The Dust of Conflict

VI – THE SCHOONER “VENTURA”

THE night was considerably clearer than anybody on board her desired when the schooner “Ventura” headed for the land. It rose in places, black and sharp against the velvety indigo, over her dipping bows, though most of the low littoral was wrapped in obscurity. Harper, the American skipper, leaned upon the helm watching the growing brightness in the east, and a man whose white garments cut against the dusky sea sat upon the rail close beside him. They were both anxious, for there were no lights on that strip of Cuban coast, and the “Ventura” had drifted with the stream in a calm which had complicated Harper’s reckoning. He had to find a certain reef-studded bay, and run the schooner into a creek among the mangroves without being seen by the gunboat which he had reason to surmise was looking out for him.

Forward, a cluster of men were sitting about the windlass and leaning on the rail. They were of diverse nationality and doubtful character – American, Castilian, and African by extraction, though in the case of some of uncertain color it would have been difficult to decide which blood predominated in their veins. It was their task to supply the insurgents with the munitions of war, and they undertook it dispassionately, without any patriotic convictions, for the dollars it would bring. Indeed, most of them were not held in much esteem in the countries they belonged to, or they would not in all probability have been there on board the “Ventura.”

Appleby watched them languidly from where he sat behind the wheel, and wondered what lay before him when he glanced towards the dusky coast-line. He was, however, not unduly anxious, for he had cut himself adrift from the cramped life he had led, and as yet found the new one pleasant. It needed qualities he felt he possessed, and which, indeed, he had with difficulty held in due subjection in England; while the fact that it might at any time terminate suddenly caused him no great concern. In the meanwhile the risks and opportunities attached to it had their charm for one who had long found poverty and the restraints of conventionality irksome.

“We’ll have the moon up in ten minutes,” said Harper, as the “Ventura” swung up on a frothing sea. “That would suit us if we were in the bay, but I’m not certain where we’re heading for just now. You still think that was Sparto Point we saw at dusk, Rosendo?”

The man who sat upon the rail shook his head. “Who knows!” he said. “If she is not the Sparto she may be the Playa Santiago, or the Cameron.”

Harper turned to Appleby with a little gesture of resignation. “You hear him. He’s talking,” he said. “Thirty miles more or less don’t count with them. If we don’t get in to-day, we may to-morrow, and if it’s next week nobody’s going to worry. They’ve nice business-like notions in their country.”

Rosendo laughed. “We not find the Sparto? Good! It is simple. She is farther on. We find her in two or three more hour.”

“Oh yes!” said Harper. “Still, what I want to know is, what’s going to happen if the gunboat comes along while we’re looking for her? I’ve a notion it might mean a white wall and a firing party.”

Rosendo shrugged his shoulders, and Appleby glanced towards the east. There was a bank of cloud in that quarter, but the sky above it was a pale luminescent blue. Then he looked astern, and saw the white tops of the seas heave against the darkness, for it was blowing fresh from the north. The “Ventura,” rolling lazily, was running before it with only her boom-foresail and two jibs set, but now and then the crest of a sea that surged past lapped her rail.

“Wouldn’t she stand more sail?” he said.

“Oh yes!” said Harper, pointing to the mainsail which lay loose beneath the big boom that swung, banging a little, above them. “It’s there ready. Still, it will be ’most three hours yet before there’s water in, and if the gunboat came along I’d sooner be here, where I’ve room to run, than jammed right up between her and a lee shore. If I was sure that was the high ground behind Point Sparto I’d feel considerably happier.”

They rolled on awhile, and then a half-moon sailed up. The sea changed to flashing silver, and Harper, leaving the wheel to Rosendo, went up the foremast hoops and swung perched on the cross-trees, black against the night. He came down by and by, and there was relief in his voice.

“That’s the Point sure enough! We’ll have the mainsail on her, boys,” he said.

The men came aft in haste. There was a rattle of blocks, and Appleby bent his back among the rest, while the folds of dusky canvas rose thrashing up the mast. They swelled into shape and became at rest, while the schooner, slanting over suddenly, put on speed, and drove away towards the land with a great frothing beneath her rail. She rolled little now, but there was a thud when her bows went down and the spray whirled half the height of her foresail. Appleby felt the exhilaration of swift motion, and his pulses throbbed a trifle faster as he watched the great breadths of canvas that gleamed silver now sway athwart the blue, and the froth swirl past the slender strip of hull that was dwarfed by comparison beneath them. The “Ventura” was very fast, but she could not compete with steam; and he noticed that Harper, who had taken the helm again, every now and then glanced over the rail. He appeared to be staring persistently towards one quarter of the horizon.

Suddenly a man standing high on the cross-trees shouted, and Appleby, springing to his feet, saw a faint, dusky smear drift athwart the blue and silver, where a minute earlier there had only been sky and water.

