“Listen,” I said, “when the fight is over, I will look you up to thrash you for your impertinence in calling me a Frenchman.”
“After the fight!” he exclaimed, with a funny grimace. “Do you mean next year? Before that distant time arrives some Colorado will fall in love with you, and—and—and——”
Here he explained himself without words by drawing the edge of his hand briskly across his throat, then closing his eyes and making gurgling sounds, supposed to be uttered by a person undergoing the painful operation of having his throat cut.
Our colloquy was carried on in whispers, but his pantomimic performance drew on us the attention of our neighbours, and now he looked round to inform them with a grin and a nod that his Oriental wit was getting the victory. I was determined not to be put down by him, however, and tapped my revolver with my hand to call his attention to it.
“Look at this, you young miscreant,” I said. “Do you not know that I and many others in this column have received orders from the General to shoot down every man who attempts to run away?”
This speech effectually silenced him. He turned as pale as his dark skin would let him, and looked round like a hunted animal in search of a hole to hide in.
On my other hand a grizzly-bearded old gaucho, in somewhat tattered garments, lit a cigarette and, oblivious of everything except the stimulating fragrance of the strongest black tobacco, expanded his lungs with long inspirations, to send forth thereafter clouds of blue smoke into his neighbours' faces, scattering the soothing perfume over a third portion of the army.
Santa Coloma rose equal to the occasion; swiftly riding from column to column, he addressed each in turn, and, using the quaint, expressive phraseology of the gauchos, which he knew so well, poured forth his denunciations of the Colorados with a fury and eloquence that brought the blood with a rush to many of his followers' pale cheeks. They were traitors, plunderers, assassins, he cried; they had committed a million crimes, but all these things were nothing, nothing compared with that one black crime which no other political party had been guilty of. By the aid of Brazilian gold and Brazilian bayonets they had risen to power; they were the infamous pensioners of the empire of slaves. He compared them to the man who marries a beautiful wife and sells her to some rich person so as to live luxuriously on the wages of his own dishonour. The foul stain which they had brought on the honour of the Banda Orientál could only be washed away with their blood. Pointing to the advancing troops, he said that when those miserable hirelings were scattered like thistle-down before the wind, the entire country would be with him, and the Banda Orientál, after half a century of degradation, free at last and for ever from the Brazilian curse.
Waving his sword, he galloped back to the front of his column, greeted by a storm of vivas.
Then a great silence fell upon our ranks; while up the slope, their trumpets sounding merrily, trotted the enemy, till they had covered about three hundred yards of the ascending ground, threatening to close us round in an immense circle, when suddenly the order was given to charge, and, led by Santa Coloma, we thundered down the incline upon them.