The Filibusters, Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne [best book clubs .TXT] 📗

Carew, ” but we’ll leave it here.” He built a pile of books, and placed the paper conspicuously. ” And now, my dear Jupe, once more we have the honour to wait for your lead.”

“Up the stairs then, and on to the roof.”

He showed us the way, and we followed, and still as a precaution I kept a grip on his cassock.

The staircase did not go straight. It twisted and turned through the buildings, making connections with other rooms; and once, as we came on to a half pace, I heard voices in discussion close at the other side of a door. But we all three trod our way like cats, and in the end came out on the flat concreted roof, just then lit as” bright as day by the moonlight.

There was a parapet all round the roof, and so we were fairly safe from being spied at from below, but to make sure that no one was stirring beyond the walls we peeped over each side in succession and searched the surroundings with industry. No; unless there was anyone in close hiding amongst the trees which was unlikely the place was deserted, except for some outbuildings which showed lights, but which we decided would not have to count. So the next thing was to get to the ground.

How this was to be managed I didn’t see. I had expected an external staircase, a common addition to native architecture. But the hacienda was something of a fortress or could be used as such on occasion and the Maxillo who built it had evidently no wish unnecessarily to weaken his defences. However, the priest had a way out of the difficulty. ‘There was a long pole lying on the roof, which I fancy at some time or other had been used as a flagstaff, and which, I grimly thought, would have been used for that purpose again on the morrow if Maxillo’s plans had gone off as he intended; and this pole with some difficulty we managed to get 6n the parapet and lower vertically down the wall.

We chose the side of the house away from the moon so as not to throw an unnecessary shadow across any of the windows; but the wood squeaked and jarred abominably, however careful we might be, and I know my heart was bumping all the time we handled it. But at last we got the pole fairly up and down the wall, and Carew nipped over the parapet and lowered himself briskly away into the shadow of the dusty ground below.

“The Church next,” said I, and Father Jupe, like a sensible man, did as he was bade and followed, and I climbed down the pole close above his head, so that he might be up to no pranks when he was out of our immediate reach. I didn’t quite know what mischief he might find ready to his hand during that transit; but I had a high opinion of his cleverness, and I don’t mind repeating that I had the strongest possible distrust of the man. However, we all three got into the black shadow at the base of the building without any alarm being spread, and set off over the soft carpet of dust towards a gap between the encircling outbuildings.

The moon hung up in a clear sky like a great glowing silver coin, and I have never been less pleased to see it. The shadows were to our taste; but out of the shadows and we had to leave them sometimes we were an open advertisement. There was a quite a little settlement of outbuildings to pass through before we got into the fields beyond, and if there had been anyone with eyes, by no possibility could we have missed being seen.

Once indeed we did have a horrid alarm. As we rounded the angle of one of the stone buildings, a voice spoke out close at our elbows. We stopped in our tracks as though we had been frozen there, and I laid suggestive fingers on Jupe’s cassock. A second voice a woman’s took up the talk; and the first answered back; and then came the sound of unmistakable caresses and fondlings.

In the course of journeyings I have been in Louisiana and Cuba, and know an ” ingenio” when I see one, and am well acquainted with the scent of boiling sugar. The knowledge did not comfort me then; I recognised in a moment that we were leaning against the wall of the very torture house with which Maxillo had threatened us; and there for a mortal twenty minutes we had to stop and listen to the silly love-sentences of that pair of tools who were not a yard away from us. They were parishioners of Father Jupe, and it was plain to learn that their love-making was none of the most orthodox. Jupe was hearing the confession with obvious distaste, and if one could judge by a face, the pair of them were in for a thumping penance if ever their pastor got within reach of them again. I suppose there was humour in the situation, but I’m sure we all of us quite failed to see it then.

However, at last they wound up the interview with one long last ecstatic kiss heavens, how long a kiss can seem sometimes and took themselves slowly off; and once more we got under way and left the unpleasantly suggestive neighbourhood of the boilers. Another minute and we were clear of the buildings altogether; another five and we were walking quickly down a track between stalks of Indian corn which rose on either side of us eight feet high.

Carew, as being the man with the gun, brought up the rear now; the priest led, and I stepped close behind his heels and laid an occasional hand on the skirt of his cassock, as a hint that I was quite ready to stop him if he tried a bolt.

