Soldiers of Fortune by Richard Harding Davis (page 3)

when at the review to take up his position at the point nearest to his own body-guard, and as far as possible from the troops led by Mendoza. Stuart added that he had absolute confidence in the former. The policeman who had attempted to carry Burke’s note to Mendoza had confessed that he was the only traitor in the camp, and that he had tried to work on his comrades without success. Stuart begged Clay to join him as quickly as possible. Clay went up the hill to the Palms, and after consulting with Mr. Langham, dictated an order to Kirkland, instructing him to call the men together and to point out to them how much better their condition had been since they had entered the mines, and to promise them an increase of wages if they remained faithful to Mr. Langham’s interests, and a small pension to any one who might be injured “from any cause whatsoever” while serving him.

“Tell them, if they are loyal, they can live in their shacks rent free hereafter,” wrote Clay. “They are always asking for that. It’s a cheap generosity,” he added aloud to Mr. Langham, “because we’ve never been able to collect rent from any of them yet.”

At noon young Langham ordered the best three horses in the stables to be brought to the door of the Palms for Clay, MacWilliams, and himself. Clay’s last words to King were to have the yacht in readiness to put to sea when he telephoned him to do so, and he advised the women to have their dresses and more valuable possessions packed ready to be taken on board.

“Don’t you think I might see the review if I went on horseback?” Hope asked. “I could get away then, if there should be any trouble.”

Clay answered with a look of such alarm and surprise that Hope laughed.

“See the review! I should say not,” he exclaimed. “I don’t even want Ted to be there.”

“Oh, that’s always the way,” said Hope, “I miss everything. I think I’ll come, however, anyhow. The servants are all going, and I’ll go with them disguised in a turban.”

As the men neared Valencia, Clay turned in his saddle, and asked Langham if he thought his sister would really venture into the town.

“She’d better not let me catch her, if she does,” the fond brother replied.

The reviewing party left the Government Palace for the Alameda at three o’clock, President Alvarez riding on horseback in advance, and Madame Alvarez sitting in the State carriage with one of her attendants, and with Stuart’s troopers gathered so closely about her that the men’s boots scraped against the wheels, and their numbers hid her almost entirely from sight.

The great square in which the evolutions were to take place was lined on its four sides by the carriages of the wealthy Olanchoans, except at the two gates, where there was a wide space left open to admit the soldiers. The branches of the trees on the edges of the bare parade ground were black with men and boys, and the balconies and roofs of the houses that faced it were gay with streamers and flags, and alive with women wrapped for the occasion in their colored shawls. Seated on the grass between the carriages, or surging up and down behind them, were thousands of people, each hurrying to gain a better place of vantage, or striving to hold the one he had, and forming a restless, turbulent audience in which all individual cries were lost in a great murmur of laughter, and calls, and cheers. The mass knit together, and pressed forward as the President’s band swung jauntily into the square and halted in one corner, and a shout of expectancy went up from the trees and housetops as the President’s body-guard entered at the lower gate, and the broken place in its ranks showed that it was escorting the State carriage. The troopers fell back on two sides, and the carriage, with the President riding at its head, passed on, and took up a position in front of the other carriages, and close to one of the sides of the hollow square. At Stuart’s orders Clay, MacWilliams, and Langham had pushed their horses into the rear rank of cavalry, and remained wedged between the troopers within twenty feet of where Madame Alvarez was sitting. She was very white, and the powder on her face gave her an added and unnatural pallor. As the people cheered her husband and herself she raised her head slightly and seemed to be trying to catch any sound of dissent in their greeting, or some possible undercurrent of disfavor, but the welcome appeared to be both genuine and hearty, until a second shout smothered it completely as the figure of old General Rojas, the Vice-President, and the most dearly loved by the common people, came through the gate at the head of his regiment. There was such greeting for him that the welcome to the President seemed mean in comparison, and it was with an embarrassment which both felt that the two men drew near together, and each leaned from his saddle to grasp the other’s hand. Madame Alvarez sank back rigidly on her cushions, and her eyes flashed with anticipation and excitement. She drew her mantilla a little closer about her shoulders, with a nervous shudder as though she were cold. Suddenly the look of anxiety in her eyes changed to one of annoyance, and she beckoned Clay imperiously to the side of the carriage.

“Look,” she said, pointing across the square. “If I am not mistaken that is Miss Langham, Miss Hope. The one on the black horse–it must be she, for none of the native ladies ride. It is not safe for her to be here alone. Go,” she commanded, “bring her here to me. Put her next to the carriage, or perhaps she will be safer with you among the troopers.”

Clay had recognized Hope before Madame Alvarez had finished speaking, and dashed off at a gallop, skirting the line of carriages. Hope had stopped her horse beside a victoria, and was talking to the native women who occupied it, and who were scandalized at her appearance in a public place with no one but a groom to attend her.

“Why, it’s the same thing as a polo match,” protested Hope, as Clay pulled up angrily beside the victoria. “I always ride over to polo alone at Newport, at least with James,” she added, nodding her head toward the servant.

The man approached Clay and touched his hat apologetically, “Miss Hope would come, sir,” he said, “and I thought I’d better be with her than to go off and tell Mr. Langham, sir. I knew she wouldn’t wait for me.”

“I asked you not to come,” Clay said to Hope, in a low voice.

“I wanted to know the worst at once,” she answered. “I was anxious about Ted–and you.”

“Well, it can’t be helped now,” he said. “Come, we must hurry, here is our friend, the enemy.” He bowed to their acquaintances in the victoria and they trotted briskly off to the side of the President’s carriage, just as a yell arose from the crowd that made all the other shouts which had preceded it sound like the cheers of children at recess.

“It reminds me of a football match,” whispered young Langham, excitedly, “when the teams run on the field. Look at Alvarez and Rojas watching Mendoza.”

Mendoza advanced at the front of his three troops of cavalry, looking neither to the left nor right, and by no sign acknowledging the fierce uproarious greeting of the people. Close behind him came his chosen band of cowboys and ruffians. They were the best equipped and least disciplined soldiers in the army, and were, to the great relief of the people, seldom seen in the city, but were kept moving in the mountain passes and along the coast line, on the lookout for smugglers with whom they were on the most friendly terms. They were a picturesque body of blackguards, in their hightopped boots and silver-tipped sombreros and heavy, gaudy saddles, but the shout that had gone up at their advance was due as much to the fear they inspired as to any great love for them or their chief.

“Now all the chessmen are on the board, and the game can begin,” said Clay. “It’s like the scene in the play, where each man has his sword at another man’s throat and no one dares make the first move.” He smiled as he noted, with the eye of one who had seen Continental troops in action, the shuffling steps and slovenly carriage of the half-grown soldiers that followed Mendoza’s cavalry at a quick step. Stuart’s picked men, over whom he had spent many hot and weary hours, looked like a troop of Life Guardsmen in comparison. Clay noted their superiority, but he also saw that in numbers they were most woefully at a disadvantage.

It was a brilliant scene for so modest a capital. The sun flashed on the trappings of the soldiers, on the lacquer and polished metal work of the carriages; and the Parisian gowns of their occupants and the fluttering flags and banners filled the air with color and movement, while back of all, framing the parade ground with a band of black, was the restless mob of people applauding the evolutions, and cheering for their favorites, Alvarez, Mendoza, and Rojas, moved by an excitement that was in disturbing contrast to the easy good-nature of their usual manner.

The marching and countermarching of the troops had continued with spirit for some time, and there was a halt in the evolutions which left the field vacant, except for the presence of Mendoza’s cavalrymen, who were moving at a walk along one side of the quadrangle. Alvarez and Vice-President Rojas, with Stuart, as an adjutant at their side, were sitting their horses within some fifty yards of the State carriage and the body-guard. Alvarez made a conspicuous contrast in his black coat and high hat to the brilliant greens and reds of his generals’ uniforms, but he sat his saddle as well as either of the others, and his white hair, white imperial and mustache, and the dignity of his bearing distinguished him above them both. Little Stuart, sitting at his side, with his blue eyes glaring from under his white helmet and his face burned to almost as red a tint as his curly hair, looked like a fierce little bull-dog in comparison. None of the three men spoke as they sat motionless and quite alone waiting for the next movement of the troops.

It proved to be one of moment. Even before Mendoza had ridden toward them with his sword at salute, Clay gave an exclamation of enlightenment and concern. He saw that the men who were believed to be devoted to Rojas, had been halted and left standing at the farthest corner of the plaza, nearly two hundred yards from where the President had taken his place, that Mendoza’s infantry surrounded them on every side, and that Mendoza’s cowboys, who had been walking their horses, had wheeled and were coming up with an increasing momentum, a flying mass of horses and men directed straight at the President himself.

Mendoza galloped up to Alvarez with his sword still in salute. His eyes were burning with excitement and with the light of success. No one but Stuart and Rojas heard his words; to the spectators and to the army he appeared as though he was, in his capacity of Commander-in-Chief, delivering some brief report, or asking for instructions.

“Dr. Alvarez,” he said, “as the head of the army I arrest you for high treason; you have plotted to place yourself in office without popular election. You are also accused of large thefts of public funds. I must ask you to ride with me to the military prison. General Rojas, I regret that as an accomplice of the President’s, you must come with us also. I will explain my action to the people when you are safe in prison, and I will proclaim martial law. If your troops attempt to interfere, my men have orders to fire on them and you.”

Stuart did not wait for his sentence. He had heard the heavy beat of the cavalry coming up on them at a trot. He saw the ranks open and two men catch at each bridle rein of both Alvarez and Rojas and drag them on with them, buried in the crush of horses about them, and swept forward by the weight and impetus of the moving mass behind. Stuart dashed off to the State carriage and seized the nearest of the horses by the bridle. “To the Palace!” he shouted to his men. “Shoot any one who tries to stop you. Forward, at a gallop,” he commanded.

