When Santiago Fell: or, The War Adventures of Two Chums

CHAPTER XXVI.

A DISHEARTENING DISCOVERY

“Under Spanish guard!” I cried, and looked questioningly at Alano’s father.

“That’s too bad,” he said gravely. “However, there is no help for this unexpected turn of affairs, and we must make the best of it. Alano, my son, you are sure you are not mistaken?”

“There are a number of Spanish soldiers on the highway, and with the field-glass I saw that more soldiers were scattered round about.”

“Then your report must be true. I’ll ride ahead and take a view of the situation.”

I begged to go along, and Captain Guerez agreed. Alano came too, while the others withdrew to a thicket, to avoid being surprised by any of the Spaniards who might be out foraging.

A turn in the highway brought us in full view of Cubineta. Of course we were not foolish enough to expose ourselves. Screened behind bushes and vines, we took a survey through the glass of the place, its people, and the soldiers.

Cubineta was not a large village, but it was a pretty place and evidently thriving – or had been thriving before the war put a blight upon all Cuban industries. There was one long street of stores and dwellings, a church, a casa or town-house, and at the farthest end what looked to be a hastily constructed fort, built of heavy logs and sods.

“The Spaniards are evidently going to use the place as a center or depot for supplies,” was Captain Guerez' comment. “Under the present circumstances I hardly know what is best to do.”

“Perhaps they have my father a prisoner in that fortress,” I suggested.

“It is not unlikely, Mark – if the men who held him have not yet gone further than Cubineta.”

“Can’t we steal into town under cover of night?” I continued.

“We might do that – if it would do any good.”

“I want to join my father at any hazard.”

“That might be very foolish, Mark. How can you assist him if you are yourself made a prisoner?”

“Would they hold a boy like myself?”

“You are not so young as you would like to make them imagine,” laughed Alano’s father shortly. “Besides, if left free, they would be afraid you would carry messages for your father. I think the best thing we can do just now is to let Jorge go into town, pretending he is half starved and willing to do anything for anybody who will give him food. By taking this course, no one will pay much attention to him, as there are many such worthless blacks floating about, and he can quietly find his way around the fort and learn what prisoners, if any, are being kept there.”

This was sensible advice, and, impatient as I was to catch sight of my parent, I agreed to wait. We rode back to where the others had made their camp, and Jorge was called up and duly instructed. The black grinned with pleasure, for he considered it a great honor to do spy work for such an influential planter as Captain Guerez. Possibly he had visions of a good situation on the plantation after the war was over; but, if so, he kept his thoughts on that point to himself.

Jorge gone, the time hung heavily on the hands of all; but I believe I was the most impatient of the crowd, and with good reason. Alano noticed how uneasily I moved about, and soon joined me.

“You must take things easy, Mark,” he said. "Stewing won’t do any good, and it will only make you sick, combined with this hot weather, which, I know, is about all you can stand."

“If only I felt certain that my father was safe, Alano! Remember, he is all I have in the world. My mother has been dead for years, and I never had a brother or a sister.”

“I think it will all come out right in the end,” he answered, doing his best to cheer me up. “They won’t dare to – to – ” He did not finish.

“To shoot him? That’s just what I fear they will do, Alano. From what I heard at Santiago de Cuba, the Spaniards are down on most Americans, for they know we sympathize with you and think Cuba ought to be free, or, at least ought to have a large hand in governing itself.”

When nightfall came most of the others lay down to sleep. But this was out of the question for me, tired though I was physically, and so I was left on guard, with instructions to call one of the men at midnight.

Slowly the hours went by, with nothing to break the stillness of the night but the hum of countless insects and the frequent note of a night bird. We had not dared to build a campfire, and in consequence there was no getting where the smoke drifted and out of the way of the mosquitoes.

At midnight I took a walk around to see if all was safe. The man I was to call slept so soundly I had not the heart to wake him up, so I continued on guard until one, when a noise down by the road attracted my attention.

Pistol in hand I stalked forward, when I heard a low voice and recognized Jorge. The negro had been walking fast, and he was almost out of breath.

“Well?” I inquired anxiously. “Is my father there?”

“I think he is, señor,” replied the guide. “I go to prison-fort – da have six Cubans dare an' one Americano.”

“My father!”

“I talk to some men, an' da tell me prisoners come in last night – some from Rodania, udders from udder places. Americano in a prison by himself, near the river. I swim up close to dat prison – maybe we make hole in wall an' git him out.”

