The Dust of Conflict

He glanced forward towards one of the streaks of froth which Appleby surmised showed where a reef lay below, and Rosendo made an expressive grimace.

“Los Dientes!” he said, and spread his arms out as though to indicate a measure. “One brazo a half now.”

Harper nodded. “I can’t run for the gut behind it without bringing that fellow too close,” he said. “If I go round to weather we’ll have to close-haul her, and he’d come up near enough to sink us if we took sail off her. Still, she’ll scarcely carry what she has got now on the wind.”

Rosendo shrugged his shoulders as he said in Castilian, “Between the fire and the cooking pot there is not much choice, my friend!”

Then the men between the masts came aft together, and one of them, whose color was not exactly white, stopped in front of Harper.

“We have no use for being run slap on the Dientes, and she’s not going to work off it if we hold on much longer.”

Harper swung a hand up commandingly. “When I’m not fit to sail this boat I’ll ask your help,” he said. “I’ve a good deal less use for showing the Spaniard just what I mean to do while he could spoil my hand by altering his course a point or two. Get your boom-foresail over, and the staysail on to her!”

It was done, though the “Ventura” rolled her rail in when the big sail swung banging over. By and by Harper brought the wind abeam, and she drove along at an angle to her previous course, with one side hove high, while the sea came in in cataracts over either bow. Appleby clutched the rail, for the deck slanted away beneath him, and he wondered how the barefooted men kept their footing. The other rail was apparently level with the sea, and the brine that sluiced down the incline washed knee-deep inside it. The masts sloped as the deck did, with the spray beating like grapeshot into the foresail between them; but the topmasts above them slanted further, and Appleby understood why Harper’s face was anxious when he glanced aloft. The gunboat was within easy range now, and it was evident there would be no escape for them if anything yielded under the strain. In fact, Appleby was wondering whether her commander felt sure of them since he was not firing, when there was another flash followed by the roar of a gun. An unseen object that could be heard through the sound of wind and sea passed between the masts, and Harper nodded.

“I guess that decides the thing. What she can’t carry she’ll have to drag,” he said.

She dragged it for another five minutes, staggering under a press of sail, and then there was a crash aloft, and topmast and mainsail gaff fell to leeward together. A clamor of voices went up, and the “Ventura’s” bows swung round a little further off the wind; while Appleby, who saw Harper’s face in the moonlight, noticed that it was set and very grim.

“You can run down the staysail and outer jib so she’ll not fall to leeward all at once,” he said.

The men went forward floundering amidst the spray, and the plunges grew a trifle easier, while the seas swung the “Ventura” aloft instead of deluging her; but a glance made the position unpleasantly plain to Appleby. To leeward lay the white frothing on the Dientes reef, and he surmised that the “Ventura” could not clear it without her after canvas; to windward the gunboat, coming down on them rapidly. There was, it seemed, no escape, and he wondered vaguely what would happen. Harper said nothing whatever, but stood with his lean figure casting a black shadow upon the crippled mainsail, grasping the wheel. So they drove on for another five minutes, and then, with a glance at the gunboat, the skipper straightened himself.

“They’re not going to have the guns, and the schooner might fetch ten dollars when I’m through with her,” he said. “Get the foresail off her, and stand by to swing out the boat!”

The sail came down thrashing, and the men stood very still and silent when they had hooked the tackles on the boat. Their faces were turned forward, and Appleby guessed that they were watching the white upheavals that showed where the seas rolled across the submerged reef. This was not astonishing, for the “Ventura’s” bows had swung further round, and it was evident that Harper was running them upon it. Appleby was sensible of a curious admiration for him. He still stood at the wheel, slouching over it, now suspense had gone and certainty had come, a most unimpressive figure, in old duck jacket and brine-soaked trousers that were both too loose for him, but it was evident that the spirit which disdains dramatic expression and often burns most clearly in unexpected places was in him.

“Hold on!” he said quietly as the bows went up.

Then she struck, with a crash that sent two men reeling across her deck, and the sea that rolled up behind her surged frothing on board. It went forward waist deep; the “Ventura” lifted, and came down again, with everything in her rattling and her crew holding fast for their lives. Then she twisted round, so that the next comber foamed across her and ground her on the reef, hove herself up, scraped forward, grinding and groaning, a few more fathoms, and stopped again; while a negro and a Cuban shaken from their hold rolled down the slanting deck clutching at each other until they fell into the water pent up by the lower rail. The din was bewildering, for every block and spar banged and rattled amidst the dull roar of the seas, but it was rent by the crash of a gun.