The populace had not discovered what had occurred until it was finished. The coup d’etat had been long considered and the manner in which it was to be carried out carefully planned. The cavalry had swept across the parade ground and up the street before the people saw that they carried Rojas and Alvarez with them. The regiment commanded by Rojas found itself hemmed in before and behind by Mendoza’s two regiments. They were greatly outnumbered, but they fired a scattering shot, and following their captured leader, broke through the line around them and pursued the cavalry toward the military prison.

It was impossible to tell in the uproar which followed how many or how few had been parties to the plot. The mob, shrieking and shouting and leaping in the air, swarmed across the parade ground, and from a dozen different points men rose above the heads of the people and harangued them in violent speeches. And while some of the soldiers and the citizens gathered anxiously about these orators, others ran through the city calling for the rescue of the President, for an attack on the palace, and shrieking “Long live the Government!” and “Long live the Revolution!” The State carriage raced through the narrow streets with its body-guard galloping around it, sweeping down in its rush stray pedestrians, and scattering the chairs and tables in front of the cafe’s. As it dashed up the long avenue of the palace, Stuart called his men back and ordered them to shut and barricade the great iron gates and to guard them against the coming of the mob, while MacWilliams and young Langham pulled open the carriage door and assisted the President’s wife and her terrified companion to alight. Madame Alvarez was trembling with excitement as she leaned on Langham’s arm, but she showed no signs of fear in her face or in her manner.

“Mr. Clay has gone to bring your travelling carriage to the rear door,” Langham said. “Stuart tells us it is harnessed and ready. You will hurry, please, and get whatever you need to carry with you. We will see you safely to the coast.”

As they entered the hall, and were ascending the great marble stairway, Hope and her groom, who had followed in the rear of the cavalry, came running to meet them. “I got in by the back way,” Hope explained. “The streets there are all deserted. How can I help you?” she asked, eagerly.

“By leaving me,” cried the older woman. “Good God, child, have I not enough to answer for without dragging you into this? Go home at once through the botanical garden, and then by way of the wharves. That part of the city is still empty.”

“Where are your servants; why are they not here?” Hope demanded without heeding her. The palace was strangely empty; no footsteps came running to greet them, no doors opened or shut as they hurried to Madame Alvarez’s apartments. The servants of the household had fled at the first sound of the uproar in the city, and the dresses and ornaments scattered on the floor told that they had not gone empty-handed. The woman who had accompanied Madame Alvarez to the review sank weeping on the bed, and then, as the shouts grew suddenly louder and more near, ran to hide herself in the upper stories of the house. Hope crossed to the window and saw a great mob of soldiers and citizens sweep around the corner and throw themselves against the iron fence of the palace. “You will have to hurry,” she said. “Remember, you are risking the lives of those boys by your delay.”

There was a large bed in the room, and Madame Alvarez had pulled it forward and was bending over a safe that had opened in the wall, and which had been hidden by the head board of the bed. She held up a bundle of papers in her hand, wrapped in a leather portfolio. “Do you see these?” she cried, “they are drafts for five millions of dollars.” She tossed them back into the safe and swung the door shut.

“You are a witness. I do not take them,” she said.

“I don’t understand,” Hope answered, “but hurry. Have you everything you want–have you your jewels?”

“Yes,” the woman answered, as she rose to her feet, “they are mine.”

A yell more loud and terrible than any that had gone before rose from the garden below, and there was the sound of iron beating against iron, and cries of rage and execration from a great multitude.

“I will not go!” the Spanish woman cried, suddenly. “I will not leave Alvarez to that mob. If they want to kill me, let them kill me.” She threw the bag that held her jewels on the bed, and pushing open the window stepped out upon the balcony. She was conspicuous in her black dress against the yellow stucco of the wall, and in an instant the mob saw her and a mad shout of exultation and anger rose from the mass that beat and crushed itself against the high iron railings of the garden. Hope caught the woman by the skirt and dragged her back. “You are mad,” she said. “What good can you do your husband here? Save yourself and he will come to you when he can. There is nothing you can do for him now; you cannot give your life for him. You are wasting it, and you are risking the lives of the men who are waiting for us below. Come, I tell you.”

MacWilliams left Clay waiting beside the diligence and ran from the stable through the empty house and down the marble stairs to the garden without meeting any one on his way. He saw Stuart helping and directing his men to barricade the gates with iron urns and garden benches and sentry-boxes. Outside the mob were firing at him with their revolvers, and calling him foul names, but Stuart did not seem to hear them. He greeted MacWilliams with a cheerful little laugh. “Well,” he asked, “is she ready?”

“No, but we are. Clay and I’ve been waiting there for five minutes. We found Miss Hope’s groom and sent him back to the Palms with a message to King. We told him to run the yacht to Los Bocos and lie off shore until we came. He is to take her on down the coast to Truxillo, where our man-of-war is lying, and they will give her shelter as a political refugee.”

“Why don’t you drive her to the Palms at once?” demanded Stuart, anxiously, “and take her on board the yacht there? It is ten miles to Bocos and the roads are very bad.”

“Clay says we could never get her through the city,” MacWilliams answered. “We should have to fight all the way. But the city to the south is deserted, and by going out by the back roads, we can make Bocos by ten o’clock to-night. The yacht should reach there by seven.”

“You are right; go back. I will call off some of my men. The rest must hold this mob back until you start; then I will follow with the others. Where is Miss Hope?”

“We don’t know. Clay is frantic. Her groom says she is somewhere in the palace.”

“Hurry,” Stuart commanded. “If Mendoza gets here before Madame Alvarez leaves, it will be too late.”

MacWilliams sprang up the steps of the palace, and Stuart, calling to the men nearest him to follow, started after him on a run.

As Stuart entered the palace with his men at his heels, Clay was hurrying from its rear entrance along the upper hall, and Hope and Madame Alvarez were leaving the apartments of the latter at its front. They met at the top of the main stairway just as Stuart put his foot on its lower step. The young Englishman heard the clatter of his men following close behind him and leaped eagerly forward. Half way to the top the noise behind him ceased, and turning his head quickly he looked back over his shoulder and saw that the men had halted at the foot of the stairs and stood huddled together in disorder looking up at him. Stuart glanced over their heads and down the hallway to the garden beyond to see if they were followed, but the mob still fought from the outer side of the barricade. He waved his sword impatiently and started forward again. “Come on!” he shouted. But the men below him did not move. Stuart halted once more and this time turned about and looked down upon them with surprise and anger. There was not one of them he could not have called by name. He knew all their little troubles, their love-affairs, even. They came to him for comfort and advice, and to beg for money. He had regarded them as his children, and he was proud of them as soldiers because they were the work of his hands.

So, instead of a sharp command, he asked, “What is it?” in surprise, and stared at them wondering. He could not or would not comprehend, even though he saw that those in the front rank were pushing back and those behind were urging them forward. The muzzles of their carbines were directed at every point, and on their faces fear and hate and cowardice were written in varying likenesses.

“What does this mean?” Stuart demanded, sharply. “What are you waiting for?”

Clay had just reached the top of the stairs. He saw Madame Alvarez and Hope coming toward him, and at the sight of Hope he gave an exclamation of relief.

Then his eyes turned and fell on the tableau below, on Stuart’s back, as he stood confronting the men, and on their scowling upturned faces and half-lifted carbines. Clay had lived for a longer time among Spanish-Americans than had the English subaltern, or else he was the quicker of the two to believe in evil and ingratitude, for he gave a cry of warning, and motioned the women away.

“Stuart!” he cried. “Come away; for God’s sake, what are you doing? Come back!”

The Englishman started at the sound of his friend’s voice, but he did not turn his head. He began to descend the stairs slowly, a step at a time, staring at the mob so fiercely that they shrank back before the look of wounded pride and anger in his eyes. Those in the rear raised and levelled their rifles. Without taking his eyes from theirs, Stuart drew his revolver, and with his sword swinging from its wrist-strap, pointed his weapon at the mass below him.

“What does this mean?” he demanded. “Is this mutiny?”

A voice from the rear of the crowd of men shrieked: “Death to the Spanish woman. Death to all traitors. Long live Mendoza,” and the others echoed the cry in chorus.

Clay sprang down the broad stairs calling, “Come to me;” but before he could reach Stuart, a woman’s voice rang out, in a long terrible cry of terror, a cry that was neither a prayer nor an imprecation, but which held the agony of both. Stuart started, and looked up to where Madame Alvarez had thrown herself toward him across the broad balustrade of the stairway. She was silent with fear, and her hand clutched at the air, as she beckoned wildly to him. Stuart stared at her with a troubled smile and waved his empty hand to reassure her. The movement was final, for the men below, freed from the reproach of his eyes, flung up their carbines and fired, some wildly, without placing their guns at rest, and others steadily and aiming straight at his heart.

As the volley rang out and the smoke drifted up the great staircase, the subaltern’s hands tossed high above his head, his body sank into itself and toppled backward, and, like a tired child falling to sleep, the defeated soldier of fortune dropped back into the outstretched arms of his friend.

Clay lifted him upon his knee, and crushed him closer against his breast with one arm, while he tore with his free hand at the stock about the throat and pushed his fingers in between the buttons of the tunic. They came forth again wet and colored crimson.

“Stuart!” Clay gasped. “Stuart, speak to me, look at me!” He shook the body in his arms with fierce roughness, peering into the face that rested on his shoulder, as though he could command the eyes back again to light and life. “Don’t leave me!” he said. “For God’s sake, old man, don’t leave me!”

