CHAPTER XVIII
About the stirring events of the succeeding days I have little torelate, and no reader who has suffered the malady of love in its acutestform will wonder at it. During those days I mixed with a crowd ofadventurers, returned exiles, criminals, and malcontents, every one ofthem worth studying; the daylight hours were passed in cavalry exercisesor in long expeditions about the country, while every evening besidethe camp fire romantic tales enough to fill a volume were told in myhearing. But the image of Dolores was ever before my mind, so that allthis crowded period, lasting nine or ten days, passed before me likea phantasmagoria, or an uneasy dream, leaving only a very confusedimpression on my brain. I not only grieved for the sorrow I hadoccasioned her, but mourned also that my own heart had so terriblybetrayed me, so that for the moment the beautiful girl I had persuadedto fly from home and parents, promising her my undying affection, hadceased to be what she had been, so great was this new inconvenientpassion. The General had offered me a commission in his tatterdemaliongathering, but, as I had no knowledge of military matters, I hadprudently declined it, only requesting, as a special favour, that Imight be employed constantly on the expeditions he sent out over thesurrounding country to beat up recruits, seize arms, cattle, and horses,and to depose the little local authorities in the villages, puttingcreatures of his own in their places. This request had been granted, sothat morning, noon, and night I was generally in the saddle.
One evening I was in the camp seated beside a large fire and gloomilystaring into the flames, when the other men, who were occupied playingcards or sipping _mate_, hastily rose to their feet, making the salute.Then I saw the General standing near gazing fixedly at me. Motioning tothe men to resume their cards, he sat down by my side.
"What is the matter with you?" he said. "I have noticed that you arelike a different person since you joined us. Do you regret that step?"
"No," I answered, and then was silent, not knowing what more to say.
He looked searchingly at me. Doubtless some suspicion of the truth wasin his mind; for he had gone to the Casa Blanca with me, and it wasscarcely likely that his keen eyes had failed to notice the coldreception Dolores gave me on that occasion. He did not, however, touchon that matter.
"Tell me," he said at length, "what can I do for you?"
I laughed. "What can you do except to take me to Montevideo?" I replied.
"Why do you say that?" he returned quickly.
"We are not merely friends now as we were before I joined you," I said."You are my General; I am simply one of your men."
"The friendship remains just the same, Richard. Let me know franklywhat you think of this campaign, since you have now suddenly turned thecurrent of the conversation in that direction?"
There was a slight sting in the concluding words, but I had, perhaps,deserved it. "Since you bid me speak," I said, "I, for one, feel verymuch disappointed at the little progress we are making. It seems to methat before you are in a position to strike, the enthusiasm and courageof your people will have vanished. You cannot get anything like adecent army together, and the few men you have are badly armed andundisciplined. Is it not plain that a march to Montevideo in thesecircumstances is impossible, that you will be obliged to retire into theremote and difficult places to carry on a guerilla war?"
"No," he returned; "there is to be no guerilla war. The Coloradosmade the Orientals sick of it, when that arch-traitor and chief ofcut-throats, General Rivera, desolated the Banda for ten years. We mustride on to Montevideo soon. As for the character of my force, that isa matter it would perhaps be useless to discuss, my young friend. If Icould import a well-equipped and disciplined army from Europe to do myfighting, I should do so. The Oriental farmer, unable to send to Englandfor a threshing-machine, is obliged to go out and gather his wild maresfrom the plain to tread out his wheat, and I, in like manner, havingonly a few scattered _ranchos_ to draw my soldiers from, must besatisfied to do what I can with them. And now tell me, are you anxiousto see something done at once--a fight, for instance, in which we mightpossibly be the losers?"
"Yes, that would be better than standing still. If you are strong, thebest thing you can do is to show your strength."
He laughed. "Richard, you were made for an Oriental," he said, "onlynature at your birth dropped you down in the wrong country. You arebrave to rashness, abhor restraint, love women, and have a light heart;the Castilian gravity you have recently assumed is, I fancy, only apassing mood."
"Your words are highly complimentary and fill me with pride," Ianswered, "but I scarcely see their connection with the subject of ourconversation."
