The Filibusters by Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne (book club suggestions TXT) đź“–
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- Author: Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne
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It was rather with surprise, then, that I saw a tiny thread of grey steam jet out from the Clarindella’s bows as her windlass hove up an anchor, and with considerable astonishment that I saw her get under way and steer towards us down the estuary. She had a surf boat towing alongside, and when she was over the bar and well into the smooth, muddy waters of the bay we saw half a dozen men get down into this, cast off the painter, and row back towards the town.
“There go the pilot and non-combatants,” said Fluellen to me. ” The ass is going to fight after all. What an insane fool.”
“He’d better put another hand at the wheel then,” said I. “She’s steering shockingly badly. They’re yawing her about all over the place. She’ll be out of the fairway directly. Look at her.”
“I wonder what’s her game. I can’t see anyone on her bridge, or on her decks either for that matter. They’ll be all keeping very closely out of shot.”
“That’s hardly Carew’s way. Perhaps he isn’t on board.”
“Perhaps nobody’s on board. By Jove, that’s it. They’ve fired up all the furnaces will hold, turned steam full on, lashed the wheel amidships, and left her to take her chance and do the worst she can.”
Captain Meadey, who, to give him his due, was sharp enough, had understood this state of affairs as soon as we did, and found himself on the horns of a dilemma. With his own low-powered, slowturning ship, he would find it very hard to avoid the Clarindella if he got to close quarters with her and she took it into her head to ram him; if he left her alone she might very possibly run ashore and destroy herself, which would score to his discredit; and if he let her pass out to sea, the desertion might turn out to be a ruse, and he would be finely laughed at as another of Carew’s gulls.
There was small enough time for decision. The Clarindella was nearing him at the best of her twelve-knot gait, and I must say he took his risks like a man. He got his clumsy, slow, old vessel turned with her head away from the shore. The unmanned ship came chasing after him, yawing first to this side, then to that. She drew nearer and still nearer, threatening the gunboat’s stern with her sheering knife-like bow, and Meadey paraded his bridge, white-gloved, calm, and pompous as usual. But for all his iciness and his affectations he was a good enough sailor when it came to the pinch, and knew what he was doing. He gave his orders, and they were repeated like clock work; and as the Clarindella came alongside, the Rabbit lunged over and laid her aboard.
Officers and crew were ready for the manoeuvre. No sooner had the iron plating rasped against the gunboat’s wooden. sides than they paraded on the white hammocks that topped her rail, and scrambled over on to the Clarindella’s dirty decks with an orderly armed torrent. In another moment the ships were separated again and the quicker vessel shot ahead. But then some of the invaders got down to her engine-room, and the propeller stopped, steam snorted from her escape pipes, and. a minute later she had lost way and was awaiting the war-ship’s orders.
In the waist below us that stuffy little person, the owner of the Clarindella, was shedding tears of joy as his eyes gloated over his refound treasure; and on the bridge above us was Captain Meadey, unsmiling, pompous, and imperturbable; and Fluellen and I were as powerless to move one as the other. They had got their steamboat back, and that was all they seemed to care about. That the man who had escaped would continue to be a pest to Sacaronduca troubled them not one jot.
But Carew’s evasion was a very real worry to Fluellen and myself. We had been sent out to catch him, and so far we had failed dismally. It was no excuse according to President Briggs’s code that we had failed through no fault of our own. And if in the meanwhile Carew made himself a further nuisance to the wretched country, Briggs was quite as likely as not to hold us directly responsible, and have us stuck up against a wall and shot, if so be he could contrive to lay hands upon us.
So we were keenly enough anxious to get ashore and pick up Carew’s trail, without further delay, and use the authorised forces of the country to crush him out of existence.
AND now it becomes my duty to tell of the final disbanding of Carew’s most capable gang of ruffians, and the final solving of the marriage question between him and Donna Delicia.
Fluellen and I said good-bye to the Rabbit and her people (by Captain Meadey’s most kind and formal permission), and got ashore at Pueblo. Carew had oppressed the place ruthlessly, and being still sore from their skinning, any enemy of Carew’s was a friend of theirs. Indeed, the good folks of Pueblo gave us a public reception; wanted us to stay and be feted with fireworks, a ball, and a banquet, on three successive nights; and in fact fairly bubbled with their demonstrations of loyalty to the Briggs regime. We could go hunting after that devil Carew ” manana” they said; but we pointed out that the ” manana” principle would have to be suspended if Carew was to be caught, and so, as they honestly wished the man every ill, and as they themselves were not called upon to hustle personally for his capture, they provided us with four good horses, and gave us a shower of blessings and fireworks as a send-off.