“Smoke!” said Harper. “I don’t know that it’s the ‘Enseñada,’ but I’m taking no chances of meeting her, We’ll have the gaff-topsails up, boys, and the foresail over.”

He pulled at the wheel. There was a bang as the boom-foresail lurched over, so that it and the big mainsail now swelled on either hand. Then the men swarmed about the deck again, and Appleby wondered a little when amidst a clatter of blocks two more strips of sail went thrashing aloft, for it seemed to him that the “Ventura” was already carrying a risky press of canvas. He, however, pulled among the rest, and it was not until the schooner was clothed with canvas to her topmast heads that he straightened his back and looked about him. As he did so she dipped her bows into a sea, and a cascade poured in forward. It came aft frothing when her head went up, and then as she plunged into the hollow another mass of foam came up astern and surged by a foot above her rail. Harper laughed.

“Wet feet don’t count in this trade,” he said. “She’s not going to scoop in too much of it if I can keep her running, but you’ll see something very like chaos if we have to put her on the wind. Is that smoke rising any?”

Appleby fancied it was, for the dusky smear had lengthened, and it seemed to him there was something more solid than vapor in the midst of it. The skipper, however, in view of the inadvisability of bringing the great mainsail crashing over, could not turn his head.

“Still, even if it is a gunboat, we should be well in with the land before she overhauls us,” said Appleby.

“Yes,” said Harper grimly. “The trouble is there’s no water yet into the creek, and there’ll be a blame nasty surf running into the bay. Still, there’s a place where we could hold her to it with two anchors down, and it would take good eyes to make us out against the land. It’s just a question whether those fellows yonder see us first.”

It appeared to Appleby a somewhat important one, but he had to wait for the answer with the rest, and by and by it came. The man on the cross-trees shouted, the smear of smoke seemed to break in two, as though the vessel beneath it had changed her direction, and she became visible in a moment or two, a faint dark blur upon the moonlit water. Harper turned his head swiftly, and his face showed very grim in the moonlight when he stared in front of him again.

“I guess our chances have gone down fifty cents in the dollar,” he said. “Get a range of cable up on deck. Then we’ll have the boat cleared handy and the hatch-wedges out.”

The men became busy amidst a rattle of chain, and then stood where it was a little dryer between the masts, with their shadows lying black upon the silvery cloths of the foresail. They were watching the steamer, which was rising upon one quarter with the smear of smoke blowing away from her. Appleby could see her plainly now, a strip of black hull that rolled with slanted spars across the harmonies of blue and silver – and she seemed to him portentous in her shadowiness, for there was no blink of light on board her.

“The ‘Enseñada’?” said Harper.

“Si, señor!” said Rosendo, with a little gesture which was very expressive.

Harper pulled at the wheel, and Appleby saw that he was addressing him.

“There are two of their gunboats on this coast, and it’s quite in the usual course that it’s the one I don’t want to see that turns up,” he said. “Her commander has a little grievance against me.”

Appleby did not ask him what it was. He had something else to think of, and the swift upward lurches and wisps of spray that blew about the “Ventura” made conversation difficult. The seas also seemed to be growing steeper as she closed with the land, and washed in as they went smoking past. Still, but for that sinister shape steadily rising higher on one quarter he could have found pleasure in the scene. The wail of wind, the humming of the shrouds, patter of spray, and roar of frothy seas stirred the blood in him, while the swift reeling rush when the bows went up brought him a curious sense of exultation.

It was stress and effort of muscle and body he had hungered for in the sleepy English town, for slow endurance was nothing new to him, and he was apparently to get it now. There was a meaning in the tense black figures of the men, and the grim impassiveness of Harper’s face as he stiffened his grasp on the wheel, for human fibre was under strain as well as hemp and wood and metal, which groaned under the pressure which racked them to the uttermost limit. Yet while the gunboat crept up astern Appleby felt at home, as though this was not a novel sensation, and he had been through it all, or something very similar, more than once before. The fixed look in the eyes that gleamed in the moonlight, the set faces, and the rigidity of the men’s pose appeared in a curious fashion familiar.

A flash from the steamer roused him, there was a detonation, and a quarter of a mile beyond them a little white cloud rose from the sea. Some of the black figures swung round, but Appleby looked straight in front of him. He did not know why he avoided any abrupt movement, but he felt without reflection that it was incumbent on him. It was, however, not the first time a man of his or his mother’s name had stood outwardly unmoved, at least, under artillery fire.

There was also something to see ahead – a dim, forest-shrouded littoral across which the vapors were streaming, and a faint white line of beach. In the foreground were broad streaks of froth, and the long blur of a jutting point with a yeasty seething about the end of it. Away on the other hand lay a smear of dusky trees, and the gap between them and the point was, he surmised, the bay they had been looking for. It held no shelter for them that he could see. Then Harper called the Spaniard Rosendo.