"There is a connection, nevertheless," he returned pleasantly. "Thoughyou refuse a commission from me, I am so convinced that you are in heartone of us that I will take you into my confidence and tell you somethingknown to only half a dozen trusted individuals here. You rightly saythat if we have strength we must show it to the country. That is whatwe are now about to do. A cavalry force has been sent against us and weshall engage it before two days are over. As far as I know, the forceswill be pretty evenly balanced, though our enemies will, of course, bebetter armed. We shall choose our own ground; and, should they attack ustired with a long march, or if there should be any disaffection amongstthem, the victory will be ours, and after that every Blanco sword in theBanda will be unsheathed in our cause. I need not repeat to you that inthe hour of my triumph, if it ever comes, I shall not forget my debt toyou; my wish is to bind you, body and heart, to this Oriental country.It is, however, possible that I may suffer defeat, and if in two days'time we are all scattered to the winds, let me advise you what to do.Do not attempt to return immediately to Montevideo, as that might bedangerous. Make your way by Minas to the southern coast; and when youreach the department of Rocha, inquire for the little settlement ofLomas de Rocha, a village three leagues west of the lake. You will findthere a storekeeper, one Florentino Blanco--a Blanco in heart as well.Tell him I sent you to him, and ask him to procure you an Englishpassport from the capital; after which it will be safe for you to travelto Montevideo. Should you ever be identified as a follower of mine, youcan invent some story to account for your presence in my force. WhenI remember that botanical lecture you once delivered, also some othermatters, I am convinced that you are not devoid of imagination."
After giving some further kind advice, he bade me good night, leavingme with a strangely unpleasant conviction in my mind that we had changedcharacters for the nonce, and that I had bungled as much in my new partas I had formerly done in my old. He had been sincerity itself, while I,picking up the discarded mask, had tied it on, probably upside down, forit made me feel excessively uncomfortable during our interview. Tomake matters worse, I was also sure that it had quite failed to hide mycountenance, and that he knew as well as I knew myself the real cause ofthe change he had noticed in me.
These disagreeable reflections did not trouble me long, and then I beganto feel considerable excitement at the prospect of a brush with thegovernment troops. My thoughts kept me awake most of the night; still,next morning, when the trumpet sounded its shrill reveille close athand, I rose quickly, and in a much more cheerful mood than I had knownof late. I began to feel that I was getting the better of that insanepassion for Dolores which had made us both so unhappy, and when we wereonce more in the saddle the "Castilian gravity," to which the Generalhad satirically alluded, had pretty well vanished.
No expeditions were sent out that day; after we had marched abouttwelve or thirteen miles eastward and nearer to the immense range ofthe Cuchilla Grande, we encamped, and after the midday meal spent theafternoon in cavalry exercises.
On the next day happened the great event for which we had beenpreparing, and I am positive that, with the wretched material hecommanded, no man could have done more than Santa Coloma, though, alas!all his efforts ended in disaster. Alas, I say, not because I took, eventhen, any very serious interest in Oriental politics, but becauseit would have been greatly to my advantage if thi
ngs had turnedout differently. Besides, a great many poor devils who had been anunconscionable time out in the cold would have come into power, and therascally Colorados sent away in their turn to eat the "bitter bread"of proscription. The fable of the fox and the flies might here possiblyoccur to the reader; I, however, preferred to remember Lucero's fable ofthe tree called Montevideo, with the chattering colony in its branches,and to look upon myself as one in the majestic bovine army about tobesiege the monkeys and punish them for their naughty behaviour.
Quite early in the morning we had breakfast, then every man was orderedto saddle his best horse; for every one of us was the owner of three orfour steeds. I, of course, saddled the horse the General had given me,which had been reserved for important work. We mounted, and proceededat a gentle pace through a very wild and broken country, still inthe direction of the Cuchilla. About midday scouts came riding in andreported that the enemy were close upon us. After halting for half anhour, we again proceeded at the same gentle pace till about two o'clock,when we crossed the Canada de San Paulo, a deep valley beyond whichthe plain rose to a height of about one hundred and fifty feet. In the_canada_ we stopped to water our horses, and there heard that the enemywere advancing along it at a rapid pace, evidently hoping to cut off oursupposed retreat towards the Cuchilla. Crossing the little stream of SanPaulo, we began slowly ascending the sloping plain on the farther sidetill the highest point was gained; then, turning, we saw the enemy,numbering about seven hundred men, beneath us, spread out in a line ofextraordinary length. Up from the valley they came towards us at a brisktrot. We were then rapidly disposed in three columns, the centre onenumbering about two hundred and fifty men, the others about two hundredmen each. I was in one of the outside columns, within about fourmen from the front. My fellow-soldiers, who had hitherto been verylight-hearted and chatty, had suddenly become grave and quiet, someof them even looking pale and scared. On one side of me was anirrepressible scamp of a boy about eighteen years old, a dark littlefellow, with a monkey face and a feeble, falsetto voice like a very oldwoman. I watched him take out a small sharp knife and without lookingdown draw it across the upper part of his surcingle three or four times;but this he did evidently only for practice, as he did not cut into thehide. Seeing me watching, he grinned mysteriously and made a sign withhead and shoulders thrust forward in imitation of a person riding awayat full speed, after which he restored his knife to its sheath.