But the head on his shoulder only sank the closer and the body stiffened in his arms. Clay raised his eyes and saw the soldiers still standing, irresolute and appalled at what they had done, and awe-struck at the sight of the grief before them.

Clay gave a cry as terrible as the cry of a woman who has seen her child mangled before her eyes, and lowering the body quickly to the steps, he ran at the scattering mass below him. As he came they fled down the corridor, shrieking and calling to their friends to throw open the gates and begging them to admit the mob. When they reached the outer porch they turned, encouraged by the touch of numbers, and halted to fire at the man who still followed them.

Clay stopped, with a look in his eyes which no one who knew them had ever seen there, and smiled with pleasure in knowing himself a master in what he had to do. And at each report of his revolver one of Stuart’s assassins stumbled and pitched heavily forward on his face. Then he turned and walked slowly back up the hall to the stairway like a man moving in his sleep. He neither saw nor heard the bullets that bit spitefully at the walls about him and rattled among the glass pendants of the great chandeliers above his head. When he came to the step on which the body lay he stooped and picked it up gently, and holding it across his breast, strode on up the stairs. MacWilliams and Langham were coming toward him, and saw the helpless figure in his arms.

“What is it?” they cried; “is he wounded, is he hurt?”

“He is dead,” Clay answered, passing on with his burden. “Get Hope away.”

Madame Alvarez stood with the girl’s arms about her, her eyes closed and her figure trembling.

“Let me be!” she moaned. “Don’t touch me; let me die. My God, what have I to live for now?” She shook off Hope’s supporting arm, and stood before them, all her former courage gone, trembling and shivering in agony. “I do not care what they do to me!” she cried. She tore her lace mantilla from her shoulders and threw it on the floor. “I shall not leave this place. He is dead. Why should I go? He is dead. They have murdered him; he is dead.”

“She is fainting,” said Hope. Her voice was strained and hard.

To her brother she seemed to have grown suddenly much older, and he looked to her to tell him what to do.

“Take hold of her,” she said. “She will fall.” The woman sank back into the arms of the men, trembling and moaning feebly.

“Now carry her to the carriage,” said Hope. “She has fainted; it is better; she does not know what has happened.”

Clay, still bearing the body in his arms, pushed open the first door that stood ajar before him with his foot. It opened into the great banqueting hall of the palace, but he could not choose.

He had to consider now the safety of the living, whose lives were still in jeopardy.

The long table in the centre of the hall was laid with places for many people, for it had been prepared for the President and the President’s guests, who were to have joined with him in celebrating the successful conclusion of the review. From outside the light of the sun, which was just sinking behind the mountains, shone dimly upon the silver on the board, on the glass and napery, and the massive gilt centre-pieces filled with great clusters of fresh flowers. It looked as though the servants had but just left the room. Even the candles had been lit in readiness, and as their flames wavered and smoked in the evening breeze they cast uncertain shadows on the walls and showed the stern faces of the soldier presidents frowning down on the crowded table from their gilded frames.

There was a great leather lounge stretching along one side of the hall, and Clay moved toward this quickly and laid his burden down. He was conscious that Hope was still following him. He straightened the limbs of the body and folded the arms across the breast and pressed his hand for an instant on the cold hands of his friend, and then whispering something between his lips, turned and walked hurriedly away.

Hope confronted him in the doorway. She was sobbing silently. “Must we leave him,” she pleaded, “must we leave him–like this?”

From the garden there came the sound of hammers ringing on the iron hinges, and a great crash of noises as the gate fell back from its fastenings, and the mob rushed over the obstacles upon which it had fallen. It seemed as if their yells of exultation and anger must reach even the ears of the dead man.

“They are calling Mendoza,” Clay whispered, “he must be with them. Come, we will have to run for our lives now.”

But before he could guess what Hope was about to do, or could prevent her, she had slipped past him and picked up Stuart’s sword that had fallen from his wrist to the floor, and laid it on the soldier’s body, and closed his hands upon its hilt. She glanced quickly about her as though looking for something, and then with a sob of relief ran to the table, and sweeping it of an armful of its flowers, stepped swiftly back again to the lounge and heaped them upon it.

“Come, for God’s sake, come!” Clay called to her in a whisper from the door.

Hope stood for an instant staring at the young Englishman as the candle-light flickered over his white face, and then, dropping on her knees, she pushed back the curly hair from about the boy’s forehead and kissed him. Then, without turning to look again, she placed her hand in Clay’s and he ran with her, dragging her behind him down the length of the hall, just as the mob entered it on the floor below them and filled the palace with their shouts of triumph.

As the sun sank lower its light fell more dimly on the lonely figure in the vast diningDhall, and as the gloom deepened there, the candles burned with greater brilliancy, and the faces of the portraits shone more clearly.

They seemed to be staring down less sternly now upon the white mortal face of the brother-in-arms who had just joined them.

One who had known him among his own people would have seen in the attitude and in the profile of the English soldier a likeness to his ancestors of the Crusades who lay carved in stone in the village church, with their faces turned to the sky, their faithful hounds waiting at their feet, and their hands pressed upward in prayer.

And when, a moment later, the half-crazed mob of men and boys swept into the great room, with Mendoza at their head, something of the pathos of the young Englishman’s death in his foreign place of exile must have touched them, for they stopped appalled and startled, and pressed back upon their fellows, with eager whispers. The Spanish-American General strode boldly forward, but his eyes lowered before the calm, white face, and either because the lighted candles and the flowers awoke in him some memory of the great Church that had nursed him, or because the jagged holes in the soldier’s tunic appealed to what was bravest in him, he crossed himself quickly, and then raising his hands slowly to his visor, lifted his hat and pointed with it to the door. And the mob, without once looking back at the rich treasure of silver on the table, pushed out before him, stepping softly, as though they had intruded on a shrine.

XIII

The President’s travelling carriage was a double-seated diligence covered with heavy hoods and with places on the box for two men. Only one of the coachmen, the same man who had driven the State carriage from the review, had remained at the stables. As he knew the roads to Los Bocos, Clay ordered him up to the driver’s seat, and MacWilliams climbed into the place beside him after first storing three rifles under the lap-robe.

Hope pulled open the leather curtains of the carriage and found Madame Alvarez where the men had laid her upon the cushions, weak and hysterical. The girl crept in beside her, and lifting her in her arms, rested the older woman’s head against her shoulder, and soothed and comforted her with tenderness and sympathy.

Clay stopped with his foot in the stirrup and looked up anxiously at Langham who was already in the saddle.

“Is there no possible way of getting Hope out of this and back to the Palms?” he asked.

“No, it’s too late. This is the only way now.” Hope opened the leather curtains and looking out shook her head impatiently at Clay. “I wouldn’t go now if there were another way,” she said. “I couldn’t leave her like this.”

“You’re delaying the game, Clay,” cried Langham, warningly, as he stuck his spurs into his pony’s side.

The people in the diligence lurched forward as the horses felt the lash of the whip and strained against the harness, and then plunged ahead at a gallop on their long race to the sea. As they sped through the gardens, the stables and the trees hid them from the sight of those in the palace, and the turf, upon which the driver had turned the horses for greater safety, deadened the sound of their flight.

They found the gates of the botanical gardens already opened, and Clay, in the street outside, beckoning them on. Without waiting for the others the two outriders galloped ahead to the first cross street, looked up and down its length, and then, in evident concern at what they saw in the distance, motioned the driver to greater speed, and crossing the street signalled him to follow them. At the next corner Clay flung himself off his pony, and throwing the bridle to Langham, ran ahead into the cross street on foot, and after a quick glance pointed down its length away from the heart of the city to the mountains.

The driver turned as Clay directed him, and when the man found that his face was fairly set toward the goal he lashed his horses recklessly through the narrow street, so that the murmur of the mob behind them grew perceptibly fainter at each leap forward.

The noise of the galloping hoofs brought women and children to the barred windows of the houses, but no men stepped into the road to stop their progress, and those few they met running in the direction of the palace hastened to get out of their way, and stood with their backs pressed against the walls of the narrow thoroughfare looking after them with wonder.

Even those who suspected their errand were helpless to detain them, for sooner than they could raise the hue and cry or formulate a plan of action, the carriage had passed and was disappearing in the distance, rocking from wheel to wheel like a ship in a gale. Two men who were so bold as to start to follow, stopped abruptly when they saw the outriders draw rein and turn in their saddles as though to await their coming.

Clay’s mind was torn with doubts, and his nerves were drawn taut like the strings of a violin. Personal danger exhilarated him, but this chance of harm to others who were helpless, except for him, depressed his spirit with anxiety. He experienced in his own mind all the nervous fears of a thief who sees an officer in every passing citizen, and at one moment he warned the driver to move more circumspectly, and so avert suspicion, and the next urged him into more desperate bursts of speed. In his fancy every cross street threatened an ambush, and as he cantered now before and now behind the carriage, he wished that he was a multitude of men who could encompass it entirely and hide it.

But the solid streets soon gave way to open places, and low mud cabins, where the horses’ hoofs beat on a sun-baked road, and where the inhabitants sat lazily before the door in the fading light, with no knowledge of the changes that the day had wrought in the city, and with only a moment’s curious interest in the hooded carriage, and the grim, white-faced foreigners who guarded it.

Clay turned his pony into a trot at Langham’s side. His face was pale and drawn.

As the danger of immediate pursuit and capture grew less, the carriage had slackened its pace, and for some minutes the outriders galloped on together side by side in silence. But the same thought was in the mind of each, and when Langham spoke it was as though he were continuing where he had but just been interrupted.

He laid his hand gently on Clay’s arm. He did not turn his face toward him, and his eyes were still peering into the shadows before them. “Tell me?” he asked.

