And then they came over a low rise to open up a fresh vista of the plain. Two miles ahead stood a low, grey building with a black speck fluttering over it-the fortress of Soco with its flag; evidently the dozen colonists who had taken refuge there had made good their defence.
‘Here they come!’ said the Adelantado. ‘Form your square, men.’
Rich had no time to see more during the bustle of forming up.
‘Invalids here in the centre!’ called the Adelantado. ‘Gentlemen, mount your horses. Pikemen! Crossbowmen!’
Rich helped his invalid to the ground. There were a dozen helpless men lying there already, but his own invalid was convalescent by now and with one more curse, lurched away to join the ranks of his fellows. Ruiz and the advanced guard came clattering up as Rich climbed on the grey horse. Other horses cannoned into him and he lost a stirrup and nearly lost his helmet before he found himself in the mass of cavalry grouped round the invalids. The foot soldiers had formed a square round the cavalry, facing outwards, the handgunmen with their matches alight, the crossbowmen with their bows wound up.
Pouring up towards them was an enormous crowd of naked Indians. It was like a brown sea rolling upon them, thousands and thousands of them-not merely men, Rich saw as they approached, but women and children as well, all shrieking and yelling, as they waved their arms over their heads, with a noise like surf on the beach.
‘Please God they charge,’ said the Adelantado, and then, raising his voice: ‘Remember, no man is to fire a shot until I give the word. Don Bernardo, see to it.’
Rich, fidgeting with his reins and his sword, marvelled at the Adelantado’s sentiments. It seemed to him the most necessary thing in the world that the guns should start firing at once. Through his muddled brain coursed a sudden desire to wheel his horse round and break through the ranks and gallop away; panic was making his heart beat painfully fast and clouding his intellect, and it was only with difficulty that he restrained himself from acting on the impulse.
‘If we shoot one now the whole lot’ll run away,’ explained the Adelantado to the hidalgos round him. ‘I want to close with them.’
The huge crowd poured up towards the square. Then it halted a hundred yards from the nearest face, came on again, halted again in the centre, while at the sides it still poured forward until in the end the whole square was surrounded at a discreet distance. A few more daring of the Indians ran closer still and, with frantic gestures, flung stones which fell to earth far in front of the waiting Spaniards.
‘No shooting!’ said the Adelantado loudly again.
The crowd eddied round the square like mist, forward here and back there. The din was tremendous. Then at last came the rush, as some indetectable impulse carried the whole mob inwards towards the square.
‘Fire!’ yelled the Adelantado.
The crash of the handguns drowned the noise of the discharge of the crossbows. Rich saw no Indian fall, and next moment the two nations were at grips. The Indians carried heavy sticks for the most part, with which they struck clumsily at the helmets in front of them, clumsily, like clowns in a comedy. Perched up on his horse Rich caught vivid glimpses of brown faces, some of them striped with red paint, distorted with passion. He saw the expression on one turn to mild dismay as a Spaniard drove his sword home. Rich’s horse was chafing at the bit as the smell of blood reached his nostrils; close in front of him a crossbowman was winding frantically at his moulinet. There came a loud bang as one of the re-charged handguns went off, and then another and another. The brown masses began to hesitate, and ceased to crowd up against the sword-points.
‘They’re going to break!’ said the Adelantado. ‘Gentlemen, are you ready?’
The crossbowmen thrust his loaded weapon forward between the two swordsmen who were protecting him, and released the bolt with a whizz and a clatter.
‘Open out when you charge, gentlemen. Ride them down and show no mercy,’ said the Adelantado. ‘There! They’re breaking! Sailors, make way! Open your ranks, sailors! Come on, gentlemen!’
The sailors who formed one face of the square huddled off to either side, making a gap for the horsemen who poured through it in a torrent, the maddened horses jostling each other. Rich kept his seat with difficulty as his horse dashed out along with his fellows; reins and sword seemed to have become mixed in his grip. Avila was riding in front of him, his horse stretched to a gallop and his lance, with its fluttering banderol, in rest before him. The point caught a flying Indian in the back below the ribs, and lifted him forward in a great leap before he dropped spreadeagled on the ground and Avila rode forward to free his point. The swords were wheeling in great arcs of fire under the sun. There was an Indian running madly close by Rich’s right knee, his hands crossed over his head to ward off the impending blow. Rich had his sword hand free now, and he swung and struck at the hands, and the Indian fell with a dull shriek.
This was madly exciting, this wild pursuit on a horse galloping at top speed with Indians scurrying in all directions before him. Behind him the handguns were still banging, and faint shouts indicated that the infantry were in pursuit as well. Rich struck again and again. He found himself leaning far out of the saddle, like any accomplished cavalier, to get a fairer sweep, and the discovery delighted him. He was carried away by the violence of his reaction from his previous panic; there were enemies all about him, running like rabbits. He yelled with excitement and slashed again. An Indian, crazed with panic, ran blindly across his course, and fell with a scream under the forelegs of the grey horse. The grey horse came down with a crash, and Rich found himself sailing through the air. The earth which received him was soft, and he was not stunned by the fall, but the breath was driven from his body as if he were a burst bladder. Dazed and winded, sword and helmet gone, he grovelled about on the ground trying to recover himself. And Indian woman saw his plight; she still had her club in her hand, and apparently she was not as affected by panic as most of her companions. She ran up and struck at Rich, screaming the while for assistance. Two more women arrived, one with a pointed cane which she stuck painfully into Rich’s left arm, overbalancing him just as he was on the point of regaining his feet. The club clanged on his breastplate, the sharpened cane scraped over it. But then the screams of the women changed from excitement to fright. A horse’s head loomed hugely over them; one women fell across Rich, deluging him with blood from her half-severed neck, the others disappeared. Garcia was there riding a maddened chestnut stallion with graceful dexterity; the blood slowly dripped from his reddened sword and his white teeth flashed in a smile.