“Could we do that, Jorge, without being discovered?”

“Tink so, señor – work at night – now, maybe. Swim under river an' come up by fort, den dig with machetes – make hole under fort.”

“If only we could do that!” I cried; and then, struck with a sudden idea, I caught Jorge by the arm. “Jorge, if I go, will you come and show me the way and help me?”

“Yes, señor.”

“Then let us go at once, without arousing the others. More than two might spoil the plan. Go back to the road and wait for me.”

The guide did as directed, and I turned back into camp. Here I awoke the man previously mentioned, and told him I was going off to meet Jorge. He but partly understood, but arose to do guard duty, and I hurried off.

I felt that I was not doing just right in not notifying Captain Guerez and Alano, but I was impatient to meet my father and was afraid if I told them what Jorge had said they would want to delay matters. As events turned out it would probably have been much better had I been guided by their advice.

A short but brisk walk brought the guide and myself in sight of the town. On the outskirts the campfires of the Spanish soldiers burned brightly. These we carefully avoided, and made a détour, coming up presently to the bank of the stream upon which the fort was located.

The river was broad and shallow, and as it ran but sluggishly we might have forded across, but this would have placed us in plain view of the sentries, who marched up and down along the river bank and in front of the prison-house.

Disdaining to undress, we dropped down into the stream and swam over, with only our faces out of water, and without a sound, to a spot behind the building opposite. We came up in a tiny hollow, screened by several small bushes, and crawled on our stomachs to the rear of the wing in which the guide said the American prisoner was incarcerated.

I had a long and broad dagger which I had picked up the day previous, and Jorge had his machete, and with these we began to dig a tunnel leading under the wooden wall of the fort. Fortunately, the ground was not hard, and soon we broke through the very flooring of the prison. I was in the lead, and in great eagerness I poked up my head and gazed around me.

“Hullo, who’s there?” cried a startled voice, in English, and my heart sank completely, for the prisoner was not my father at all.

CHAPTER XXVII.

GILBERT BURNHAM

“Are you alone?” I asked, when I had recovered sufficiently to speak.

“An American!” came the low cry. “Yes, I am alone. Who are you, and what do you want?”

“I came to save you – that is, I thought my father was a prisoner here,” I stammered. “Are you tied up?”

“Worse, chained. But I think the chain can easily be broken. If you’ll help me get away from here, I’ll consider myself in your debt for life.”

“I’ll do what I can for you. But keep quiet, for there are a number of guards about,” I whispered.

With an effort I squeezed through the hole that had been made, and felt my way to the prisoner’s side, for the interior of the cell was dark. He had a chain around one wrist, and the chain was fastened by a large staple driven into a log of the wall of the fort.

Jorge had come up behind me, and, learning of the staple, began to cut at the woodwork surrounding it with his machete. The lower end of the blade was fairly keen, and he made such rapid progress that in less than five minutes a sharp jerk cleared the staple from the log, and the prisoner was free.

“Good for you,” he whispered to the colored guide. “Now which is the way out of this hole?”

“Follow me, and keep very quiet,” I whispered, and motioned to Jorge to lead the way.

Soon the guide had disappeared into the opening we had made. Going from the prison was worse than getting in, and the man we were trying to rescue declared the passage-way too small for him.

We commenced to enlarge it, I with my dagger and he with his hands. We had just made it of sufficient size when we heard a cry from outside. Jorge had emerged into the open, only to be discovered by a sentry who chanced to be looking his way. There was a shot, and half a dozen soldiers came running up, at which the guide took to the river with a loud splash.

“I’m afraid we are lost!” I cried, and stopped, half in and half out of the hole. Then the prison door was banged open, and the rays of a lantern flared into the cell.

The American I had discovered promptly showed fight by leaping on the intruder. But this was madness, as the soldier was backed up by four others, all armed with pistols and guns. In the meantime another light flashed from outside the hole, and I felt myself caught, very much like a rat in a trap.

“De donde viene V.? [Where do you come from?]” demanded a cold, stern voice, and I felt myself grabbed by the hair. Realizing that resistance was useless, I gave myself up, and immediately found myself surrounded by a dozen Spanish soldiers. In the meantime Jorge had made good his escape.

The soldiers marched me around to the entrance of the fort, where an officer began to question me in Spanish. He could speak no English, and as soon as he found my command of Spanish was very limited he sent off for an interpreter. Then I was taken inside the fort and consigned to one of the prison cells.