"You intend cutting your surcingle and running away, little coward?" Isaid.
"And what are you going to do?" he returned.
"Fight," I said.
"It is the best thing you can do, Sir Frenchman," said he, with a grin.
"Listen," I said, "when the fight is over, I will look you up to thrashyou for your impertinence in calling me a Frenchman."
"After the fight!" he exclaimed, with a funny grimace. "Do you mean nextyear? Before that distant time arrives some Colorado will fall in lovewith you, and--and--and----"
Here he explained himself without words by drawing the edge of his handbriskly across his throat, then closing his eyes and making gurglingsounds, supposed to be uttered by a person undergoing the painfuloperation of having his throat cut.
Our colloquy was carried on in whispers, but his pantomimic performancedrew on us the attention of our neighbours, and now he looked round toinform them with a grin and a nod that his Oriental wit was getting thevictory. I was determined not to be put down by him, however, and tappedmy revolver with my hand to call his attention to it.
"Look at this, you young miscreant," I said. "Do you not know that Iand many others in this column have received orders from the General toshoot down every man who attempts to run away?"
This speech effectually silenced him. He turned as pale as his dark skinwould let him, and looked round like a hunted animal in search of a holeto hide in.
On my other hand a grizzly-bearded old gaucho, in somewhat tatteredgarments, lit a cigarette and, oblivious of everything except thestimulating fragrance of the strongest black tobacco, expanded his lungswith long inspirations, to send forth thereafter clouds of blue smokeinto his neighbours' faces, scattering the soothing perfume over a thirdportion of the army.
Santa Coloma rose equal to the occasion; swiftly riding from column tocolumn, he addressed each in turn, and, using the quaint, expressivephraseology of the gauchos, which he knew so well, poured forth hisdenunciations of the Colorados with a fury and eloquence that broughtthe blood with a rush to many of his followers' pale cheeks. They weretraitors, plunderers, assassins, he cried; they had committed a millioncrimes, but all these things were nothing, nothing compared with thatone black crime which no other political party had been guilty of.By the aid of Brazilian gold and Brazilian bayonets they had risen topower; they were the infamous pensioners of the empire of slaves. Hecompared them to the man who marries a beautiful wife and sells herto some rich person so as to live luxuriously on the wages of his owndishonour. The foul stain which they had brought on the honour of theBanda Oriental could only be washed away with their blood. Pointing tothe advancing troops, he said that when those miserable hirelings werescattered like thistle-down before the wind, the entire country would bewith him, and the Banda Oriental, 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, greetedby a storm of _vivas_.
Then a great silence fell upon our ranks; while up the slope, theirtrumpets sounding merrily, trotted the enemy, till they had coveredabout three hundred yards of the ascending ground, threatening to closeus round in an immense circle, when suddenly the order was given tocharge, and, led by Santa Coloma, we thundered down the incline uponthem.
Soldiers reading this plain, unvarnished account of an Oriental battlemight feel inclined to criticise Santa Coloma's tactics; for his menwere, like the Arabs, horsemen and little else; they were, moreover,armed with lance and broadsword, weapons requiring a great deal of spaceto be used effectively. Yet, considering all the circumstances, I amsure that he did the right thing. He knew that he was too weak to meetthe enemy in the usual way, pitting man against man; also that if hefailed to fight, his temporary prestige would vanish like smoke and therebellion collapse. Having decided to hazard all, and knowing that in astand-up fight he would infallibly be beaten, his only plan was to showa bold front, mass his feeble followers together in columns, and hurlthem upon the enemy, hoping by this means to introduce a panic amongsthis opponents and so snatch the victory.
A discharge of carbines with which we were received did us no damage.I, at any rate, saw no saddles emptied near me, and in a few momentswe were dashing through the advancing lines. A shout of triumph wentup from our men, for our cowardly foes were flying before us in alldirections. On we rode in triumph till we reached the bottom of thehill, then we reined up, for before us was the stream of San Paulo, andthe few scattered men who had crossed it and were scuttling away likehunted ostriches scarcely seemed worth chasing. Suddenly with a greatshout a large body of Colorados came thundering down the hill on ourrear and flank, and dismay seized upon us. The feeble efforts made bysome of our officers to bring us round to face them proved unavailing. Iam utterly unable to give any clear account of what followed immediatelyafter that, for we were all, friends and foes, mixed up for some minutesin the wildest confusion, and how I ever got out of it all without ascratch is a mystery to me. More than once I was in violent collisionwith Colorado men, distinguished from ours by their uniform, and severalfurious blows with sword and lance were aimed at me, but somehow Iescaped them all. I emptied the six chambers of my Colt's revolver, butwhether my bullets did any execution or not I cannot pretend to say. Inthe end I found myself surrounded by four of our men who were furiouslyspurring their horses out of the fight.
