnance sergeant—passed out the last rifle and ammunition. He was red with slaughter, slippery with gun-grease, dripping with perspiration and filthy with dust and dirt. “Begorra,” he declared, “a cowld bottle av beer would go fine now.” Then, recalling his limitations, he sighed and put the thought from him. It revived in him, however, for the first time since he had left the steamer, a memory of John Stuart Webster, and his promise to the latter to report on the progress of the war. So Don Juan sought Doctor Pacheco in his headquarters and learned that a signal-man, heliographing from the roof of the arsenal, had been in communication with General Ruey, who reported the situation well in hand, with no doubt of an overwhelming victory before the day should be over. This and sundry other bits of information Don Juan gleaned and then deserted the Sobrantean revolutionary army quite as casually as he had joined it, to make his precarious way down the Calle San Rosario to the bay.
CHAPTER XXV
THROUGHOUT the forenoon Webster and Dolores, from the deck of the steamer, watched the city. Numerous fires covered it with a pall of smoke from beneath which came the steady crackle of machine-gun fire, mingled with the insistent crash of the field batteries which seemingly had moved up closer to their target.