My feelings can be better imagined than described. Bitterly I regretted having started on my midnight quest without notifying Captain Guerez. My hasty action had brought me to grief and placed me in a position from which escape seemed impossible. What my captors would do with me remained to be seen. That they would treat me in anything like a friendly fashion was out of the question to expect. It was likely that they would hold me as a prisoner of war.

Presently the door of the cell was opened, and somebody else was thrown in bodily and with such force that he fell headlong. The door was banged shut and bolted, and the crowd which had been outside went away.

The new arrival lay like a log where he had been thrown, and for a few minutes I fancied he must be dead from the way he had been treated.

I bent over him, and in the dim light of the early dawn made out that it was the American I had sought to rescue. I placed my hand over his heart and discovered that he still breathed, although but faintly.

There was nothing at hand with which I could do anything for him. My own pockets had been turned inside out by my captors, and even my handkerchief, with which I might have bound up an ugly wound on his brow, was gone. I opened his coat and vest and his shirt around the neck, and gave him as much air as I could.

“Oh!” he groaned, as he finally came to his senses. “Oh! Don’t kick me any more! I give in!”

“You’re all right – they have put you in a cell with me,” I hastened to reassure him, and then he sat up.

“Who – what – ” he paused. “In a cell, eh? And they caught you, too?”

“Yes.”

“That’s too bad.” He drew a deep breath. “Did you fight with them?”

“No. I saw it would be no use.”

“I was a fool to do it. I’m too hot-blooded for this sort of work. I ought to have stayed in Boston reporting local affairs.”

“Are you a reporter?”

“Hush! Yes; but I don’t want it to become known if I can help it. They think I am nothing more than an inquisitive American.”

“Then why did they lock you up?”

“That was more of my hot-headedness. I was sketching a picture of the town and this fort or prison, when a Spanish officer came up and tried to snatch the drawing from my hand. Instead of demanding an explanation I promptly knocked him down. Then a couple of guards ran for me, and I dusted. But it was no use. They sent a company of soldiers after me, and here I am.”

“And here we are both likely to remain for some time to come,” I added bitterly.

“Looks that way, that’s a fact. By the way, you said something about your father, didn’t you?”

"Yes. My father is a prisoner of the Spaniards, and I felt almost certain he was in this fort."

“What’s your father’s name?”

“Richard Carter. My name is Mark.”

“And my name is Gilbert Burnham. I’ve heard of your father, come to think of it. He joined the Cuban army along with a plantation owner named Guerez and another American named Hawley.”

“You are right. Did you hear anything at all of him here in Cubineta or the vicinity?”

“No. But then, you see, that is not strange, as I talk very little Spanish. I certainly haven’t seen any Americans here but you and myself.”

Gilbert Burnham asked me to tell him my story; and, feeling that I could lose nothing by so doing, I favored him with a recital of my efforts to get to my father. He was quite interested.

“By Jove, young man, if I get clear from here I’ll do what I can to help you,” he said.

Then he told me his own history – how he had grown tired of newspaper reporting in Boston and begged the head editor of the paper he represented to send him on an “assignment” to Cuba. He had been in the island four months, and had had a varied list of adventures, although none of a particularly thrilling or perilous nature.

“But now it looks as though I was in for it,” he concluded moodily. “That officer I knocked down will make matters as hard as he can for me.”

“And I’m afraid trying to break away from prison won’t help matters,” I said.

“You are right there. But, heigho! we must make the best of it.”

Yet making the best of it was small satisfaction to me. Tired out in body and mind, I sank down in a corner of the gloomy and damp cell and gave myself up to my bitter reflections.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A BATTLE ON LAND AND WATER

It was about eight o’clock in the morning that the door of the prison cell was opened and Gilbert Burnham and I were ordered to march out into a larger apartment.

The order was given by a Spanish officer who spoke fairly good English, and the officer was backed up by a guard of eight men, all well armed.

“They are going to run no chances on us now,” remarked the newspaper correspondent, as he arose from the floor, upon which he had been resting.

“We had better be as civil as possible,” I answered. “If we anger them they have it in their power to make us mighty uncomfortable.”

“I’ll keep as civil as my hot-headedness will permit,” he grumbled.

We were led from one end of the fort to the other, where there was a narrow room, provided with a small, square table and half a dozen benches. At the table sat several officers I had seen before. One was a particularly ugly-looking fellow, and Burnham nudged me and said this chap was the fellow he had knocked down.