“There’s not going to be water in for an hour yet, anyway,” he said.

Rosendo shook his head. “There is much tree on the Point,” he said.

Harper appeared reflective. “Yes,” he said, “that’s what I was thinking. Well, with this wind the Point would break the sea, and she mightn’t bump the bottom out of her if we did put her on the bar. Those fellows couldn’t get a clear shot at us across the trees, and they wouldn’t be anxious to send boats in considering the sea that’s running. Still, there’s a thing that’s worrying me.”

He glanced forward towards one of the streaks of froth which Appleby surmised showed where a reef lay below, and Rosendo made an expressive grimace.

“Los Dientes!” he said, and spread his arms out as though to indicate a measure. “One brazo a half now.”

Harper nodded. “I can’t run for the gut behind it without bringing that fellow too close,” he said. “If I go round to weather we’ll have to close-haul her, and he’d come up near enough to sink us if we took sail off her. Still, she’ll scarcely carry what she has got now on the wind.”

Rosendo shrugged his shoulders as he said in Castilian, “Between the fire and the cooking pot there is not much choice, my friend!”

Then the men between the masts came aft together, and one of them, whose color was not exactly white, stopped in front of Harper.

“We have no use for being run slap on the Dientes, and she’s not going to work off it if we hold on much longer.”

Harper swung a hand up commandingly. “When I’m not fit to sail this boat I’ll ask your help,” he said. “I’ve a good deal less use for showing the Spaniard just what I mean to do while he could spoil my hand by altering his course a point or two. Get your boom-foresail over, and the staysail on to her!”

It was done, though the “Ventura” rolled her rail in when the big sail swung banging over. By and by Harper brought the wind abeam, and she drove along at an angle to her previous course, with one side hove high, while the sea came in in cataracts over either bow. Appleby clutched the rail, for the deck slanted away beneath him, and he wondered how the barefooted men kept their footing. The other rail was apparently level with the sea, and the brine that sluiced down the incline washed knee-deep inside it. The masts sloped as the deck did, with the spray beating like grapeshot into the foresail between them; but the topmasts above them slanted further, and Appleby understood why Harper’s face was anxious when he glanced aloft. The gunboat was within easy range now, and it was evident there would be no escape for them if anything yielded under the strain. In fact, Appleby was wondering whether her commander felt sure of them since he was not firing, when there was another flash followed by the roar of a gun. An unseen object that could be heard through the sound of wind and sea passed between the masts, and Harper nodded.

“I guess that decides the thing. What she can’t carry she’ll have to drag,” he said.

She dragged it for another five minutes, staggering under a press of sail, and then there was a crash aloft, and topmast and mainsail gaff fell to leeward together. A clamor of voices went up, and the “Ventura’s” bows swung round a little further off the wind; while Appleby, who saw Harper’s face in the moonlight, noticed that it was set and very grim.

“You can run down the staysail and outer jib so she’ll not fall to leeward all at once,” he said.

The men went forward floundering amidst the spray, and the plunges grew a trifle easier, while the seas swung the “Ventura” aloft instead of deluging her; but a glance made the position unpleasantly plain to Appleby. To leeward lay the white frothing on the Dientes reef, and he surmised that the “Ventura” could not clear it without her after canvas; to windward the gunboat, coming down on them rapidly. There was, it seemed, no escape, and he wondered vaguely what would happen. Harper said nothing whatever, but stood with his lean figure casting a black shadow upon the crippled mainsail, grasping the wheel. So they drove on for another five minutes, and then, with a glance at the gunboat, the skipper straightened himself.

“They’re not going to have the guns, and the schooner might fetch ten dollars when I’m through with her,” he said. “Get the foresail off her, and stand by to swing out the boat!”

The sail came down thrashing, and the men stood very still and silent when they had hooked the tackles on the boat. Their faces were turned forward, and Appleby guessed that they were watching the white upheavals that showed where the seas rolled across the submerged reef. This was not astonishing, for the “Ventura’s” bows had swung further round, and it was evident that Harper was running them upon it. Appleby was sensible of a curious admiration for him. He still stood at the wheel, slouching over it, now suspense had gone and certainty had come, a most unimpressive figure, in old duck jacket and brine-soaked trousers that were both too loose for him, but it was evident that the spirit which disdains dramatic expression and often burns most clearly in unexpected places was in him.

“Hold on!” he said quietly as the bows went up.

