Here our Huitoto, the moment we stopped, leaped ashore, and, with a brief remark that the “Peruvians were very wicked,” disappeared in the bushes. I suggested to Sánchez that we had better follow the aborigine’s example, but he thought that as he was an exile and I was a foreigner we would not be molested, as at Argelia. Against my better judgment I remained, and we sat there in the canoe, waiting for the approach of the marauders.
Soon, turning a bend, two launches appeared, and as soon as we were perceived we heard a voice shout out: “Fire! Fire! Sink the canoe! Sink the canoe!” Before this order could be executed, however, the first vessel, the Liberal of the “civilising company,” had passed us, but the second, the Iquitos, a sort of river gunboat, in the service of the Peruvian Government, let fly at us, one of the bullets passing just between Sánchez and myself, and splashing into the water a little beyond. Then, at our cries of astonishment and protest, we heard a voice ordering us, in the most vile and obscene words, to approach the launch, and at the same time commanding the soldiers to keep us covered with their carbines. We approached as quickly as possible, but, handicapped by the robbery of our Indian boatmen, were able to make but slow progress. Then we heard once more the order, “Fire! Fire!” the click of the hammers being cocked, and I thought all was over with us. But at this moment an altercation arose between the two chiefs, one of them countermanding this order, while the other insisted upon its execution. Meanwhile, as rapidly as possible, we approached the vessel, and perceived some twenty-five or thirty soldiers all covering us, their rules aimed over the rail, calmly awaiting the final order to launch us into eternity!
Fortunately, the altercation continued between the two bandits long enough to enable us, after what seemed like a century, to reach the side of the Iquitos. Here we were jerked on board, kicked, beaten, insulted, and abused in a most cowardly manner by Captain Arce Benavides of the Peruvian Army, Benito Lores, commander of the Iquitos, and a gang of coffee-coloured soldiers, sailors, and employees of the “civilising company,” without being given a chance to speak a word.
As soon as they had finished their self-imposed task of outraging us in this brutal and cynical manner—defenceless as we were—I told them who we were, and demanded to be allowed to continue our journey, but all in vain, for they merely laughed at me and my protests. Then these conquering heroes, after searching our persons and our canoe and taking possession of the few things we had with us, put us under a sentinel.
This operation accomplished, Captain Benavides entertained us with a horrible account of the “victory” the Peruvians had gained at La Unión, the sounds of which we had heard in the morning. He informed us that as the two launches had arrived there that morning the Colombians had treacherously opened fire upon them, and that the Peruvian forces had gallantly repulsed the attack, under his leadership, and killed several of the assaulting party. A peculiar feature of the “battle” was, according to his version, that such Colombians as had not escaped had all been killed outright, there being no wounded.
As I afterwards ascertained, the two launches, upon reaching La Unión, had started to disembark the soldiers and employees—probably with the intention of playing the same game as they had played on Serrano a month or so previously—when Ordoñez ordered them off his premises. At the same time, Prieto unfurled the Colombian flag and the unequal conflict began. There were less than twenty Colombians against about a hundred and forty Peruvians—employees of the criminal syndicate and soldiers and sailors with a machine gun. The Colombians resisted bravely for about half an hour, when, their ammunition giving out, they were compelled to take to the woods, leaving Duarte and two peons dead and Prieto and another peon severely wounded. The latter two were then dispatched most cruelly by some of the “civilising company’s” missionaries. Then the thousand arrobas of rubber were carefully stowed away on the Liberal, the houses were sacked and burned, and several Colombian women, found hiding in the forest, were dragged aboard the two launches as legitimate prey for the “victors.”
While in my enforced state of imprisonment on the Iquitos, I witnessed the cowardly and brutal violation of one of these poor women. Pilar Gutierrez, the woman of Rafael Cano, one of the racionales at La Unión, was one of the females found in the bushes after the “battle,” and this poor victim, already in an advanced state of pregnancy, was allotted to Captain —— ——.[94] This human monster, intent only on slaking his animal thirst of lasciviousness, and regardless of the grave state of the unhappy woman’s health, dragged her to a place of privacy and, in spite of the cries of agony of the unfortunate creature, violated her without compunction.
A few hours later we reached Argelia, where both launches stopped for the night side by side. Here we were transferred to the Liberal, where, to my astonishment, I found Perkins and the youth Gabriel Valderrama, one of Serrano’s employees. Perkins then informed me of the horrors committed at La Unión and of his own capture, which had been effected upon the return of these latter-day pirates from that sanguinary scene, when they had stopped at La Reserva, broken into and burglarised the house—for Serrano and his men, excepting Valderrama and Perkins, had fled to the forest—embarked the hundred and seventy arrobas of rubber on the Liberal, and destroyed everything they could not steal.