Grasping the rail with both hands, Appleby saw the gunboat rolling black athwart the moonlight, while a smear of vapor broadened about her; but there was another sound beneath him as he gazed, and while the splinters flew in showers a great rent opened in the deck. Nobody said anything, or could have been heard if he had, and Appleby clung tighter still when once more a sea crested with spouting white came along. It lifted the “Ventura” up, and then there was a curious quietness as it dropped her clear of the reef. Through the sudden silence Harper’s voice rose evenly and almost expressionless.

“I guess there’s some of the rudder left, though it’s jammed. Give me a hand,” he said.

Appleby sprang to help him, and between them they dragged the helm over. The “Ventura” lurched on more smoothly with a gurgling sound inside her, for the reef broke the sea; but ten minutes later she struck again, and remained this time immovable. Nobody waited for orders, and in swift silence the boat was got over, while a fire commenced to twinkle on the beach. Wooden cases were passed up from the hold, and – for the water was smoother there – the boat got away. Four men went in her, and the rest dropped into the hold, where they tore out boxes and cases and passed them from man to man. While they worked the gun boomed again, but the gasping men toiled the more fiercely, and Appleby did his part with them. He was dripping with perspiration and spray, his hands were bleeding, and his duck jacket rent up the back, but, gasping and panting, he labored on with a fierce pleasure that seemed wholly illogical.

Once he lifted his head above the hatch, as he tore the jacket which impeded him off his shoulders, and saw that the gunboat had stopped. She was not firing now, and his comrades had, he fancied, sent three loads ashore by that time; but he had scarcely glanced at her when Harper saw him. “Hustle!” he said. “The boats are coming.”

How long they toiled in the hold Appleby could never remember, but though it appeared no more than a few minutes to him the moon had moved across a broad strip of sky when he crawled on deck again. The boat lay beneath him, half full of cases, and the men were dropping into her. Two other boats showed for a moment to windward, and then sank from sight again.

“Hold on!” said Harper, pointing to the cases still on deck. “Into the sea with them!”

Appleby and another man threw them over, though there were impatient cries from the boat below, and the rest were shoving off when they dropped into her. Somebody was baling furiously, two men tugged and thrust, Spanish fashion, at every oar, and they reeled away shorewards with the water lapping into her. Then a fire grew brighter above the roaring beach, men came floundering waist-deep through the surf, those in the boat sprang over, and they went up with the wash of a sea. Appleby, scrambling out of the backwash, stood up, dripping, breathless, and aching all over, and saw Harper not far away and a host of dusky figures flitting about the fire. Then there was a flash from seawards, a crash in the forest behind them, and they disappeared.

“Well,” said the skipper quietly, “the ‘Ventura’ isn’t going to sea any more. You have to take your chances in this business; and we got most of the inside out of her, anyway.”

VII – THE DESCENT OF SANTA MARTA

A LITTLE fire burned in a hollow of the dusty barranco that fissured the face of the hill, a clear red fire of the kind that gives little light and makes no smoke, and its pale glow showed but feebly against the rock behind. This was still flushed with a warm lustre caught from the western sky, though the sun had dipped and the fleecy mists were creeping across the dusky plain below.

A group of weary men lay about the fire, dusty and ragged, for they had spent most of twelve weary hours forcing a path through thickets and climbing like goats from rock to rock under the heat of the tropics. Two of them wore garments of cotton, which hung about them rent by thorns; three others jackets of American make, looted from a loyalist store; and one trousers of English tweed, through which his knees protruded, and a jacket of alpaca of a kind esteemed in Spain. He had, however, a red silk sash of beautiful texture, which had cost somebody else a good many dollars, round his waist; and his face, which was bronzed to a coffee color, had once been of paler complexion than those of most of his companions. He raised himself a trifle, and glanced about him with a little whimsical smile.

“They are a choice collection of scarecrows to take a city with,” he said in English.

A man who lay close by looked up with a twinkle in his eyes. “I have seen smarter soldiers,” he drawled. “Still, they’re a hard crowd, and I’d feel kind of sorry for Colonel Morales if his cazadores don’t put up a good fight to-night. What we have on hand isn’t quite the thing I came out to do, but I guess it’s better than catching fever down there in the mangrove swamps. That’s how it strikes me, though it will scarcely be the kind of business you’ve been used to, Appleby.”

Appleby laughed again as he glanced at the ragged men sprawling in attitudes that were rather easy than picturesque a little farther up the gorge. They were of various shades of color, from pale Castilian olive to African jet, and a good many of them were barefooted, while the shoes of the rest were burst. The arms scattered about them were as curiously assorted – American Marlin rifles, old English Sniders, Spanish service weapons, and cutlass-like machetes with a two-foot blade, which proved as efficient when, as quite frequently happened, there was a difficulty in obtaining the right kind of cartridges.