Then she struck, with a crash that sent two men reeling across her deck, and the sea that rolled up behind her surged frothing on board. It went forward waist deep; the “Ventura” lifted, and came down again, with everything in her rattling and her crew holding fast for their lives. Then she twisted round, so that the next comber foamed across her and ground her on the reef, hove herself up, scraped forward, grinding and groaning, a few more fathoms, and stopped again; while a negro and a Cuban shaken from their hold rolled down the slanting deck clutching at each other until they fell into the water pent up by the lower rail. The din was bewildering, for every block and spar banged and rattled amidst the dull roar of the seas, but it was rent by the crash of a gun.

Grasping the rail with both hands, Appleby saw the gunboat rolling black athwart the moonlight, while a smear of vapor broadened about her; but there was another sound beneath him as he gazed, and while the splinters flew in showers a great rent opened in the deck. Nobody said anything, or could have been heard if he had, and Appleby clung tighter still when once more a sea crested with spouting white came along. It lifted the “Ventura” up, and then there was a curious quietness as it dropped her clear of the reef. Through the sudden silence Harper’s voice rose evenly and almost expressionless.

“I guess there’s some of the rudder left, though it’s jammed. Give me a hand,” he said.

Appleby sprang to help him, and between them they dragged the helm over. The “Ventura” lurched on more smoothly with a gurgling sound inside her, for the reef broke the sea; but ten minutes later she struck again, and remained this time immovable. Nobody waited for orders, and in swift silence the boat was got over, while a fire commenced to twinkle on the beach. Wooden cases were passed up from the hold, and – for the water was smoother there – the boat got away. Four men went in her, and the rest dropped into the hold, where they tore out boxes and cases and passed them from man to man. While they worked the gun boomed again, but the gasping men toiled the more fiercely, and Appleby did his part with them. He was dripping with perspiration and spray, his hands were bleeding, and his duck jacket rent up the back, but, gasping and panting, he labored on with a fierce pleasure that seemed wholly illogical.

Once he lifted his head above the hatch, as he tore the jacket which impeded him off his shoulders, and saw that the gunboat had stopped. She was not firing now, and his comrades had, he fancied, sent three loads ashore by that time; but he had scarcely glanced at her when Harper saw him. “Hustle!” he said. “The boats are coming.”

How long they toiled in the hold Appleby could never remember, but though it appeared no more than a few minutes to him the moon had moved across a broad strip of sky when he crawled on deck again. The boat lay beneath him, half full of cases, and the men were dropping into her. Two other boats showed for a moment to windward, and then sank from sight again.

“Hold on!” said Harper, pointing to the cases still on deck. “Into the sea with them!”

Appleby and another man threw them over, though there were impatient cries from the boat below, and the rest were shoving off when they dropped into her. Somebody was baling furiously, two men tugged and thrust, Spanish fashion, at every oar, and they reeled away shorewards with the water lapping into her. Then a fire grew brighter above the roaring beach, men came floundering waist-deep through the surf, those in the boat sprang over, and they went up with the wash of a sea. Appleby, scrambling out of the backwash, stood up, dripping, breathless, and aching all over, and saw Harper not far away and a host of dusky figures flitting about the fire. Then there was a flash from seawards, a crash in the forest behind them, and they disappeared.

“Well,” said the skipper quietly, “the ‘Ventura’ isn’t going to sea any more. You have to take your chances in this business; and we got most of the inside out of her, anyway.”

VII – THE DESCENT OF SANTA MARTA

A LITTLE fire burned in a hollow of the dusty barranco that fissured the face of the hill, a clear red fire of the kind that gives little light and makes no smoke, and its pale glow showed but feebly against the rock behind. This was still flushed with a warm lustre caught from the western sky, though the sun had dipped and the fleecy mists were creeping across the dusky plain below.

A group of weary men lay about the fire, dusty and ragged, for they had spent most of twelve weary hours forcing a path through thickets and climbing like goats from rock to rock under the heat of the tropics. Two of them wore garments of cotton, which hung about them rent by thorns; three others jackets of American make, looted from a loyalist store; and one trousers of English tweed, through which his knees protruded, and a jacket of alpaca of a kind esteemed in Spain. He had, however, a red silk sash of beautiful texture, which had cost somebody else a good many dollars, round his waist; and his face, which was bronzed to a coffee color, had once been of paler complexion than those of most of his companions. He raised himself a trifle, and glanced about him with a little whimsical smile.

“They are a choice collection of scarecrows to take a city with,” he said in English.

A man who lay close by looked up with a twinkle in his eyes. “I have seen smarter soldiers,” he drawled. “Still, they’re a hard crowd, and I’d feel kind of sorry for Colonel Morales if his cazadores don’t put up a good fight to-night. What we have on hand isn’t quite the thing I came out to do, but I guess it’s better than catching fever down there in the mangrove swamps. That’s how it strikes me, though it will scarcely be the kind of business you’ve been used to, Appleby.”