“He was coming up the stairs,” Clay answered. He spoke in so low a voice that Langham had to lean from his saddle to hear him. “They were close behind; but when they saw her they stopped and refused to go farther. I called to him to come away, but he would not understand. They killed him before he really understood what they meant to do. He was dead almost before I reached him. He died in my arms.” There was a long pause. “I wonder if he knows that?” Clay said.

Langham sat erect in the saddle again and drew a short breath. “I wish he could have known how he helped me,” he whispered, “how much just knowing him helped me.”

Clay bowed his head to the boy as though he were thanking him. “His was the gentlest soul I ever knew,” he said.

“That’s what I wanted to say,” Langham answered. “We will let that be his epitaph,” and touching his spur to his horse he galloped on ahead and left Clay riding alone.

Langham had proceeded for nearly a mile when he saw the forest opening before them, and at the sight he gave a shout of relief, but almost at the same instant he pulled his pony back on his haunches and whirling him about, sprang back to the carriage with a cry of warning.

“There are soldiers ahead of us,” he cried. “Did you know it?” he demanded of the driver. “Did you lie to me? Turn back.”

“He can’t turn back,” MacWilliams answered. “They have seen us. They are only the custom officers at the city limits. They know nothing. Go on.” He reached forward and catching the reins dragged the horses down into a walk. Then he handed the reins back to the driver with a shake of the head.

“If you know these roads as well as you say you do, you want to keep us out of the way of soldiers,” he said. “If we fall into a trap you’ll be the first man shot on either side.”

A sentry strolled lazily out into the road dragging his gun after him by the bayonet, and raised his hand for them to halt. His captain followed him from the post-house throwing away a cigarette as he came, and saluted MacWilliams on the box and bowed to the two riders in the background. In his right hand he held one of the long iron rods with which the collectors of the city’s taxes were wont to pierce the bundles and packs, and even the carriage cushions of those who entered the city limits from the coast, and who might be suspected of smuggling.

“Whose carriage is this, and where is it going?” he asked.

As the speed of the diligence slackened, Hope put her head out of the curtains, and as she surveyed the soldier with apparent surprise, she turned to her brother.

“What does this mean?” she asked. “What are we waiting for?”

“We are going to the Hacienda of Senor Palacio,” MacWilliams said, in answer to the officer. “The driver thinks that this is the road, but I say we should have taken the one to the right.”

“No, this is the road to Senor Palacio’s plantation,” the officer answered, “but you cannot leave the city without a pass signed by General Mendoza. That is the order we received this morning. Have you such a pass?”

“Certainly not,” Clay answered, warmly. “This is the carriage of an American, the president of the mines. His daughters are inside and on their way to visit the residence of Senor Palacio. They are foreigners–Americans. We are all foreigners, and we have a perfect right to leave the city when we choose. You can only stop us when we enter it.”

The officer looked uncertainly from Clay to Hope and up at the driver on the box. His eyes fell upon the heavy brass mountings of the harness. They bore the arms of Olancho. He wheeled sharply and called to his men inside the post-house, and they stepped out from the veranda and spread themselves leisurely across the road.

“Ride him down, Clay,” Langham muttered, in a whisper. The officer did not understand the words, but he saw Clay gather the reins tighter in his hands and he stepped back quickly to the safety of the porch, and from that ground of vantage smiled pleasantly.

“Pardon,” he said, “there is no need for blows when one is rich enough to pay. A little something for myself and a drink for my brave fellows, and you can go where you please.”

“Damned brigands,” growled Langham, savagely.

“Not at all,” Clay answered. “He is an officer and a gentleman. I have no money with me,” he said, in Spanish, addressing the officer, “but between caballeros a word of honor is sufficient. I shall be returning this way to-morrow morning, and I will bring a few hundred sols from Senor Palacio for you and your men; but if we are followed you will get nothing, and you must have forgotten in the mean time that you have seen us pass.”

There was a murmur inside the carriage, and Hope’s face disappeared from between the curtains to reappear again almost immediately. She beckoned to the officer with her hand, and the men saw that she held between her thumb and little finger a diamond ring of size and brilliancy. She moved it so that it flashed in the light of the guard lantern above the post-house.

“My sister tells me you shall be given this tomorrow morning,” Hope said, “if we are not followed.”

The man’s eyes laughed with pleasure. He swept his sombrero to the ground.

“I am your servant, Senorita,” he said. “Gentlemen,” he cried, gayly, turning to Clay, “if you wish it, I will accompany you with my men. Yes, I will leave word that I have gone in the sudden pursuit of smugglers; or I will remain here as you wish, and send those who may follow back again.”

“You are most gracious, sir,” said Clay. “It is always a pleasure to meet with a gentleman and a philosopher. We prefer to travel without an escort, and remember, you have seen nothing and heard nothing.” He leaned from the saddle, and touched the officer on the breast. “That ring is worth a king’s ransom.”

“Or a president’s,” muttered the man, smiling. “Let the American ladies pass,” he commanded.

The soldiers scattered as the whip fell, and the horses once more leaped forward, and as the carriage entered the forest, Clay looked back and saw the officer exhaling the smoke of a fresh cigarette, with the satisfaction of one who enjoys a clean conscience and a sense of duty well performed.

The road through the forest was narrow and uneven, and as the horses fell into a trot the men on horseback closed up together behind the carriage.

“Do you think that road-agent will keep his word?” Langham asked.

“Yes; he has nothing to win by telling the truth,” Clay answered. “He can say he saw a party of foreigners, Americans, driving in the direction of Palacio’s coffee plantation. That lets him out, and in the morning he knows he can levy on us for the gate money. I am not so much afraid of being overtaken as I am that King may make a mistake and not get to Bocos on time. We ought to reach there, if the carriage holds together, by eleven. King should be there by eight o’clock, and the yacht ought to make the run to Truxillo in three hours. But we shall not be able to get back to the city before five to-morrow morning. I suppose your family will be wild about Hope. We didn’t know where she was when we sent the groom back to King.”

“Do you think that driver is taking us the right way?” Langham asked, after a pause.

“He’d better. He knows it well enough. He was through the last revolution, and carried messages from Los Bocos to the city on foot for two months. He has covered every trail on the way, and if he goes wrong he knows what will happen to him.”

“And Los Bocos–it is a village, isn’t it, and the landing must be in sight of the Custom-house?”

“The village lies some distance back from the shore, and the only house on the beach is the Custom-house itself; but every one will be asleep by the time we get there, and it will take us only a minute to hand her into the launch. If there should be a guard there, King will have fixed them one way or another by the time we arrive. Anyhow, there is no need of looking for trouble that far ahead. There is enough to worry about in between. We haven’t got there yet.”

The moon rose grandly a few minutes later, and flooded the forest with light so that the open places were as clear as day. It threw strange shadows across the trail, and turned the rocks and fallen trees into figures of men crouching or standing upright with uplifted arms. They were so like to them that Clay and Langham flung their carbines to their shoulders again and again, and pointed them at some black object that turned as they advanced into wood or stone. From the forest they came to little streams and broad shallow rivers where the rocks in the fording places churned the water into white masses of foam, and the horses kicked up showers of spray as they made their way, slipping and stumbling, against the current. It was a silent pilgrim age, and never for a moment did the strain slacken or the men draw rein. Sometimes, as they hurried across a broad tableland, or skirted the edge of a precipice and looked down hundreds of feet below at the shining waters they had just forded, or up at the rocky points of the mountains before them, the beauty of the night overcame them and made them forget the significance of their journey.

They were not always alone, for they passed at intervals through sleeping villages of mud huts with thatched roofs, where the dogs ran yelping out to bark at them, and where the pine-knots, blazing on the clay ovens, burned cheerily in the moonlight. In the low lands where the fever lay, the mist rose above the level of their heads and enshrouded them in a curtain of fog, and the dew fell heavily, penetrating their clothing and chilling their heated bodies so that the sweating horses moved in a lather of steam.

They had settled down into a steady gallop now, and ten or fifteen miles had been left behind them.

“We are making excellent time,” said Clay. “The village of San Lorenzo should lie beyond that ridge.” He drove up beside the driver and pointed with his whip. “Is not that San Lorenzo?” he asked.

“Yes, senor,” the man answered, “but I mean to drive around it by the old wagon trail. It is a large town, and people may be awake. You will be able to see it from the top of the next hill.”

The cavalcade stopped at the summit of the ridge and the men looked down into the silent village. It was like the others they had passed, with a few houses built round a square of grass that could hardly be recognized as a plaza, except for the church on its one side, and the huge wooden cross planted in its centre. From the top of the hill they could see that the greater number of the houses were in darkness, but in a large building of two stories lights were shining from every window.

“That is the comandancia,” said the driver, shaking his head. “They are still awake. It is a telegraph station.”

“Great Scott!” exclaimed MacWilliams. “We forgot the telegraph. They may have sent word to head us off already.”

“Nine o’clock is not so very late,” said Clay. “It may mean nothing.”

“We had better make sure, though,” MacWilliams answered, jumping to the ground. “Lend me your pony, Ted, and take my place. I’ll run in there and dust around and see what’s up. I’ll join you on the other side of the town after you get back to the main road.”

“Wait a minute,” said Clay. “What do you mean to do?”

“I can’t tell till I get there, but I’ll try to find out how much they know. Don’t you be afraid. I’ll run fast enough if there’s any sign of trouble. And if you come across a telegraph wire, cut it. The message may not have gone over yet.”

The two women in the carriage had parted the flaps of the hoods and were trying to hear what was being said, but could not understand, and Langham explained to them that they were about to make a slight detour to avoid San Lorenzo while MacWilliams was going into it to reconnoitre. He asked if they were comfortable, and assured them that the greater part of the ride was over, and that there was a good road from San Lorenzo to the sea.