They were for the most part men with wrongs, individual as well as national; for the Spanish system of checking disaffection was sharp and stern, and the man who has seen brother or comrade butchered to bolster up an effete authority is apt to remember it. Those who had no wrongs possessed a lust of plunder which served almost as well as animus; but there were a few who had been driven to join them by patriotic convictions. They had already made themselves a terror to the conscript troops of Spain, as well as peaceful peasants with loyalist sympathies, who called them the Sin Verguenza – the men without shame. It was not from choice that Appleby had cast in his lot with them, but because it seemed to him preferable to falling into the Spaniards’ hands. He had, however, by daring in one encounter, and shrewd counsel, already made himself an influence, and had been endowed with the rank of Teniente.

“No,” he said a trifle dryly, “it is not. When I plundered folks in my country I did it for other people with a bill, and I had the law behind me. I was trained to it, you see.”

“It’s quite a good trade,” said Harper, who had joined the Sin Verguenza because the coast was too strictly watched to leave him any chance of getting away again. “Kind of pity to let up on it. It was a woman sent you here?”

Appleby laughed, and then sat silent a moment or two staring straight before him. The dusty gorge seemed to fade, and he could fancy himself standing once more at the head of a shadowy stairway in an English hall looking into a woman’s eyes. They were big gray eyes that seemed to read one’s thoughts, set most fittingly in a calm, proud face, above which clustered red-gold hair, and he had seen them often since that eventful night, on many a weary march, as well as in his sleep.

“Yes,” he said; “but not in the way I think you mean. She was my best friend’s sweetheart, and nothing to me. No doubt she has married him by now.”

Harper’s smile seemed to express incredulity, and for the first time a doubt flashed into his comrade’s mind. Would he have done so much for Tony if the woman had been any one else than Violet Wayne? The question almost startled him and though he strove to answer it in the affirmative no conviction came. Tony had been his friend, and until he came to Northrop he had never seen the girl; while it was, of course, preposterous to suspect that he had gone out under a cloud for her sake; and yet the doubt remained to be afterwards grappled with. In the meanwhile he brushed the question aside as of no moment. Violet Wayne would marry Tony, and in all probability he had already passed out of her memory. He was, however, glad when a man with an olive face stood up beside the fire and glanced at him with a smile.

“Among comrades it is not good courtesy to speak apart, and the English is a difficult tongue to me,” he said in Castilian. “I have apprehended no more in the Havana than the response discourteous, ‘You bedam.’”

Appleby laughed. “I fancy you others can beat us in that line,” he said. “Shall we get in to-night, Maccario?”

The Insurgent captain made a little expressive gesture. “Who knows!” he said. “They have two companies of cazadores, but there is this in our favor – they do not expect us. Four days’ march – for troops – from Adeje, and we have come in two! Yes, I think we shall get in, and then there will be trouble for those others in Santa Marta and the Colonel Morales.”

Appleby glanced down the barranco, and saw framed, as it were, in its rocky gateway the sweep of plain below. The tall green cane and orange groves had faded to a blur of dusky blueness now, but in one place he could still discern the pale gleam of white walls. That was Santa Marta, and he remembered how they had been welcomed there when, weary and dusty with travel, they had last limped that way. There were no troops in Santa Marta then, and the Sin Verguenza, who did not know that an infantry battalion lay close by, had accepted the citizens’ hospitality, and borrowed much less from them than they usually did when their entertainers had loyalist sympathies. While they slept the deep sleep of weariness the cazadores fell upon the town, and the Colonel Morales allowed a very short shrift to those who failed to escape from it. Therefore Santa Marta was anathema to the Sin Verguenza, and, what was almost as much to the purpose, it was rich.

While he watched the white walls faded, and the fire in the barranco grew brighter as darkness closed down. A negro, who removed a kettle from it, carefully put it out, and served them with a meal, though Harper sighed disgustedly as he lighted a maize-husk cigarette when he had consumed his portion.

“Well, I guess we’ll get breakfast to-morrow, if we’re alive,” he said. “I’ve lived on some kind of curious things in Cuba, including fricassee of mule, but onions, bad guavas, and half-ripe mangoes, as a mixture for fighting on, doesn’t suit my taste at all. No, sir. I want to lie down nice and quiet, and not worry anybody, when I’ve got dysentery.”

His companions, however, did not complain. Perhaps they were accustomed to scarcity, though the Sin Verguenza lived well when they could do so at other men’s expense; and there is a capacity for patient endurance in most of the peoples of Spain. They lay smoking cigarettes instead, while a little cool breeze came down out of the soft darkness that now veiled the hills above. Beneath them lights twinkled dimly like clustering fireflies in the misty plain, and once a faint elfin ringing of bugles came up. The Sin Verguenza answered it with a hoarse murmur, and then lay still, patiently biding their time.

