The Filibusters by Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne (book club suggestions TXT) 📖

“That’s right,” said Fluellen; ” try and scare me with the idea of being stuck up against a wall and shot. Oh, you well-intentioned old owl. There, away with you, and get on with your work, and leave me to pick up strength.”

“Hope Fluellen is pulling up again,” said the General as he rode past me when I got outside the door, and I said, ” Oh, yes, nicely,” but I can’t say that I felt enthusiastic over his quick recovery. It rather struck me that as soon as he emerged from the shelf, there would be other complications to deal with which we could very well do without. Holsteins’ lengthy cablegram was giving us quite all the extra anxiety we had any use for already.

As it turned out, however, though these vague dangers dangled over our heads, neither of them fell; other worries vanished which we had quite reckoned on having to deal with; and, in fact, matters prospered with us beyond belief. The country had been without its revolution for months, and we had come at the psychological moment. Our leader was popular, and his method had the delicious charm of novelty. They had experienced most kinds of fighting in Sacaronduca; never before the inroad of British filibusters; and certainly never fighting to set up a government of such a kind as Briggs proposed.

They were a people quick to take up new ideas; to flash out with one wild enthusiasm to-day, and another on entirely fresh lines tomorrow; a race of human beings with souls hung on spiral springs. They were starving for excitement when we came; had been for seven solid months; and when the meal was set down before them, they ate of it with greedy splutterings. Three quarters of Los Angeles wanted, so they said, to fight or intrigue for their new hero, Don Esteban Puentos; and as a preliminary they desired the blood of everybody who did not agree with them utterly; and (what we could not avoid) got some flow of it. A little murder was necessary to warm them up to the part.

When it came to actual volunteering for service in the new army, there they did not show up so well. True, we had abundance of offers from aged men and cripples, and others who obviously could not pass the most lenient physique examination; but the able-bodied (when it came to the point) felt themselves wanted by the calls of their business in Los Angeles, or were the last male survivors of an old and important line, or reluctantly stayed behind at the plea of a fiance” e, or a mother or an only sister. Several indeed wished to join us as war correspondents, and some enthusiasts did get up a red cross society with a very correct uniform; but when all was said and done a bare hundred only of these eager civilians came forward to shoulder a rifle; and if it had not been for our former military opponents joining us, we should have been in queer street so far as number went.

These gentlemen, however, made small bones about changing their allegiance. A very short spell in prison persuaded them that it was quite unsatisfactory to rust there any longer; and on the fourth day of their incarceration a memorial, couched in the most handsome of terms, was forwarded to their ” Illustrious Conqueror.” They avowed themselves as eager to serve the rising sun, and wrote out a wish that he might shine a thousand years. In fact, plain people might have called them the most pernicious of renegades, and (probably from such feeling as this) their offer was not accepted in all its completeness. We did not re-enlist them ” en bloc.” We picked out small squads at a time and joined them to our “corps d’elite,” and then, as we got confidence in these, added others, and so on. Moreover, many we retained in an unarmed condition to make the personnel of the transport and commissariat services.

This last was a very important item in our forthcoming expedition against the capital. There had been countless railways projected from Dolores to the Mexican Gulf Coast; for three of them the money had actually been raised; but the sums so gathered were ” bonnes bouches” which no self-respecting Sacaronducan could resist having a snatch at, and in the general scramble a mere derision of a capital had remained over. One of these lines had two thousand and four yards of track laid under a dense growth of secondary forest; another possessed three second-hand locomotives and a scrap heap of venerable flange-rails; whilst the third had exhausted itself in setting up a commodious terminus building, and as a forlorn hope of dividends had rented this to a Wesleyan mission.

All communication, therefore, between Los Angeles and the capital (excepting over a constantly broken telegraph wire) was by road, and a very bad road at that. It had never been treated to the principles of MacAdam at any point; the utmost it could boast of being a fathom or so of corduroy at the more than usually impassable spots; and the rivers which gapped it were never thought worth rebridging between revolutions. This road was eighty-nine miles in length, and native gentlemen of energy were proud when they traversed it on mule back within the week.

Now an army, marching on foot and being encumbered with its military stores, artillery, camp followers, and other impedimenta, cannot be expected to move at the pace of mounted men travelling light. So General Briggs announced publicly that he should allow ten days to make the march, and would start on the twenty-first of November. He gave facilities for spies to carry these tidings to President Maxillo in Dolores, and then proceeded to do the unexpected. He paraded troops and transport at dawn on the i6th, and set off on the quickest of forced marches, taking care that no one got in front of him to carry on the amended news. Delicia, with Donna Carmoy, accompanied the army on horseback.