"Whip up, Captain, come with us this way," shouted one of them whoknew me, and who always insisted on giving me a title to which I had noright.
As we rode away, skirting
the hill towards the south, he assured me thatall was lost, in proof of which he pointed to scattered bodies of ourmen flying from the field in all directions. Yes, we were defeated;that was plain to see, and I needed little encouragement from myfellow-runaways to spur my horse to its utmost speed. Had the falcon eyeof Santa Coloma rested on me at that moment he might have added tothe list of Oriental traits he had given me the un-English faculty ofknowing when I was beaten. I was quite as anxious, I believe, to save myskin--_throat_, we say in the Banda Oriental--as any horseman there, noteven excepting the monkey-faced boy with the squeaky voice.
If the curious reader, thirsting for knowledge, will consult theUruguayan histories, I daresay he will find a more scientificdescription of the battle of San Paulo than I have been able to give. Myexcuse must be that it was the only battle--pitched or other--at whichI have ever assisted, also that my position in the Blanco forces wasa very humble one. Altogether I am not overproud of my soldieringperformances; still, as I did no worse than Frederick the Great ofPrussia, who ran away from his first battle, I do not consider thatI need blush furiously. My companions took our defeat with the usualOriental resignation. "You see," said one in explanation of his mentalattitude, "there must always be one side defeated in every fight, forhad we gained the day, then the Colorados would have lost." There was inthis remark a sound practical philosophy; it could not be controverted,it burdened our brains with no new thing, and it made us all verycheerful. For myself, I did not care very much, but could not helpthinking a great deal of Dolores, who would now have a fresh grief toincrease her pain.
For a distance of three or four miles we rode at a fast gallop, on theslopes of the Cuchilla paused to breathe our horses, and, dismounting,stood for some time gazing back over the wide landscape spread outbefore us. At our backs rose the giant green and brown walls of thesierras, the range stretching away on either hand in violet and deepblue masses. At our feet lay the billowy green and yellow plain, vast asocean, and channelled by innumerable streams, while one black patch ona slope far away showed us that our foes were camping on the very spotwhere they had overcome us. Not a cloud appeared in the immense heavens;only, low down in the west, purple and rose-coloured vapours werebeginning to form, staining the clear, intense white-blue sky about thesinking sun. Over all reigned deep silence; until, suddenly, a flock oforange and flame-coloured orioles with black wings swept down on a clumpof bushes hard by and poured forth a torrent of wild, joyous music.A strange performance! screaming notes that seemed to scream jubilantgladness to listening heaven, and notes abrupt and guttural, minglingwith others more clear and soul-piercing than ever human lips drew fromreed or metal. It soon ended; up sprang the vocalists like a fountain offire and fled away to their roost among the hills, then silence reignedonce more. What brilliant hues, what gay, fantastic music! Were theyindeed birds, or the glad, winged inhabitants of a mystic region,resembling earth, but sweeter than earth and never entered by death,upon whose threshold I had stumbled by chance? Then, while the last richflood of sunshine came over the earth from that red, everlasting urnresting on the far horizon, I could, had I been alone, have cast myselfupon the ground to adore the great God of Nature, who had given methis precious moment of life. For here the religion that languishesin crowded cities or steals shame-faced to hide itself in dim churchesflourishes greatly, filling the soul with a solemn joy. Face to facewith Nature on the vast hills at eventide, who does not feel himselfnear to the Unseen?
Out of his heart God shall not pass: His image stamped is on every grass.
My comrades, anxious to get through the Cuchilla, were already onhorseback, shouting to me to mount. One more lingering glance overthat wide prospect--wide, yet how small a portion of the Banda's twentythousand miles of everlasting verdure, watered by innumerable beautifulstreams? Again the thought of Dolores swept like a moaning wind over myheart. For this rich prize, her beautiful country, how weakly and withwhat feeble hands had we striven! Where now was her hero, the gloriousdeliverer Perseus? Lying, perhaps, stark and stained with blood on yondarkening moor. Not yet was the Colorado monster overcome. "Rest onthy rock, Andromeda!" I sadly murmured, then, leaping into the saddle,galloped away after my retreating comrades, already half a mile awaydown in the shadowy mountain pass.