“It is a pity,” said Martas; “I wished to burn the black devil alive.”
At that instant Du Chien cried out: “Look there!” And extending his arm toward the top of the ridge, he started off at full speed. We all looked up and saw Celia flying for dear life toward the forest of the high ground behind the cabin, and we joined in the chase. It was perhaps forty yards up the slope to the highest part, and about the same distance down the other side to the water’s edge. Just as we got to the crest, Celia, who had already reached the water’s edge, leaped lightly into a small canoe and began to ply the paddle vigorously, and with a stroke or two sent the frail bark gliding swiftly away from the shore, while she looked back at us with a wicked smile. In a moment more she would be beyond our reach, and the soldier who had shot Todo leveled his fatal revolver at her head. But Captain Martas knocked the weapon up, saying, in a voice choked with emotion: “No, no! let the girl go! She is my daughter.”
Swiftly and silently the slight canoe swept away over the dark waters of the great, black swamp, now hidden in the shadow, now a moment glancing through some little patch of sunlight, always receding farther and farther, seen less often, seen less distinctly every moment, and then seen no more.
THE AMATEUR REVOLUTIONIST
By John Fleming Wilson
If you should see bronzed men or men with soldierly bearing frequenting a certain office in a small street in San Francisco, and if you knew who the men were or what they represented, you could predict to a nicety the next Central American revolution, its leaders, and its outcome. That is because San Francisco is the place where everything commences, and many have their end in the way of troubles in the “sister republics.”
Three years ago the present government of Guatemala missed overthrow by just a hair. As the man who had been financing the insurrection said bitterly when the bottom fell out: “If it weren’t for women there’d be no revolutions, and if it weren’t for a woman every revolution would be successful.” He said this to the man who knows more about troubles political where there’s money and fighting than any other man in the world. This man nodded his head with a smile not often seen on his spare face. The financier didn’t like the look, and he growled some more: “They might at least have let me hold the government up for my expenses before calling the whole business off. I could have got everything back and interest on my venture.”
The other man kept on smiling. “That’s the way you fellows look at it. If you can’t win, sell out at a good price. But that don’t win in the long run. One woman can spoil the scheme.”
Two years before this a young woman landed from the Pacific Mail steamer City of Para, and registered at the Palace as from Mazatlan. She had a little maid who giggled and talked Mexican, some luggage with Vienna and Paris hotel labels over it, and the manner of a deposed queen. She signed herself as “Srta Maria Rivas.”
In due time Señorita Rivas left the hotel for quiet lodgings on Vallejo Street. But before she disappeared from the court, a gentle-mannered old man, with knotty hands, called and introduced a companion. “This is the young man I spoke to your excellency about. I present Señor Thomas Vincent.” Then the gray-haired man slipped away, and Thomas Vincent was left looking down into the dark face of Maria Rivas. He did not know why he was there, nor who she was, nor even the name of the man who had introduced him. But he was not sorry.