It was not difficult to follow in Carew’s track. He had a hundred and fifty men in his company, and they did not carry a baggage train. Carew’s idea for supplying the commissariat might not be pleasant from the point of view of the country he passed through, though it was eminently satisfactory from a military standpoint. He had a gift for foraging that we of the Expeditionary Force at one time used to describe as heavenly, though I can quite imagine that the people he foraged from would set down his peculiar talent as emanating from somewhere extremely far from heaven.
On this particular march he and his men always swapped the mount they bestrode for a better so soon as it came into their sight; they always contrived to halt at some good plump village, which they squeezed of everything available before they left it. Let them receive smiles and no opposition, and they were the mildest-mannered brigands imaginable; they would be civil to the men and more than civil to the ladies. But let any irritable person object to parting with the cream of his stock, and show an ugly front in defence of his fancied rights, and the face of things would change at once. With equal glibness these predatory gentlemen would hang the objector to a branch of one of the village shade-trees as an example to his fellow-rustics, and would loudly profess their entire willingness to provide similar tutoring for anyone else who desired it.
Like the late Father O’Flynn, Sir William Carew undoubtedly ” had a wonderful way with him.” It was seldom that he had to resort to these disciplinary hangings. The villagers who came in for his visits rendered up what he was pleased to covet with the best grace they could muster. Indeed, during the whole of that chase we only came across two authentic instances where he had hanged obstructionists, and only a paltry three who had been in any way damaged by gunshots. In Sacaronduca, of course, they regard these matters more lightly than they do in England; indeed, the Spaniard of Central America would feel dull without his periodical revolution and occasional irruption of self-styled guerillas into his dwellingplace. Such a state of things has always been part of the course of life since the countries thereabouts threw off the hated yoke of Spain. They had a firm government then and personal security. Now they have very little government at all and no personal security worth speaking about.
But still, being human, they are apt to resent being robbed after the event, and as a consequence we received excellent treatment and full information as we scurried along at the guerillas’ heels. We had two good horses apiece to ride turn and turn about, but it took us all we knew not to lose ground. We did not, you understand, want to do anything so Quixotic as catch the fellows up just then, as that would have spelled useless suicide. We knew, if you will remember, that Don Juan Carmoy had gone on ahead presumably on the expectation of raising a force in his own particular country; we noted with grim enjoyment that Carew and his ruffians were heading for Carmoy’s district; and we held the amiable hope that we should be able to entirely upset their little plans. Twice we came across telegraph wires and jerked off lengthy messages to Briggs at Dolores, to Coffin, who was commanding at Los Angeles, and elsewhere; and three times where more modern communication was impossible, we despatched mounted couriers to the nearest wire office; and in fact kept all our chiefs posted as accurately as if they had been riding with Carew themselves.
In this way, then, both Carew and Juan Carmoy were being caught at a distinct disadvantage, and although we, like them, were quite ignorant of the measures that would be taken for their embarrassment, we had this advantage: we were complacently certain that our friends would be up and doing to get in a heavy blow at them, whilst they so far were quite unaware that their movements were known.
Railways, as I have said before, were conspicuous in Sacaronduca by their absence; roads were remarkable for their vileness; and in fact transit, especially transit of troops with baggage, was everywhere tedious and slow. But it appeared that Carew was not the only man with energy. Within two hours of receiving the first of our wires, Briggs had got a couple of army corps in movement from either end of the country. They were to travel in light, marching order. A desperate strait requires heroic remedies, they were to forage as they went on, after the manner of the man they were hunting. By means of wellmounted scouts they kept always in touch with the telegraph line, and as our wires twinkled into Dolores, Briggs, who had taken up his quarters night and day in the receiving office, jerked out corresponding orders to his troops.
It was like a game of chess for Briggs, with a kingdom and Donna Delicia for the stake.
Speaking of Donna Delicia, or Lady Carew, as I should perhaps more correctly style her, you would probably like to know how she viewed this final struggle, which was to decide which of the two men was really to be her husband. But on that point I can give absolutely no information. The lady stayed during all these events at the palace of Donna Julia Carmoy in Los Angeles; living in nunnish retirement, and letting no word of her wishes be carried away by a living soul. That she was well posted in what was going on I cannot but believe. Since I have first observed her she has always had the knack of gathering information without apparent exertion, and she has also possessed in high degree the talent for entirely
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