"I exaggerate nothing," he was saying, loudly. "O'Reilly will tell you that I killed Cobo, alone and unassisted. The man is gone, he has disappeared, and all Matanzas is mystified. This is the hand that did it; yonder is the weapon, with that butcher's blood still on it. That knife will be preserved in the museum at Habana, along with my statue." Jacket spied his chief witness and called to him. "Tell these good people who killed Cobo. Was it Narciso Villar?"
"It was," O'Reilly smiled. "The fellow is dead."
There was renewed murmuring. The crowd pressed Jacket closer; they passed the knife from hand to hand. Doubters fell silent; the boy swelled visibly. Bantam-like he strutted before their admiring glances, and when his benefactor had passed safely out of hearing he went on:
"God! What a fight we had! It was like those combats of the gladiators you hear about. The man was brave enough; there's no denying his courage, which was like that of ten men—like that of a fierce bull; but I—I was superb, magnificent! The man bellowed, he roared, he grunted; he charged me, flinging the earth high with his heels, but I was banderillero, picador, and matador in one. I was here, I was there, I was everywhere; so swiftly did I move that no eye could follow me." Jacket illustrated his imaginary movements with agile leaps and bounds. "The terror of his name frightened me, I'll admit, but it lent me a desperate courage, too. I thought of the brave men, the good women, the innocent children he had slain, and I fell upon him from this side, from that side, from the front, from the rear. I pricked him, shouting: 'That for the people of Las Villas! This for the women of the San Juan. And once again for the babies you have killed.'" Jacket carried out his pantomime by prodding with a rigid finger first one, then another of his listeners. "Oh, he went mad, like a bull, indeed, but I was another Rafael Guerra. He shed rivers of blood, the ground grew slippery and the grass became red. He stood rocking in his tracks, finally; his breath was like a hurricane. He was exhausted, he was covered with foam, his limbs were made of lead. It was my moment. 'For all your sins!' I cried, and with that I drove yonder blade through his heart and out between his shoulders, thus! My brothers, his flesh was rotten, and the steel clove it as if it were butter."
Jacket was more than gratified at the effect of his recital, for children screamed, women shuddered, and men turned shocked eyes upon one another. He realized that with a little further practice and a more diligent attention to detail he could horrify the stoutest-hearted listener, nay, cause hysterical women to swoon. He concluded his account in a studiously careless tone; "O'Reilly came, too late, but he helped me to bury the offal. We flung it head first into an old well and dumped rocks upon it. There it will lie until Cuba is free. That, my friends, was the end of Cobo, exactly as it happened."
O'Reilly saw little of his sweetheart that day, for Norine promptly bore the girl off to her own quarters and there attended to her needs, the most pressing of which was clothing. Norine's wardrobe offered little to choose from, but between them they reduced a nurse's uniform to fit the smaller figure. Meanwhile, with a rapidity and a thoroughness delightful to both of them, the two girls came to know each other.
While O'Reilly was similarly engaged in making himself presentable, he and Branch talked earnestly, with the result that they repaired later to General Gomez.
The general welcomed them; he listened with interest to O'Reilly's story of the rescue, and to the account of conditions in Matanzas. O'Reilly concluded by saying:
"I've done what I came to do, sir, but Miss Varona is badly shaken by all she has been through. She's very nervous and far from well. Esteban, too, isn't recovering."
General Gomez nodded. "Miss Evans declares he must have a change, and we have arranged to send him out of the country. His sister, poor child, should go, too."