“And he’s got it in for me,” he added.

I was marched to the front of the table, and the officer who could speak English forced me to clasp my hands behind me. This done, one of the officers at the table asked a number of questions in Spanish.

“No habla V. castellano? [Do you not speak Spanish?]” he asked me.

“No, señor,” I replied.

He glared at me suspiciously for a moment, then spoke to the other officer.

“Who you are?” demanded the latter.

“I am Mark Carter, an American boy. I came to Cuba to join my father, who was stopping at a plantation near Guantanamo.”

This was repeated in Spanish. At the mention of my name several of those present exchanged glances.

“You son of Richard Carter?” was the next question.

“Yes, señor. I understand he is a prisoner. Is it true?”

My question remained unanswered, and it was plain that my captors intended to give me no information.

“Why you break in the fort? Did this man pay you to do that?” And the Spanish officer pointed to Gilbert Burnham.

“I never saw or heard of this man before, señor. I broke in because I thought my father was a prisoner there. I heard an American was there, and I thought it must be he.”

“Aha, I see! Well, your father is not here, as you have found out.”

“Where is he?”

This question also remained unanswered. The officers began to consult among themselves, and then I was ordered back to the cell. I tried to protest, and pleaded for liberty, for a chance to find my parent, but it was all in vain. I was hustled off without ceremony and made as close a prisoner as before.

It was nearly noon before Gilbert Burnham joined me. In the meantime I had had nothing to eat or drink, and was beginning to wonder if my enemies meant to let me die of hunger and thirst.

The face of the newspaper correspondent was much downcast.

“I’m to catch it now,” he said. “To-morrow morning they are going to start to transport me to some regular fortress, and there I suppose I’ll be permitted to languish until this bloody war is over. I wish I had made a dash for liberty when I was out in that courtroom.”

“They would have shot you dead. They were too well armed for anything of the sort.”

“Maybe. But this is tough. Is there a pitcher of water anywhere?”

“Not a drop.”

At this he stormed more than ever, and finally shouted to the guard to bring some agua. But no one paid any attention to his cries, further than to order him to be silent, under penalty of being gagged, and then he subsided.

Slowly the morning wore away. The sun was shining brightly outside, and the cell, with only one narrow window, high up to the ceiling, was like a bake-oven. Once I climbed up to the window sill and looked out, only to have the muzzle of a gun thrust into my face, while a guard outside ordered me to drop. I dropped, and made no further attempt to get a whiff of fresh air.

I wondered if Jorge had escaped in safety and if Captain Guerez would do anything to save me. I felt certain he would be very angry over the way I had acted, and, looking back, I felt that I richly deserved to be censured.

It was high noon, and I and my companion were walking the floor, impatient for food and drink, when the door opened and a guard came in with a platter and an earthenware pitcher. He set both on the floor and withdrew without a word.

“Well, here’s something, anyway,” remarked Gilbert Burnham. “Bah! a stew of onions and garlic, not fit for a dog to eat. Let me have some of the water.”

Neither of us could do more than taste the mess which had been served; and as for the water, it looked as if it had been scooped from the river, and was both warm and muddy. I had just finished taking a gingerly drink, when a shot from outside startled both of us. Several more shots followed, and then came a blast on a trumpet from somewhere in the distance.

“Hullo! that means a fight!” ejaculated Gilbert Burnham, his face brightening. “I hope it’s a body of rebels to the rescue.”

“So do I, and I further hope they release us,” I replied.

At the first shot an alarm had been sounded in and about the fort. We could hear the soldiers hurrying in several directions and a number of orders issued in Spanish. The firing now continued to increase, and presently we heard a crash of splintered woodwork.

“It’s getting interesting, eh, Carter?” said Gilbert Burnham. “If only they don’t grow too enthusiastic and fire in here!”

Scarcely had he spoken than we heard a little noise up at the window. A bullet had entered and buried itself in the woodwork opposite.

“Better lay down,” I urged, and set the example, which the newspaper man was not long in following. The firing and shouting kept on steadily, and we heard the occasional splashing of water, telling that the encounter was taking place on the river as well as on land.

The battle had been going on with more or less violence for half an hour, when there came a wild rush through the fort, and some shooting just outside of our cell. Then the door went down with a crash, and we found ourselves confronted by a score or more of dusky rebels, all of whom wore the flag of Cuba pinned to their hats and coats.