The dew settled heavily as the rocks grew cooler; Appleby’s alpaca jacket grew clammy, but he lay motionless beside the embers, once more grappling with the question what was he, an Englishman of education, doing there? Violet Wayne’s eyes seemed to ask it of him reproachfully, and he could not find a fitting answer. The plea that he was there because he could not help it did not occur to him, for he was young, and believed that a determined man can shape his own destiny. Instead, he admitted vaguely that the reckless life, the testing of his bodily strength, the close touch with human nature stripped of its veneer, and the brief taste of command, all appealed to him. This, he knew, was no defence; but he felt that he at least owed the Sin Verguenza something, for they had come upon him while he hid from the troops of Spain, and, finding that he had nothing but his life to part with, had incontinently given him what they had, which was just then very little.

At last the Captain Maccario rose to his feet and called aloud. There was a murmur of voices, a clatter of arms, a rattle of stones, and a patter of feet, and the Sin Verguenza came out from the barranco like beasts from their lairs. The hillside fell steep beneath them, but they went down, flitting noiselessly, half-seen shadows, while each man chose his own path, and not as troops would have done. Here and there the machetes cleared a way where it would take too long to go round, or there was a crackle of undergrowth when they plunged into a belt of trees. Then a mule track led them down to the level, and with a shuffle of broken boots and soft patter of naked feet they swung along the dusty carretera road. It wound away before them smelling of dew-cooled earth, a faint white riband, past the shadowy tobacco and dusky sugar cane, and there was no stoppage when here and there a flat-roofed house loomed up beside it. Then there was a murmur of warning, a drowsy “Viva la libertad!” and the column passed on; for the insurrection had taken hold, and the enemies of the Sin Verguenza were the men who had something to lose.

Still, a dozen men with rifles, and cartridges to match, stayed behind when they filed through a white aldea lying silent amidst the cane, and the Sin Verguenza swung into slightly quicker stride. If the Colonel Morales was to be caught at all he must be caught napping, and, as they knew, he usually slept with one eye open. Still, Appleby fancied it might be accomplished, for he had discovered already that the Castilian has a disdain for petty details, and frequently leaves a good deal to chance.

By degrees the dust grew thicker and the little flat-topped houses more plentiful, while here and there white haciendas grew into shape among the trees. There were no lights in any of them; but by and by the Sin Verguenza stopped where the white orange flowers lay crushed upon the road and consulted with their guide. The Colonel Morales, they believed, did not expect them, but it was likely that he had pushed forward a section or two of cazadores to watch the road. The leaders also argued softly for some little time, and Appleby listened with his Marlin rifle under his arm, noticing how the fireflies sparkled in the leaves meanwhile. There were great stars above him in the sweep of cloudless indigo, and the low murmur of voices emphasized the stillness, while the heavy scent of the orange flowers was in his nostrils. Long afterwards a vision of the long, straggling column waiting in the dim white road would rise up before him when he breathed that scent.

Then they went on again, by paths that led through tobacco fields and amidst breast-high cane dripping with the dew that brushed them as they passed. This was, however, the work the Sin Verguenza were accustomed to, and no one saw them flit through the misty fields file by file. The cazadores, on their part, marched with bugles and wagons and loaded mules; and there was perhaps some excuse for their leader, the Colonel Morales, who believed the Sin Verguenza to be hiding some ten leagues away.

They stopped for the last time within sight of the white-walled town, which lay dark and silent girdled by thin wisps of mist, and the Captain Maccario spoke to those who could hear him. His words were not eloquent or especially patriotic, but they were answered by a portentous murmur; and Appleby surmised that there would be wild work if the Sin Verguenza sacked the town. He, however, moved forward as he was bidden with his ragged half-company, realizing that in the meanwhile he was rather going with than leading them. Where the rest went he could not see, for his attention was occupied in getting into and out of enclosures noiselessly, and once he fell into an aloe hedge and pricked himself grievously. Then he wondered what had happened to the barefooted men, but none of them at least said anything, and the dim, flitting forms went on. It all seemed unreal to him – white walls that rose higher, shadowy figures, and the silence they scarcely disturbed; but once more he was vaguely conscious that it was curiously familiar.

Then there was no more cover, for they straggled out, not in ranks, but clusters, from among orange trees and tall, flowering shrubs, which he fancied by their scent were oleanders, with a bare strip between them and the flat-topped houses. Santa Marta lay before him scarcely two hundred yards away, and he felt his heart throb painfully. His guide whispered something, and Appleby nodded, though he could not remember what the man had said, and they went forward at a run. The patter of feet, and clatter of strap and swivel, seemed to swell into a bewildering din, but they were almost upon the fielato offices, where the carretera entered the town, before a rifle flashed.