Through corn, through maize and sorghum, through grass land and sweet potato fields we kept on in this order at the best of our pace for the rest of that night, talking little, so as to save all our wind for the walk. They must have discovered our absence by that time one would think, but still there was no sound of pursuit. Probably Maxillo rested satisfied with the idea that we could not get out of the valley, and promised himself the luxury of hunting us down by daylight and at his leisure.

Nearer and nearer we drew to the enormous wall of stone which ringed the valley round, and even when the moon had grown faint against oncoming day, nowhere could I see a break in the towering crags. So steep were they that they hardly looked like natural mountains as one stared at them in that grey light of dawn they gave one the idea of a vast wall of titanic slabs built up with sweat and toil and labour by some forgotten race of giants. And, as I say, nowhere did an outlet show itself. Ever and again we came upon a bend of the stream, and a minute later were leaving it as it swerved off on its serpentine course; and every time we struck it the volume of water had increased. It flowed onwards round its curves with a gentle purr, and though it sometimes dissipated for a mile or two into marsh and reedy tarn, it always came out again, clear and musical, at the further side, and always, despite its flirtings, made headway towards the vast stone barrier beyond.

It was evident that the priest was growing very weary. Walking is not cultivated in Sacaronduca amongst the better classes; indeed, there is a local saying to the effect that any man who can afford it will take a horse even if he is only going to cross a street. But I will say he stuck to it gamely, and, moreover, Carew and I were able to feel for him, as we were more than a little tired ourselves. When we had taken our first look upon the expanse of the valley we had put it down as a nice snug little retreat; but when we came to measure it up with footsteps we had a much more respectful idea of its size.

However, it was obvious that we were coming rapidly to the end of our walk. The foot of the vast crags was less than a mile away now, and although any break in them still refused to show, it was a certain thing that the stream must have passage somewhere to empty into the sea. What the nature of that passage was we had got to find out. It might merely be an underground filter, it might be a tunnel, it might be a narrow gutter of a cafion; and again the pace of the stream in this outlet, whatever it might be, was by no means guaranteed gentle. In fact, from the beginning, Father Jupe had given the poorest opinion of its practicableness for our purpose.

However, as we drew nearer, the rush and the clash of falling water began to announce themselves by noise, and a great wall of the cliff commenced to separate out from the mass till it showed us a lean alley of a cafion leading with windings and turns into the very heart of that huge barrier of stone, and the stream with noisy falls and rapids gushing along its base. And just about that time we learned for a definite fact that Maxillo had sent after us a force which would put successful resistance (if they came in contact with us) entirely out of the question.

We saw them topping a bit of a grass-covered rise, and counted some twenty men on horseback and another score on foot. Up till then they had not been especially hurrying themselves, relying probably on the belief that we could not get beyond the barriers of the valley, and promising themselves the sport of hunting us down at their leisure. But when they saw us persistently bending for this river canon, they grasped the fact that there was a possibility of losing us even then, and so the cavalry left the others and came on over the rough ground as fast as their horses could carry them.

We on our part brisked up. We had tasted the sweets of escape, and did not want to be killed now if it could be avoided; and though the boil of water in the canon was far from appetising, we had a strong inclination for giving Maxillo’s braves the complete go-bye and taking the chances of the stream as they arrived.

It was a case of dragging to get the priest on the last hundred yards, but I lugged him along somehow. And at last we got to the outermost barrier of the canon, and, dry-shod, at any rate, we could go no further.

Father Jupe turned to me with a little spit of anger. ” Take your infernal fingers off my clothes, Mr. Birch,” he snapped.

“Yes, don’t bully the man so,” said Carew; upon which I swore back at him, and the three of us started a wrangle which very nearly resulted in blows.

A little kick of dust thrown up by a rifle shot from beneath our feet had the effect of calming us somewhat for the time being. Other bullets began to whizz past us viciously. Seven of the riders had dismounted and were firing from the knee as fast as they could load; the others, who had only revolvers, were coming on alongside the line of fire with all the pace their horses could give them.

“Oh, stop this row,” said Carew. ” You and I must be off, Birch.”

“Yes,” said I. ” There’s an account between