MacWilliams rode down into the village along the main trail, and threw his reins over a post in front of the comandancia. He mounted boldly to the second floor of the building and stopped at the head of the stairs, in front of an open door. There were three men in the room before him, one an elderly man, whom he rightly guessed was the comandante, and two younger men who were standing behind a railing and bending over a telegraph instrument on a table. As he stamped into the room, they looked up and stared at him in surprise; their faces showed that he had interrupted them at a moment of unusual interest.

MacWilliams saluted the three men civilly, and, according to the native custom, apologized for appearing before them in his spurs.

He had been riding from Los Bocos to the capital, he said, and his horse had gone lame. Could they tell him if there was any one in the village from whom he could hire a mule, as he must push on to the capital that night?

The comandante surveyed him for a moment, as though still disturbed by the interruption, and then shook his head impatiently. “You can hire a mule from one Pulido Paul, at the corner of the plaza,” he said. And as MacWilliams still stood uncertainly, he added, “You say you have come from Los Bocos. Did you meet any one on your way?”

The two younger men looked up at him anxiously, but before he could answer, the instrument began to tick out the signal, and they turned their eyes to it again, and one of them began to take its message down on paper.

The instrument spoke to MacWilliams also, for he was used to sending telegrams daily from the office to the mines, and could make it talk for him in either English or Spanish. So, in his effort to hear what it might say, he stammered and glanced at it involuntarily, and the comandante, without suspecting his reason for doing so, turned also and peered over the shoulder of the man who was receiving the message. Except for the clicking of the instrument, the room was absolutely still; the three men bent silently over the table, while MacWilliams stood gazing at the ceiling and turning his hat in his hands. The message MacWilliams read from the instrument was this: “They are reported to have left the city by the south, so they are going to Para, or San Pedro, or to Los Bocos. She must be stopped–take an armed force and guard the roads. If necessary, kill her. She has in the carriage or hidden on her person, drafts for five million sols. You will be held responsible for every one of them. Repeat this message to show you understand, and relay it to Los Bocos. If you fail–”

MacWilliams could not wait to hear more; he gave a curt nod to the men and started toward the stairs. “Wait,” the comandante called after him.

MacWilliams paused with one hand on top of the banisters balancing himself in readiness for instant flight.

“You have not answered me. Did you meet with any one on your ride here from Los Bocos?”

“I met several men on foot, and the mail carrier passed me a league out from the coast, and oh, yes, I met a carriage at the cross roads, and the driver asked me the way of San Pedro Sula.”

“A carriage?–yes–and what did you tell him?”

“I told him he was on the road to Los Bocos, and he turned back and–”

“You are sure he turned back?”

“Certainly, sir. I rode behind him for some distance. He turned finally to the right into the trail to San Pedro Sula.”

The man flung himself across the railing.

“Quick,” he commanded, “telegraph to Morales, Comandante San Pedro Sula–”

He had turned his back on MacWilliams, and as the younger man bent over the instrument, MacWilliams stepped softly down the stairs, and mounting his pony rode slowly off in the direction of the capital. As soon as he had reached the outskirts of the town, he turned and galloped round it and then rode fast with his head in air, glancing up at the telegraph wire that sagged from tree-trunk to tree-trunk along the trail. At a point where he thought he could dismount in safety and tear down the wire, he came across it dangling from the branches and he gave a shout of relief. He caught the loose end and dragged it free from its support, and then laying it across a rock pounded the blade of his knife upon it with a stone, until he had hacked off a piece some fifty feet in length. Taking this in his hand he mounted again and rode off with it, dragging the wire in the road behind him. He held it up as he rejoined Clay, and laughed triumphantly. “They’ll have some trouble splicing that circuit,” he said, “you only half did the work. What wouldn’t we give to know all this little piece of copper knows, eh?”

“Do you mean you think they have telegraphed to Los Bocos already?”

“I know that they were telegraphing to San Pedro Sula as I left and to all the coast towns. But whether you cut this down before or after is what I should like to know.”

“We shall probably learn that later,” said Clay, grimly.

The last three miles of the journey lay over a hard, smooth road, wide enough to allow the carriage and its escort to ride abreast.

It was in such contrast to the tortuous paths they had just followed, that the horses gained a fresh impetus and galloped forward as freely as though the race had but just begun.

Madame Alvarez stopped the carriage at one place and asked the men to lower the hood at the back that she might feel the fresh air and see about her, and when this had been done, the women seated themselves with their backs to the horses where they could look out at the moonlit road as it unrolled behind them.

Hope felt selfishly and wickedly happy. The excitement had kept her spirits at the highest point, and the knowledge that Clay was guarding and protecting her was in itself a pleasure. She leaned back on the cushions and put her arm around the older woman’s waist, and listened to the light beat of his pony’s hoofs outside, now running ahead, now scrambling and slipping up some steep place, and again coming to a halt as Langham or MacWilliams called, “Look to the right, behind those trees,” or “Ahead there! Don’t you see what I mean, something crouching?”

She did not know when the false alarms would turn into a genuine attack, but she was confident that when the time came he would take care of her, and she welcomed the danger because it brought that solace with it.

Madame Alvarez sat at her side, rigid, silent, and beyond the help of comfort. She tortured herself with thoughts of the ambitions she had held, and which had been so cruelly mocked that very morning; of the chivalric love that had been hers, of the life even that had been hers, and which had been given up for her so tragically. When she spoke at all, it was to murmur her sorrow that Hope had exposed herself to danger on her poor account, and that her life, as far as she loved it, was at an end. Only once after the men had parted the curtains and asked concerning her comfort with grave solicitude did she give way to tears.

“Why are they so good to me?” she moaned. “Why are you so good to me? I am a wicked, vain woman, I have brought a nation to war and I have killed the only man I ever trusted.”

Hope touched her gently with her hand and felt guiltily how selfish she herself must be not to feel the woman’s grief, but she could not. She only saw in it a contrast to her own happiness, a black background before which the figure of Clay and his solicitude for her shone out, the only fact in the world that was of value.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the carriage coming to a halt, and a significant movement upon the part of the men. MacWilliams had descended from the box-seat and stepping into the carriage took the place the women had just left.

He had a carbine in his hand, and after he was seated Langham handed him another which he laid across his knees.

“They thought I was too conspicuous on the box to do any good there,” he explained in a confidential whisper. “In case there is any firing now, you ladies want to get down on your knees here at my feet, and hide your heads in the cushions. We are entering Los Bocos.”

Langham and Clay were riding far in advance, scouting to the right and left, and the carriage moved noiselessly behind them through the empty streets. There was no light in any of the windows, and not even a dog barked, or a cock crowed. The women sat erect, listening for the first signal of an attack, each holding the other’s hand and looking at MacWilliams, who sat with his thumb on the trigger of his carbine, glancing to the right and left and breathing quickly. His eyes twinkled, like those of a little fox terrier. The men dropped back, and drew up on a level with the carriage.

“We are all right, so far,” Clay whispered. “The beach slopes down from the other side of that line of trees. What is the matter with you?” he demanded, suddenly, looking up at the driver, “are you afraid?”

“No,” the man answered, hurriedly, his voice shaking; “it’s the cold.”

Langham had galloped on ahead and as he passed through the trees and came out upon the beach, he saw a broad stretch of moonlit water and the lights from the yacht shining from a point a quarter of a mile off shore. Among the rocks on the edge of the beach was the “Vesta’s” longboat and her crew seated in it or standing about on the beach. The carriage had stopped under the protecting shadow of the trees, and he raced back toward it.

“The yacht is here,” he cried. “The long-boat is waiting and there is not a sign of light about the Custom-house. Come on,” he cried. “We have beaten them after all.”

A sailor, who had been acting as lookout on the rocks, sprang to his full height, and shouted to the group around the long-boat, and King came up the beach toward them running heavily through the deep sand.

Madame Alvarez stepped down from the carriage, and as Hope handed her her jewel case in silence, the men draped her cloak about her shoulders. She put out her hand to them, and as Clay took it in his, she bent her head quickly and kissed his hand. “You were his friend,” she murmured.

She held Hope in her arms for an instant, and kissed her, and then gave her hand in turn to Langham and to MacWilliams.

“I do not know whether I shall ever see you again,” she said, looking slowly from one to the other, “but I will pray for you every day, and God will reward you for saving a worthless life.”

As she finished speaking King came up to the group, followed by three of his men.

“Is Hope with you, is she safe?” he asked.

“Yes, she is with me,” Madame Alvarez answered.

“Thank God,” King exclaimed, breathlessly. “Then we will start at once, Madame. Where is she? She must come with us!”

“Of course,” Clay-assented, eagerly, “she will be much safer on the yacht.”

But Hope protested. “I must get back to father,” she said. “The yacht will not arrive until late to-morrow, and the carriage can take me to him five hours earlier. The family have worried too long about me as it is, and, besides, I will not leave Ted. I am going back as I came.”

“It is most unsafe,” King urged.

“On the contrary, it is perfectly safe now,” Hope answered. “It was not one of us they wanted.”

“You may be right,” King said. “They don’t know what has happened to you, and perhaps after all it would be better if you went back the quicker way.” He gave his arm to Madame Alvarez and walked with her toward the shore. As the men surrounded her on every side and moved away, Clay glanced back at Hope and saw her standing upright in the carriage looking after them.

“We will be with you in a minute,” he called, as though in apology for leaving her for even that brief space. And then the shadow of the trees shut her and the carriage from his sight. His footsteps made no sound in the soft sand, and except for the whispering of the palms and the sleepy wash of the waves as they ran up the pebbly beach and sank again, the place was as peaceful and silent as a deserted island, though the moon made it as light as day.

The long-boat had been drawn up with her stern to the shore, and the men were already in their places, some standing waiting for the order to shove off, and others seated balancing their oars.

