The Stowaway Girl Part 37

Even in his dire extremity, De Sylva smiled.

"Would that others had run like you, my Salvador!" he said. "Then we should have been in Pernambuco to-morrow."

The Brazilian looked around. His eye dwelt heedlessly on the cowering Carmela. He was searching for Iris, who had been compelled by c.o.ke and Bulmer and her uncle to take shelter behind the score of sailors who still remained at Las Flores.

"It is true, nevertheless," he said laconically. "I knew the game was lost, so I came here to try and save a lady."

"Ah--our Carmela? You thought of her?"

"No!"

Then the spell pa.s.sed from Carmela. She literally threw herself on her lover.

"Yes, it is true!" she shrieked. "He came to save me, but I preferred to die here--with you, father--and with him."

Dom Corria did not understand these fire-works, but he had no time for thought. Bullets were crashing through the closed Venetians. Light they must have, or the defense would become an orgy of self-destruction, yet light was their most dangerous foe when men were shooting from the somber depths of the trees.

The a.s.sailants were steadily closing around the house. Their rifles covered every door and window. Each minute brought up fresh bands in tens and twenties. At last, Barraca himself arrived. Some members of his staff made a hasty survey of the situation. There were some three hundred men available, and, in all probability, Dom Corria could not muster one-sixth of that number. It was a crisis that called for vigor.

The cavalry lance was twenty miles from its base, and there was no knowing what accident might reunite the scattered Liberationists. One column, at least, of the Nationalists had failed to keep its rendezvous, or this last desperate stand at Las Flores would have proved a sheer impossibility.

So the house must be rushed, no matter what the cost. This was a war of leaders. Let Dom Corria fall, and his most enthusiastic supporters would pay Dom Miguel's taxes without further parley. A scheme of concerted action was hastily arranged. Simultaneously, five detachments swarmed against the chosen points of a.s.sault. One crossed the _pateo_ to the porch, another made for the stable entrance, a third attacked the garden door, a fourth a.s.sailed the servants' quarters, and the fifth, strongest of all, and inspired by Dom Miguel's presence, battered in the shutters and tore away the piled up furniture of the ballroom.

The Nationalist leader's final order was terse.

"Spare the women; shoot every rebel; do not touch the foreigners unless they resist!"

With yells of "Abajo De Sylva!" "Morto por revoltados!" the a.s.sailants closed in. Neither side owned magazine rifles, so the fight was with machetes, swords, and bayonets when the first furious hail of lead had spent itself. No man thought of quarter, nor ceased to stab and thrust until he fell. Not even then did some of the half-savage combatants desist, and a many a thigh was gashed and boot-protected leg cut to the bone by those murderous hatchet knives wielded by hands which would soon stiffen in death.

When three hundred desperadoes meet fifty of like caliber in a hand-to-hand conflict--when the three hundred mean to end the business, and the fifty know that they must die--fighting for choice, but die in any event--the resultant encounter will surely be both fierce and brief.

And never was fratricidal strife more sanguinary than during the earliest onset within the walls. Each inch of corridor, each plank of the ballroom floor, was contested with insane ferocity. This was not warfare. It savored of the carnage of the jungle. Its sounds were those of wild beasts. It smelled of the shambles.

By one of those queer chances which sometimes decide the hazard between life and death, the window nearest that end of the room where the sailors strove to protect a few shrieking women had not been broken in. Here, then, was a tiny bay of refuge; from it the men of the _Andromeda_ and the _Unser Fritz_, Bulmer, Verity, Iris, and such of the Brazilian ladies as had not fled to the upper rooms at the initial volley, looked out on an amazing butchery. De Sylva, no longer young, and never a robust man, had been dragged from mortal peril many times by his devoted adherents.

Carmela had s.n.a.t.c.hed a machete from the fingers of a dying soldier, and was fighting like one possessed of a fiend.

Once, when a combined rush drove the defenders nearly on top of the non-combatants, Iris would have striven to draw the half-demented girl into the little haven with the other women.

But c.o.ke thrust her back, shouting:

"Leave 'er alone. She'll set about you if you touch her!"

d.i.c.key Bulmer, too, who was displaying a fort.i.tude hardly to be expected in a man of his years and habits, thought that interference was useless.

"Let 'er do what she can," he said. "She doesn't know wot is 'appenin'

now. If she was on'y watchin' she'd be a ravin' lunatic. G.o.d 'elp us all, we've got ourselves into a nice mess!"

Somehow, the old man's Lancashire drawl, with its broad vowels and misplaced aspirates, exercised a singularly soothing effect on Iris's tensely-strung nerves. It seemed to remove her from that murder-filled arena. It was redolent of home, of quiet streets, of orderly crowds thronging to the New Brighton sands, of the sober, industrious, G.o.d-fearing folk who filled the churches and chapels at each service on a Sunday. These men and women of Brazil were her brothers and sisters in the great comity of nations, yet Heaven knows they did not figure in such guise during that hour of intense emotions.