He covered the distance in five days, and marched into Dolores an hour before dawn on the 22nd. President Maxillo was making the safest of preparations to crush us; but unfortunately his dispositions were not to come into force till the end of November; and, so instead of a pitched battle on the plain before the city, conducted on scientific lines, we had a morning’s sharp rough and tumble fighting in the streets, and we rushed the Presidential Palace so unexpectedly that Maxillo had barely time to escape by a side door when Carew and a handful of his men capered in at the front.

I fancy it was Briggs’s design that his rival should have met with a fatal accident in the taking of the place, so as to avoid further complications with him; and if this was impracticable, he wished to take the man prisoner, and hold him closely; but the old ruffian was too slippery to lay hands upon, and too wily to stand in the way of a bullet. He got on a horse and galloped away through the devious old streets of the capital, with his guard following, and his household not far behind.

He was making for his estate amongst the Tolpec Mountains, a place that was half hacienda, half stronghold, and so fortified by nature that twelve men could hold it for ever against twelve armies. It could not be reduced by famine, seeing that it produced its own food; it could not be shelled; and any attempt to storm it would be the maddest kind of foolishness. And in retreat to this point the troops which remained loyal to him passed out along converging roads as fast as we drove them from the city.

Our cavalry, when the fighting in the streets slackened, and they were disengaged, followed, and in some small degree cut up the retreat. But both men and horses were jaded with the forced march and the work they had done before, and I don’t think they did much damage, and certainly brought in but few prisoners. These last apparently expected to be shot out of hand, and so were agreeably surprised to learn that they would be set at complete liberty again so soon as the country had been allowed a week or so to settle down.

I cannot say that Dolores gave us a reception like the one we got at Los Angeles. The capital contained older-fashioned, less enterprising people, who saw much more of the bi-annual revolutions, and were so cloyed with them that they held rootedly Conservative objections to each fresh change. The citizens did not rise against us; but they showed an apathetic dislike to the new cause which was far more galling.

On the day after our arrival the troops were paraded in the plaza before the palace, and from the balcony Don Juan Carmoy proclaimed the new President. The square was packed with people, men and women both, and they listened with grave attention whilst the General gave an outline of his future policy. There was some little enthusiasm, when he ceased speaking, but not much. The better class of people in Dolores considered it bad form to be demonstrative, and most of their inferiors followed the example set them. But on the other hand there was no counter-demonstration. There must have been many of our opponents present in the square, but for one reason and another they thought best to preserve a massive silence.

The General finished his speech, and two or three other men spoke, lamely and without spirit, and then we went back off the balcony into the state drawing-room of the palace. For myself I can honestly say I was feeling chilled and depressed. I had expected a repetition of the scene at Los Angeles, a show of wild enthusiasm; and this callous indifference went into me like a drizzling cold rain. I verily believe I should have preferred howls of execration.

As for the General the President, as I suppose he should now be called his face was inscrutable, his manner as quiet and decisive as ever. From the natural appearance of the man he might have had the most brilliant reception that was ever accorded. With a smile he handed me a cablegram he had just received. It was from “Hoisteins, London,” and said, ” Repeat previous warning.”

“H’m,” I said, ” taken all together things look rather blue.”

“Oh, no, my dear Birch,” he said. ” I am President already, and I shall remain in office. People do not quite realise the matter yet; and I have no doubt that Maxillo, and this mysterious assistant of his whom Holsteins talk about, will try and regain power; but ‘j’y suis et j’y. reste,’ and Sacaronduca will discover that more fully before long.”

“I had a notion,” I remarked, ” that Miss Delicia was to have been with us on the balcony to-day.”

“I confess I quite expected her,” the General replied, ” and (compliments aside), I am sure we lost by her absence. The mere sight of her would have woke many of these people up, just as it did at Los Angeles. And if she had said ten words to them, they would have warmed up at once. But I conclude she had some excellent reason for staying away.”

“Davis came into the room of a rush. ” Gentlemen,” he cried, ” Donna Delicia has disappeared. She must have been carried away kidnapped. I have just got the news from her maid.”

“My God,” exclaimed the new President; “that is Maxillo’s doing. He will kill her.”