King had arranged to fire a rocket when the launch left the shore, in order that the captain of the yacht might run in closer to pick them up. As he hurried down the beach, he called to his boatswain to give the signal, and the man answered that he understood and stooped to light a match. King had jumped into the stern and lifted Madame Alvarez after him, leaving her late escort standing with uncovered heads on the beach behind her, when the rocket shot up into the calm white air, with a roar and a rush and a sudden flash of color. At the same instant, as though in answer to its challenge, the woods back of them burst into an irregular line of flame, a volley of rifle shots shattered the silence, and a score of bullets splashed in the water and on the rocks about them.

The boatswain in the bow of the long-boat tossed up his arms and pitched forward between the thwarts.

“Give way,” he shouted as he fell.

“Pull,” Clay yelled, “pull, all of you.”

He threw himself against the stern of the boat, and Langham and MacWilliams clutched its sides, and with their shoulders against it and their bodies half sunk in the water, shoved it off, free of the shore.

The shots continued fiercely, and two of the crew cried out and fell back upon the oars of the men behind them.

Madame Alvarez sprang to her feet and stood swaying unsteadily as the boat leaped forward.

“Take me back. Stop, I command you,” she cried, “I will not leave those men. Do you hear?”

King caught her by the waist and dragged her down, but she struggled to free herself. “I will not leave them to be murdered,” she cried. “You cowards, put me back.”

“Hold her, King,” Clay shouted. “We’re all right. They’re not firing at us.”

His voice was drowned in the noise of the oars beating in the rowlocks, and the reports of the rifles. The boat disappeared in a mist of spray and moonlight, and Clay turned and faced about him. Langham and MacWilliams were crouching behind a rock and firing at the flashes in the woods.

“You can’t stay there,” Clay cried. “We must get back to Hope.”

He ran forward, dodging from side to side and firing as he ran. He heard shots from the water, and looking back saw that the men in the longboat had ceased rowing, and were returning the fire from the shore.

“Come back, Hope is all right,” her brother called to him. “I haven’t seen a shot within a hundred yards of her yet, they’re firing from the Custom-house and below. I think Mac’s hit.”

“I’m not,” MacWilliams’s voice answered from behind a rock, “but I’d like to see something to shoot at.”

A hot tremor of rage swept over Clay at the thought of a possibly fatal termination to the night’s adventure. He groaned at the mockery of having found his life only to lose it now, when it was more precious to him than it had ever been, and to lose it in a silly brawl with semi-savages. He cursed himself impotently and rebelliously for a senseless fool.

“Keep back, can’t you?” he heard Langham calling to him from the shore. “You’re only drawing the fire toward Hope. She’s got away by now. She had both the horses.”

Langham and MacWilliams started forward to Clay’s side, but the instant they left the shadow of the rock, the bullets threw up the sand at their feet and they stopped irresolutely. The moon showed the three men outlined against the white sand of the beach as clearly as though a searchlight had been turned upon them, even while its shadows sheltered and protected their assailants. At their backs the open sea cut off retreat, and the line of fire in front held them in check. They were as helpless as chessmen upon a board.

“I’m not going to stand still to be shot at,” cried MacWilliams. “Let’s hide or let’s run. This isn’t doing anybody any good.” But no one moved. They could hear the singing of the bullets as they passed them whining in the air like a banjo-string that is being tightened, and they knew they were in equal danger from those who were firing from the boat.

“They’re shooting better,” said MacWilliams. “They’ll reach us in a minute.”

“They’ve reached me already, I think,” Langham answered, with suppressed satisfaction, “in the shoulder. It’s nothing.” His unconcern was quite sincere; to a young man who had galloped through two long halves of a football match on a strained tendon, a scratched shoulder was not important, except as an unsought honor.

But it was of the most importance to MacWilliams. He raised his voice against the men in the woods in impotent fury. “Come out, you cowards, where we can see you,” he cried. “Come out where I can shoot your black heads off.”

Clay had fired the last cartridge in his rifle, and throwing it away drew his revolver.

“We must either swim or hide,” he said. “Put your heads down and run.”

But as he spoke, they saw the carriage plunging out of the shadow of the woods and the horses galloping toward them down the beach. MacWilliams gave a cheer of welcome. “Hurrah!” he shouted, “it’s Jose’ coming for us. He’s a good man. Well done, Jose’!” he called.

“That’s not Jose’,” Langham cried, doubtfully, peering through the moonlight. “Good God! It’s Hope,” he exclaimed. He waved his hands frantically above his head. “Go back, Hope,” he cried, “go back!”

But the carriage did not swerve on its way toward them. They all saw her now distinctly. She was on the driver’s box and alone, leaning forward and lashing the horses’ backs with the whip and reins, and bending over to avoid the bullets that passed above her head. As she came down upon them, she stood up, her woman’s figure outlined clearly in the riding habit she still wore. “Jump in when I turn,” she cried. “I’m going to turn slowly, run and jump in.”

She bent forward again and pulled the horses to the right, and as they obeyed her, plunging and tugging at their bits, as though they knew the danger they were in, the men threw themselves at the carriage. Clay caught the hood at the back, swung himself up, and scrambled over the cushions and up to the box seat. He dropped down behind Hope, and reaching his arms around her took the reins in one hand, and with the other forced her down to her knees upon the footboard, so that, as she knelt, his arms and body protected her from the bullets sent after them. Langham followed Clay, and tumbled into the carriage over the hood at the back, but MacWilliams endeavored to vault in from the step, and missing his footing fell under the hind wheel, so that the weight of the carriage passed over him, and his head was buried for an instant in the sand. But he was on his feet again before they had noticed that he was down, and as he jumped for the hood, Langham caught him by the collar of his coat and dragged him into the seat, panting and gasping, and rubbing the sand from his mouth and nostrils. Clay turned the carriage at a right angle through the heavy sand, and still standing with Hope crouched at his knees, he raced back to the woods into the face of the firing, with the boys behind him answering it from each side of the carriage, so that the horses leaped forward in a frenzy of terror, and dashing through the woods, passed into the first road that opened before them.

The road into which they had turned was narrow, but level, and ran through a forest of banana palms that bent and swayed above them. Langham and MacWilliams still knelt in the rear seat of the carriage, watching the road on the chance of possible pursuit.

“Give me some cartridges,” said Langham. “My belt is empty. What road is this?”

“It is a private road, I should say, through somebody’s banana plantation. But it must cross the main road somewhere. It doesn’t matter, we’re all right now. I mean to take it easy.” MacWilliams turned on his back and stretched out his legs on the seat opposite.

“Where do you suppose those men sprang from? Were they following us all the time?”

“Perhaps, or else that message got over the wire before we cut it, and they’ve been lying in wait for us. They were probably watching King and his sailors for the last hour or so, but they didn’t want him. They wanted her and the money. It was pretty exciting, wasn’t it? How’s your shoulder?”

“It’s a little stiff, thank you,” said Langham. He stood up and by peering over the hood could just see the top of Clay’s sombrero rising above it where he sat on the back seat.

“You and Hope all right up there, Clay?” he asked.

The top of the sombrero moved slightly, and Langham took it as a sign that all was well. He dropped back into his seat beside MacWilliams, and they both breathed a long sigh of relief and content. Langham’s wounded arm was the one nearest MacWilliams, and the latter parted the torn sleeve and examined the furrow across the shoulder with unconcealed envy.

“I am afraid it won’t leave a scar,” he said, sympathetically.

“Won’t it?” asked Langham, in some concern.

The horses had dropped into a walk, and the beauty of the moonlit night put its spell upon the two boys, and the rustling of the great leaves above their heads stilled and quieted them so that they unconsciously spoke in whispers.

Clay had not moved since the horses turned of their own accord into the valley of the palms. He no longer feared pursuit nor any interruption to their further progress. His only sensation was one of utter thankfulness that they were all well out of it, and that Hope had been the one who had helped them in their trouble, and his dearest thought was that, whether she wished or not, he owed his safety, and possibly his life, to her.

She still crouched between his knees upon the broad footboard, with her hands clasped in front of her, and looking ahead into the vista of soft mysterious lights and dark shadows that the moon cast upon the road. Neither of them spoke, and as the silence continued unbroken, it took a weightier significance, and at each added second of time became more full of meaning.

The horses had dropped into a tired walk, and drew them smoothly over the white road; from behind the hood came broken snatches of the boys’ talk, and above their heads the heavy leaves of the palms bent and bowed as though in benediction. A warm breeze from the land filled the air with the odor of ripening fruit and pungent smells, and the silence seemed to envelop them and mark them as the only living creatures awake in the brilliant tropical night.

Hope sank slowly back, and as she did so, her shoulder touched for an instant against Clay’s knee; she straightened herself and made a movement as though to rise. Her nearness to him and something in her attitude at his feet held Clay in a spell. He bent forward and laid his hand fearfully upon her shoulder, and the touch seemed to stop the blood in his veins and hushed the words upon his lips. Hope raised her head slowly as though with a great effort, and looked into his eyes. It seemed to him that he had been looking into those same eyes for centuries, as though he had always known them, and the soul that looked out of them into his. He bent his head lower, and stretching out his arms drew her to him, and the eyes did not waver. He raised her and held her close against his breast. Her eyes faltered and closed.

“Hope,” he whispered, “Hope.” He stooped lower and kissed her, and his lips told her what they could not speak–and they were quite alone.

XIV
An hour later Langham rose with a protesting sigh and shook the hood violently.

“I say!” he called. “Are you asleep up there. We’ll never get home at this rate. Doesn’t Hope want to come back here and go to sleep?