But if d.i.c.key Bulmer's simple words exalted him into the kingdom of the heroic, David Verity occupied a lower plane. Prayers and curses alternated on his lips. He was stupefied with fear. He had never seen the l.u.s.t of slaying in men's eyes, and it mesmerized him. Many of the sailors wanted to join in on behalf of their friends. It needed all c.o.ke's vehemence to restrain them. "Keep out of it, you swabs," he would growl. "It's your on'y chanst. This isn't our shindy. Let 'em rip an'

be hanged to 'em!" Yet he was manifestly uneasy, and he kept a wary eye on De Sylva, whom he appraised at a personal value of five thousand pounds "an pickin's."

A tall, distinguished-looking man, wearing a brilliant uniform, his breast decorated with many orders, now appeared on the scene. He shouted something, and the attacking force redoubled their efforts. He raised a revolver, and took deliberate aim at Dom Corria. c.o.ke saw him, and his bulldog pluck combined with avarice to overcome his common sense.

Without thought of the consequences, he sprang into the swaying mob and pulled De Sylva aside. A bullet smashed into the wall behind them.

"Look out, mister!" he bellowed. "'Ere's a blighter 'oo wants to finish you quick!"

De Sylva's glance sought his adversary. He produced a revolver which hitherto had remained hidden in a pocket. Perhaps its bullets were not meant for an enemy. He fired at the tall man. A violent swerve of the two irregular ranks of soldiers screened each from the other. An opening offered, and the man who had singled out Dom Corria for his special vengeance fired again. The bullet struck c.o.ke in the breast. The valiant little skipper staggered, and sank to the floor. His fiery eyes gazed up into Verity's.

"Damme if I ain't hulled!" he roared, his voice loud and harsh as if he were giving some command from the bridge in a gale of wind.

David dropped to his knees.

"For Gawd's sake, Jimmie!" he moaned.

"Yes, I've got it. Sarve me dam well right, too! No business to go ag'in me own pore old ship. Look 'ere, Verity, I'm done for! If you get away from this rotten muss, see to my missus an' the girls. If you don't--d--n you----"

"Fire!" shouted a strong English voice from without. A withering volley crashed through the open windows. Full twenty of the a.s.sailants fell, Dom Miguel de Barraca among them. There was an instant of terrible silence, as between the shocks of an earthquake.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A withering volley crashed through the window]

"Now, come on!" shouted the same voice, and Philip Hozier rushed into the ballroom, followed by his scouts and a horde of Brazilian regulars. No one not actually an eye-witness of that thrilling spectacle would believe that a fight waged with such determined malevolence could stop so suddenly as did that fray in Las Flores. It was true, now as ever, that men of a mixed race cannot withstand the unforeseen. Dom Miguel fallen, and his cohort decimated by the leaden storm that tore in at them from an unexpected quarter, the rest fled without another blow. They raced madly for their horses, to find that every tethered group was in the hands of this new contingent. Then the darkness swallowed them. Dom Miguel's cavalry was disbanded.

At once the medley within died down. Men had no words as yet to meet this astounding development. Dom Corria went to where his rival lay.

Dom Miguel was dying. His eyes met De Sylva's in a strange look of recognition. He tried to speak, but choked and died.

Then the living President stooped over the dead one. He murmured something. Those near thought afterward that he said:

"Is it worth it? Who knows!"

But he was surely President now; seldom have power and place been more hardly won.

His quiet glance sought Philip.

"Thank you, Mr. Hozier," he said. "All Brazil is your debtor. As for me, I can never repay you. I owe you my life, the lives of my daughter and of many of my friends, and the success of my cause."

Philip heard him as in a dream. He was looking at Iris. Her eyes were shining, her lips parted, yet she did not come to him. By her side was standing a white-haired old man, an Englishman, a stranger. Bending over c.o.ke, and wringing his hands in incoherent sorrow, was another elderly Briton. A fear that Philip had never before known gripped his heartstrings now. He was pale and stern, and his forehead was seamed with foreboding.

"Who is that with Miss Yorke?" he said to Dom Corria.

The President had a rare knack of answering a straight question in a straight way.

"A Mr. Bulmer, I am told," he said.

There was a pause. General Russo, carved from head to foot, but so stout withal that his enemies' weapons had reached no vital part, approached.

He thumped his huge stomach.

"We must rally our men," he said. "If we collect even five thousand to-night----"

"Yes," said De Sylva, "I will come. Before I go, Mr. Hozier, let me repeat that I and Brazil are grateful."