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

The denouement was half worked out before Fluellen and I had any notion that Briggs had started to pull the strings. An overwhelming array of troops had marched into Carmoy’s country from every side, and had crumpled him up completely. Some few had escaped, Don Juan Carmoy amongst them; but as a righting force they might be considered as nil. The few survivors, who owed their escape to the excellence of their mounts, made a junction with Carew just before he, too, got hemmed in, and I am bound to admit that the whole lot of them, Spanish or English, or whatever nationality they might be, fought with equal pluck and recklessness.

They were pinned beyond hope of escape. They first came within touch of the Presidential troops in a wide valley walled in by a couple of those inaccessible mountain ranges so peculiar to the country. Carew smelt the trap at once. He was no man to accept an engagement unnecessarily. He doubled like a hare, and made back as hard as he could race for the pass by which he had entered the valley. He found it occupied by three batteries of horse artillery, well posted, and a battalion of infantry to cover them. They gave them a shell at three thousand yards which bowled over two of his men. and he quite saw that his little force could be annihilated before he could ride down the guns. It was not a case of Balaclava over again, or he was quite the man to have risked it. He was face to face with a sheer impossibility, and he accepted the only alternative that was left. He and the men with him knew quite well that it would be Briggs’s orders ” to take no prisoners; ” and that as there was no escape, they had got to die. But they naturally made up their minds to die as hard as possible.

They galloped back to the centre of the valley, over flat pasture land, with not an atom of cover. The ground was burnt bare with summer drought. There were no crops, no fences, no dykes; there was not so much as a stone to offer shelter from rifle-fire; and, of course, they had neither time nor tools to throw up entrenchments. They were less than a hundred and fifty, all told; the troops that were closing round them numbered all of fifteen thousand; and the one earthly ambition that was left to them was to kill as many of that force as they could manage before they themselves were wiped out.

Some sort of a rampart to fight behind was the first necessity, and so they cut the throats of their horses (to save precious cartridges) and dragged the carcasses into a rude square; and as the subsequent fight went on and their numbers thinned, they added to this wall the bodies of their fallen comrades.

Only one thing could save them from annihilation at the outset. As a natural move the guns were ordered up at once, but there was a broad morass at the further end of the valley, and in this every single piece stuck in spite of the frenzied efforts of the drivers to get their teams on solid land again. So from the point of view of the Presidential troops there were the alternatives of a long-distance rifle-fire which would be ineffective against men already in cover, or of a charge across the open, which would probably be so costly in human life during its first stages that the survivors would never charge home. And so for the while the little band of men behind the dead horses were left unmeddled with, whilst their enemies prepared more elaborate schemes for their destruction.

It was at this point in this game of life and death that Fluellen and I spurred our tired horses into the further pass behind the mountains. We came upon our own fellows suddenly round an angle of the defile, and were very nearly shot by them before we could explain exactly who we were. However, they gave us the great news, and a nip of fiery ” aquardiente ” to wash it down, and on we cantered with a couple of ragged troopers as escort. We exchanged greetings with the officers of the main guard in the pass, and pushed on into the valley. A broad belt of morass lay beyond, with the guns almost out of sight in black sludge, and the gun teams mired to the belly, and the drivers, gunners, and escort cursing and working like men half demented. They had given up trying to get the batteries across the morass, and were doing their best to scramble back on to dry land again, and even in this they did not seem very successful. However, it was clear they could any way be counted as out of action, and so neither Fluellen nor I stayed to bear a hand, but flogged and spurred our own horses through the swamp, and by dint of frantic exertion managed to get them out at the further side.

It was clear that both of our animals were pretty nearly foundered, though, perhaps, if anything, Fluellen’s, which carried a stone less than mine, had got a little more left in it. The necessity for keeping together had ended. We had agreed to make first of all for the Headquarter Staff at the further side of the valley, and Fluellen quickly drew ahead. I could get no more than a walk out of my poor beast, whilst he managed to screw his up into some sort of a canter. And so, as I say, he pulled ahead of me. But I saw, to my surprise, that he was going out of the agreed-upon direction. He was making straight for the little knot of men behind the dead horses, and with a shiver I guessed that his intention was to have it out, once and for all, with Carmoy. I even sent a shout after him to come back, and .he turned and waved his hand at me in farewell, and then rode on again. To prevent mistake he pulled out a white handkerchief and let that stream in the air as he rode.