The carriage stopped, and the boys tumbled out and walked around in front of it. Hope sat smiling on the box-seat. She was apparently far from sleepy, and she was quite contented where she was, she told him.

“Do you know we haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday at breakfast?” asked Langham. “MacWilliams and I are fainting. We move that we stop at the next shack we come to, and waken the people up and make them give us some supper.”

Hope looked aside at Clay and laughed softly. “Supper?” she said. “They want supper!”

Their suffering did not seem to impress Clay deeply. He sat snapping his whip at the palm-trees above him, and smiled happily in an inconsequent and irritating manner at nothing.

“See here! Do you know that we are lost?” demanded Langham, indignantly, “and starving? Have you any idea at all where you are?”

“I have not,” said Clay, cheerfully. “All I know is that a long time ago there was a revolution and a woman with jewels, who escaped in an open boat, and I recollect playing that I was a target and standing up to be shot at in a bright light. After that I woke up to the really important things of life–among which supper is not one.”

Langham and MacWilliams looked at each other doubtfully, and Langham shook his head.

“Get down off that box,” he commanded. “If you and Hope think this is merely a pleasant moonlight drive, we don’t. You two can sit in the carriage now, and we’ll take a turn at driving, and we’ll guarantee to get you to some place soon.”

Clay and Hope descended meekly and seated themselves under the hood, where they could look out upon the moonlit road as it unrolled behind them. But they were no longer to enjoy their former leisurely progress. The new whip lashed his horses into a gallop, and the trees flew past them on either hand.

“Do you remember that chap in the `Last Ride Together’?” said Clay.
“I and my mistress, side by side, Shall be together–forever ride,
And so one more day am I deified. Who knows–the world may end to-night.”

Hope laughed triumphantly, and threw out her arms as though she would embrace the whole beautiful world that stretched around them.

“Oh, no,” she laughed. “To-night the world has just begun.”

The carriage stopped, and there was a confusion of voices on the box-seat, and then a great barking of dogs, and they beheld MacWilliams beating and kicking at the door of a hut. The door opened for an inch, and there was a long debate in Spanish, and finally the door was closed again, and a light appeared through the windows. A few minutes later a man and woman came out of the hut, shivering and yawning, and made a fire in the sun-baked oven at the side of the house. Hope and Clay remained seated in the carriage, and watched the flames springing up from the oily fagots, and the boys moving about with flaring torches of pine, pulling down bundles of fodder for the horses from the roof of the kitchen, while two sleepy girls disappeared toward a mountain stream, one carrying a jar on her shoulder, and the other lighting the way with a torch. Hope sat with her chin on her hand, watching the black figures passing between them and the fire, and standing above it with its light on their faces, shading their eyes from the heat with one hand, and stirring something in a smoking caldron with the other. Hope felt an overflowing sense of gratitude to these simple strangers for the trouble they were taking. She felt how good every one was, and how wonderfully kind and generous was the world that she lived in.

Her brother came over to the carriage and bowed with mock courtesy.

“I trust, now that we have done all the work,” he said, “that your excellencies will condescend to share our frugal fare, or must we bring it to you here?”

The clay oven stood in the middle of a hut of laced twigs, through which the smoke drifted freely. There was a row of wooden benches around it, and they all seated themselves and ate ravenously of rice and fried plantains, while the woman patted and tossed tortillas between her hands, eyeing her guests curiously. Her glance fell upon Langham’s shoulder, and rested there for so long that Hope followed the direction of her eyes. She leaped to her feet with a cry of fear and reproach, and ran toward her brother.

“Ted!” she cried, “you are hurt! you are wounded, and you never told me! What is it? Is it very bad?” Clay crossed the floor in a stride, his face full of concern.

“Leave me alone!” cried the stern brother, backing away and warding them off with the coffeepot. “It’s only scratched. You’ll spill the coffee.”

But at the sight of the blood Hope had turned very white, and throwing her arms around her brother’s neck, hid her eyes on his other shoulder and began to cry.

“I am so selfish,” she sobbed. “I have been so happy and you were suffering all the time.”

Her brother stared at the others in dismay. “What nonsense,” he said, patting her on the shoulder. “You’re a bit tired, and you need rest. That’s what you need. The idea of my sister going off in hysterics after behaving like such a sport–and before these young ladies, too. Aren’t you ashamed?”

“I should think they’d be ashamed,” said MacWilliams, severely, as he continued placidly with his supper. “They haven’t got enough clothes on.”

Langham looked over Hope’s shoulder at Clay and nodded significantly. “She’s been on a good deal of a strain,” he explained apologetically, “and no wonder; it’s been rather an unusual night for her.”

Hope raised her head and smiled at him through her tears. Then she turned and moved toward Clay. She brushed her eyes with the back of her hand and laughed. “It has been an unusual night,” she said. “Shall I tell him?” she asked.

Clay straightened himself unconsciously, and stepped beside her and took her hand; MacWilliams quickly lowered to the bench the dish from which he was eating, and stood up, too. The people of the house stared at the group in the firelight with puzzled interest, at the beautiful young girl, and at the tall, sunburned young man at her side. Langham looked from his sister to Clay and back again, and laughed uneasily.

“Langham, I have been very bold,” said Clay. “I have asked your sister to marry me–and she has said that she would.”

Langham flushed as red as his sister. He felt himself at a disadvantage in the presence of a love as great and strong as he knew this must be. It made him seem strangely young and inadequate. He crossed over to his sister awkwardly and kissed her, and then took Clay’s hand, and the three stood together and looked at one another, and there was no sign of doubt or question in the face of any one of them. They stood so for some little time, smiling and exclaiming together, and utterly unconscious of anything but their own delight and happiness. MacWilliams watched them, his face puckered into odd wrinkles and his eyes half-closed. Hope suddenly broke away from the others and turned toward him with her hands held out.

“Have you nothing to say to me, Mr. MacWilliams?” she asked.

MacWilliams looked doubtfully at Clay, as though from force of habit he must ask advice from his chief first, and then took the hands that she held out to him and shook them up and down. His usual confidence seemed to have forsaken him, and he stood, shifting from one foot to the other, smiling and abashed.

“Well, I always said they didn’t make them any better than you,” he gasped at last. “I was always telling him that, wasn’t I?” He nodded energetically at Clay. “And that’s so; they don’t make ’em any better than you.”

He dropped her hands and crossed over to Clay, and stood surveying him with a smile of wonder and admiration.

“How’d you do it?” he demanded. “How did you do it? I suppose you know,” he asked sternly, “that you’re not good enough for Miss Hope? You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course I know that,” said Clay.

MacWilliams walked toward the door and stood in it for a second, looking back at them over his shoulder. “They don’t make them any better than that,” he reiterated gravely, and disappeared in the direction of the horses, shaking his head and muttering his astonishment and delight.

“Please give me some money,” Hope said to Clay. “All the money you have,” she added, smiling at her presumption of authority over him, “and you, too, Ted.” The men emptied their pockets, and Hope poured the mass of silver into the hands of the women, who gazed at it uncomprehendingly.

“Thank you for your trouble and your good supper,” Hope said in Spanish, “and may no evil come to your house.”

The woman and her daughters followed her to the carriage, bowing and uttering good wishes in the extravagant metaphor of their country; and as they drove away, Hope waved her hand to them as she sank closer against Clay’s shoulder.

“The world is full of such kind and gentle souls,” she said.

In an hour they had regained the main road, and a little later the stars grew dim and the moonlight faded, and trees and bushes and rocks began to take substance and to grow into form and outline. They saw by the cool, gray light of the morning the familiar hills around the capital, and at a cry from the boys on the box-seat, they looked ahead and beheld the harbor of Valencia at their feet, lying as placid and undisturbed as the water in a bath-tub. As they turned up the hill into the road that led to the Palms, they saw the sleeping capital like a city of the dead below them, its white buildings reddened with the light of the rising sun. From three places in different parts of the city, thick columns of smoke rose lazily to the sky.

“I had forgotten!” said Clay; “they have been having a revolution here. It seems so long ago.”

By five o’clock they had reached the gate of the Palms, and their appearance startled the sentry on post into a state of undisciplined joy. A riderless pony, the one upon which Jose’ had made his escape when the firing began, had crept into the stable an hour previous, stiff and bruised and weary, and had led the people at the Palms to fear the worst.

Mr. Langham and his daughter were standing on the veranda as the horses came galloping up the avenue. They had been awake all the night, and the face of each was white and drawn with anxiety and loss of sleep. Mr. Langham caught Hope in his arms and held her face close to his in silence.

“Where have you been?” he said at last. “Why did you treat me like this? You knew how I would suffer.”

“I could not help it,” Hope cried. “I had to go with Madame Alvarez.”

Her sister had suffered as acutely as had Mr. Langham himself, as long as she was in ignorance of Hope’s whereabouts. But now that she saw Hope in the flesh again, she felt a reaction against her for the anxiety and distress she had caused them.

“My dear Hope,” she said, “is every one to be sacrificed for Madame Alvarez? What possible use could you be to her at such a time? It was not the time nor the place for a young girl. You were only another responsibility for the men.”

“Clay seemed willing to accept the responsibility,” said Langham, without a smile. “And, besides,” he added, “if Hope had not been with us we might never have reached home alive.”

But it was only after much earnest protest and many explanations that Mr. Langham was pacified, and felt assured that his son’s wound was not dangerous, and that his daughter was quite safe.

Miss Langham and himself, he said, had passed a trying night. There had been much firing in the city, and continual uproar. The houses of several of the friends of Alvarez had been burned and sacked. Alvarez himself had been shot as soon as he had entered the yard of the military prison. It was then given out that he had committed suicide. Mendoza had not dared to kill Rojas, because of the feeling of the people toward him, and had even shown him to the mob from behind the bars of one of the windows in order to satisfy them that he was still living. The British Minister had sent to the Palace for the body of Captain Stuart, and had had it escorted to the Legation, from whence it would be sent to England. This, as far as Mr. Langham had heard, was the news of the night just over.

“Two native officers called here for you about midnight, Clay,” he continued, “and they are still waiting for you below at your office. They came from Rojas’s troops, who are encamped on the hills at the other side of the city. They wanted you to join them with the men from the mines. I told them I did not know when you would return, and they said they would wait. If you could have been here last night, it is possible that we might have done something, but now that it is all over, I am glad that you saved that woman instead. I should have liked, though, to have struck one blow at them. But we cannot hope to win against assassins. The death of young Stuart has hurt me terribly, and the murder of Alvarez, coming on top of it, has made me wish I had never heard of nor seen Olancho. I have decided to go away at once, on the next steamer, and I will take my daughters with me, and Ted, too. The State Department at Washington can fight with Mendoza for the mines. You made a good stand, but they made a better one, and they have beaten us. Mendoza’s coup d’etat has passed into history, and the revolution is at an end.”

On his arrival Clay had at once asked for a cigar, and while Mr. Langham was speaking he had been biting it between his teeth, with the serious satisfaction of a man who had been twelve hours without one. He knocked the ashes from it and considered the burning end thoughtfully. Then he glanced at Hope as she stood among the group on the veranda. She was waiting for his reply and watching him intently. He seemed to be confident that she would approve of the only course he saw open to him.

“The revolution is not at an end by any means, Mr. Langham,” he said at last, simply. “It has just begun.” He turned abruptly and walked away in the direction of the office, and MacWilliams and Langham stepped off the veranda and followed him as a matter of course.

The soldiers in the army who were known to be faithful to General Rojas belonged to the Third and Fourth regiments, and numbered four thousand on paper, and two thousand by count of heads. When they had seen their leader taken prisoner, and swept off the parade-ground by Mendoza’s cavalry, they had first attempted to follow in pursuit and recapture him, but the men on horseback had at once shaken off the men on foot and left them, panting and breathless, in the dust behind them. So they halted uncertainly in the road, and their young officers held counsel together. They first considered the advisability of attacking the military prison, but decided against doing so, as it would lead, they feared, whether it proved successful or not, to the murder of Rojas. It was impossible to return to the city where Mendoza’s First and Second regiments greatly outnumbered them. Having no leader and no headquarters, the officers marched the men to the hills above the city and went into camp to await further developments.

Throughout the night they watched the illumination of the city and of the boats in the harbor below them; they saw the flames bursting from the homes of the members of Alvarez’s Cabinet, and when the morning broke they beheld the grounds of the Palace swarming with Mendoza’s troops, and the red and white barred flag of the revolution floating over it. The news of the assassination of Alvarez and the fact that Rojas had been spared for fear of the people, had been carried to them early in the evening, and with this knowledge of their General’s safety hope returned and fresh plans were discussed. By midnight they had definitely decided that should Mendoza attempt to dislodge them the next morning, they would make a stand, but that if the fight went against them, they would fall back along the mountain roads to the Valencia mines, where they hoped to persuade the fifteen hundred soldiers there installed to join forces with them against the new Dictator.

In order to assure themselves of this help, a messenger was despatched by a circuitous route to the Palms, to ask the aid of the resident director, and another was sent to the mines to work upon the feelings of the soldiers themselves. The officer who had been sent to the Palms to petition Clay for the loan of his soldier-workmen, had decided to remain until Clay returned, and another messenger had been sent after him from the camp on the same errand.

These two lieutenants greeted Clay with enthusiasm, but he at once interrupted them, and began plying them with questions as to where their camp was situated and what roads led from it to the Palms.

“Bring your men at once to this end of our railroad,” he said. “It is still early, and the revolutionists will sleep late. They are drugged with liquor and worn out with excitement, and whatever may have been their intentions toward you last night, they will be late in putting them into practice this morning. I will telegraph Kirkland to come up at once with all of his soldiers and with his three hundred Irishmen. Allowing him a half-hour to collect them and to get his flat cars together, and another half-hour in which to make the run, he should be here by half-past six–and that’s quick mobilization. You ride back now and march your men here at a double-quick. With your two thousand we shall have in all three thousand and eight hundred men. I must have absolute control over my own troops. Otherwise I shall act independently of you and go into the city alone with my workmen.”

“That is unnecessary,” said one of the lieutenants. “We have no officers. If you do not command us, there is no one else to do it. We promise that our men will follow you and give you every obedience. They have been led by foreigners before, by young Captain Stuart and Major Fergurson and Colonel Shrevington. They know how highly General Rojas thinks of you, and they know that you have led Continental armies in Europe.”

“Well, don’t tell them I haven’t until this is over,” said Clay. “Now, ride hard, gentlemen, and bring your men here as quickly as possible.”

The lieutenants thanked him effusively and galloped away, radiant at the success of their mission, and Clay entered the office where MacWilliams was telegraphing his orders to Kirkland. He seated himself beside the instrument, and from time to time answered the questions Kirkland sent back to him over the wire, and in the intervals of silence thought of Hope. It was the first time he had gone into action feeling the touch of a woman’s hand upon his sleeve, and he was fearful lest she might think he had considered her too lightly.

He took a piece of paper from the table and wrote a few lines upon it, and then rewrote them several times. The message he finally sent to her was this: “I am sure you understand, and that you would not have me give up beaten now, when what we do to-day may set us right again. I know better than any one else in the world can know, what I run the risk of losing, but you would not have that fear stop me from going on with what we have been struggling for so long. I cannot come back to see you before we start, but I know your heart is with me. With great love, Robert Clay.”

He gave the note to his servant, and the answer was brought to him almost immediately. Hope had not rewritten her message: “I love you because you are the sort of man you are, and had you given up as father wished you to do, or on my account, you would have been some one else, and I would have had to begin over again to learn to love you for some different reasons. I know that you will come back to me bringing your sheaves with you. Nothing can happen to you now. Hope.”

He had never received a line from her before, and he read and reread this with a sense of such pride and happiness in his face that MacWilliams smiled covertly and bent his eyes upon his instrument. Clay went back into his room and kissed the page of paper gently, flushing like a boy as he did so, and then folding it carefully, he put it away beneath his jacket. He glanced about him guiltily, although he was quite alone, and taking out his watch, pried it open and looked down into the face of the photograph that had smiled up at him from it for so many years. He thought how unlike it was to Alice Langham as he knew her. He judged that it must have been taken when she was very young, at the age Hope was then, before the little world she lived in had crippled and narrowed her and marked her for its own. He remembered what she had said to him the first night he had seen her. “That is the picture of the girl who ceased to exist four years ago, and whom you have never met.” He wondered if she had ever existed.

“It looks more like Hope than her sister,” he mused. “It looks very much like Hope.” He decided that he would let it remain where it was until Hope gave him a better one; and smiling slightly he snapped the lid fast, as though he were closing a door on the face of Alice Langham and locking it forever.

Kirkland was in the cab of the locomotive that brought the soldiers from the mine. He stopped the first car in front of the freight station until the workmen had filed out and formed into a double line on the platform. Then he moved the train forward the length of that car, and those in the one following were mustered out in a similar manner. As the cars continued to come in, the men at the head of the double line passed on through the freight station and on up the road to the city in an unbroken column. There was no confusion, no crowding, and no haste.

When the last car had been emptied, Clay rode down the line and appointed a foreman to take charge of each company, stationing his engineers and the Irish-Americans in the van. It looked more like a mob than a regiment. None of the men were in uniform, and the native soldiers were barefoot. But they showed a winning spirit, and stood in as orderly an array as though they were drawn up in line to receive their month’s wages. The Americans in front of the column were humorously disposed, and inclined to consider the whole affair as a pleasant outing. They had been placed in front, not because they were better shots than the natives, but because every South American thinks that every citizen of the United States is a master either of the rifle or the revolver, and Clay was counting on this superstition. His assistant engineers and foremen hailed him as he rode on up and down the line with good-natured cheers, and asked him when they were to get their commissions, and if it were true that they were all captains, or only colonels, as they were at home.

They had been waiting for a half-hour, when there was the sound of horses’ hoofs on the road, and the even beat of men’s feet, and the advance guard of the Third and Fourth regiments came toward them at a quickstep. The men were still in the full-dress uniforms they had worn at the review the day before, and in comparison with the soldier-workmen and the Americans in flannel shirts, they presented so martial a showing that they were welcomed with tumultuous cheers. Clay threw them into a double line on one side of the road, down the length of which his own marched until they had reached the end of it nearest to the city, when they took up their position in a close formation, and the native regiments fell in behind them. Clay selected twenty of the best shots from among the engineers and sent them on ahead as a skirmish line. They were ordered to fall back at once if they saw any sign of the enemy. In this order the column of four thousand men started for the city.

It was a little after seven when they advanced. and the air was mild and peaceful. Men and women came crowding to the doors and windows of the huts as they passed, and stood watching them in silence, not knowing to which party the small army might belong. In order to enlighten them, Clay shouted, “Viva Rojas.” And his men took it up, and the people answered gladly.

They had reached the closely built portion of the city when the skirmish line came running back to say that it had been met by a detachment of Mendoza’s cavalry, who had galloped away as soon as they saw them. There was then no longer any doubt that the fact of their coming was known at the Palace, and Clay halted his men in a bare plaza and divided them into three columns. Three streets ran parallel with one another from this plaza to the heart of the city, and opened directly upon the garden of the Palace where Mendoza had fortified himself. Clay directed the columns to advance up these streets, keeping the head of each column in touch with the other two. At the word they were to pour down the side streets and rally to each other’s assistance.