Struggling on behind with my beaten horse, I saw every scrap of what followed, and the waiting soldiery saw it also. Fluellen rode up to within speaking distance of the square, and then dismounted. Hi’s animal stood with limply hanging head, a clear, small picture to me under the distant sunshine. Its rider, with the white handkerchief still fluttering, walked up to the square and apparently talked. He was a mile away, and, of course, I could hear no words; but my eyesight is good, and the day was clear, and, but for the absence of sound, I might have been looking at them close to through the wrong end of a telescope.

The men behind the wall of dead horses were sitting down eating and drinking. They had got a meal with them, and were making the most of it, with the deliberate foreknowledge that it was the last meal that any of them would eat on earth. There was not a doubt as to who Fluellen had gone to talk to; there was small enough doubt as to what was his business. But the man he was seeking preferred to finish his food before answering the challenge; and even after that he must needs roll a final cigarette; for when he stepped outside the fence of the dead horses, I could clearly see the blue smoke floating behind him. However, there was no more waiting then. They marched out together twenty yards away from the square; stood for a moment back to back; strode out with simultaneous steps twelve yards either way; then turned with quickness; then opened fire.

Each went down to the first shot, but each continued firing from the ground. How many shots they fired from that position I could not tell, as the smoke mixed things up; but presently the shooting ceased, and I saw Carmoy begin to crawl slowly and painfully towards his enemy. Fluellen half sat up and tried to crawl to closer quarters also, but without any effective result. It turned out afterwards he was shot through the backbone and was partly paralysed. However, his pistol hand was steady enough yet, and when the pair of them came almost to handgrips, he blew out Carmoy’s brains quite as effectively as Carmoy did that service to him. And so that episode ended, and the world was poorer by two brave men and two strong haters.

But in the meanwhile, if Carew’s brigands and myself were watching this duel, the Presidential troops were otherwise employed. Three regiments of them were advancing to the attack, and when they came within rifle shot they opened out into skirmishing order. It was a smart bid of parade work, and the fellows in the square were not unkind enough at first to spoil the show by shooting. Instead, some reckless scamp amongst them struck up the Eton Boat song, and the whole of them chimed in, trolling it out at the tops of their voices. They all seemed to know the words ” Jolly boating weather,” and all the rest of it and I know my eyes got wet as I listened. They were such fine chaps. It did seem such a blazing pity they could not have run straight. And now there was no help for it; the whole lot of them had just got to be shot, out of mischief’s way.

However, theirs was going to be no tame executioner’s finale. They coolly finished their song, and then applied cheek and shoulder to the riflebutt. They were all of them cool, careful shots, and they put in some pretty practice. The range was long, but they managed to cut up the advance considerably. The attackers in the meanwhile were not idle. They had to fire at men ensconced behind a breastwork, but they fired for the cover the smoke gave them, and also to hearten themselves up. Spanish troops cannot storm a place under a heavy fire if they are not allowed to do a little shooting in return.

In this way, then, they advanced upon the square from two sides, alternately firing from the knee, and loading, and then rushing forward to fire again. The plain behind them was dotted with quiet dead and struggling wounded; and as they grew nearer the marksmanship of Carew’s men grew more deadly. But since they were sending fifty bullets against the square for every one that was received out of it, they could not very well avoid now and then scoring a hit amongst the defenders.

But the desperate men who were selling their lives so dearly did not get flurried. They sent their shots with murderous deliberation, and twice by concentrating their fire they drove back whole blocks of the advancing line. Still, what could even desperate valour do against such overwhelming numbers? They might beat back a handful of the attackers, but in the meanwhile a regiment of others was steadily advancing.

The day was windless and the sky was hot. When the engagement began each man of the attackers travelled in his own little halo of smoke. But as the forces closed in, these smoke puffs merged into one large cloud of various degrees of filminess. The faintly acid taste of it crept out and made me cough where I stood, an idle spectator. It was very grateful to me that I was not officially obliged to take part in that day’s action. From Carew’s hands I had received many slights and injuries; we had still a personal duel to settle up; and I quite recognised that the welfare of Sacaronduca demanded his final quenching. But there was