‘Wounded? Hurt?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Rich, sliding disgustedly from under the woman’s corpse.
‘I’ll catch your horse,’ said Garcia, wheeling the chestnut towards where the grey was standing, his reins over his head and his sides heaving.
Rich picked up his sword and helmet and received the reins which Garcia handed him.
‘All well?’ asked Garcia. ‘Right!’
Garcia uttered some inarticulate yell and urged his horse into a gallop again, wheeling his sword in circles; Rich stood with the reins in his hand and watched him catch an Indian and strike him down.
Rich had to sheathe his bloody sword in order to mount. It was an effort to raise his foot in the stirrup, a worse effect to swing himself up into the saddle even though the blown horse stood stock-still for him; he gathered up the reins and wondered what to do next. Behind him the scattered infantry were chasing Indians with small chance of catching them-a few Indians were still running towards him from the direction of the battlefield and swerving frantically away when they caught sight of him. Far ahead the cavalry were still on the fringe of the great mass of flying Indians; the shouts came back to Rich’s ears like the distant cry of gulls at sea. He shook his horse into activity and rode forward towards Soco at a ponderous trot-he passed dead and wounded Indians scattered here and there over the plain as witness of the efficacy of the pursuit. The shouting and scre
aming ahead suddenly redoubled; the distant crowd wavered and hesitated and then broke up into two halves, one flying to the right and one to the left amid the loud reports of gunfire.
The firing enabled Rich to guess what had happened; the garrison of Soco had come charging out across the line of retreat of the Indians, a dozen men against ten thousand and yet sufficient to check their speed enough to give the horsemen’s swords a fresh opportunity. There were plenty of Indians even near him, stragglers whom the pursuit had left behind ungleaned--exhausted Indians squatting gasping for breath, crippled Indians limping over the plain and Indians running madly back towards him from the slaughter ahead. Rich put his hand to his sword-hilt and then found himself, rather to his own surprise, leaving the weapon where it was. He did not want to kill any more.
He rode slowly up towards the fort of Soco, where the horsemen were rallying, breathing their horses and tightening their girths. A dozen men on foot-the garrison of Soco, presumably-were standing with them, everyone talking and laughing excitedly. Dead Indians lay in swathes all about them, marking the area wherein their retreat had been cut off by the garrison’s sally.
‘Mount again, gentlemen,’ said the Adelantado, as Rich came within earshot. ‘We can beat back over the ground. Plenty of game broke back and the foot are there to head them off for us.’
The Spaniards who had dismounted got back into their saddles. They were like men who had been drinking-some were giggling like schollboys with excitement of slaughter.
‘One long line,’ said the Adelantado. ‘Fifty yards apart. My standard is the centre. Spread yourselves out, gentlemen.’
The Adelantado ran an interested eye over Rich as he trotted up-Rich was conscious of the blood and mud with which he was smeared. He bore clear enough proof that he had played his part in the battle.
‘Don Cristobal said you had a fall,’ said the Adelantado.
‘I had,’ said Rich, ‘but nothing serious.’
‘Are you wounded?’
‘Nothing serious again,’ answered Rich.
‘You can have your revenge now.’
‘Do you really mean what you say, Don Bartholomew? Are you going on with this killing?’
‘Why, of course. There are four hours more of daylight.’
‘Haven’t enough been killed?’
‘No, by God. I mean this to be a lesson that they will never forget.’
‘But they are your brother’s subjects-your subjects, Your Excellency. Don’t you want them to earn revenue for you?’
‘They’ll breed again. And we’ve had no chance of sport like this for months. Don’t be mealy-mouthed, Doctor. Trumpeter!’
The trumpet set the long line in motion again in its sweep back across the plain. It was sport for the infantry, too; crossbows and handguns found plenty of targets as the frantic Indians were driven within range. The spearmen and swordsmen, even, hampered though they were with clothes and equipment, were often able to run down on foot the naked Indians who were already exhausted. Some of them showed a pretty wit in their choice of the place in which to plant their weapons when they caught their victims-the same idea had occurred to the horsemen, and shouts of laughter and approval ran along the line as each man vied with the others in displaying his dexterity or strength of arm. Rich followed fascinated.
16
‘Torture?’ said Don Bartholomew surprisingly that night in reply to a question from Garcia. ‘There’s no need for torture with these miserable wretches. Just keeping ‘em in one place and preventing ‘em from wandering about is torture for ‘em. I’ll guarantee that tomorrow morning every one of the fifty in the corral will blab all we want ‘em to. Three days of it, and they die, like fish in a bucket. But if they won’t talk tomorrow morning they will in the afternoon, after a morning in the sun without food or water. And if not, even then, the slow match that these handguns use will find tongues for ‘em. But mark my words, Don Cristobal, by two hours after dawn we’ll know all we want to know and we’ll be on our way.’
They were discussing the next move in the suppression of the rebellion. The Adelantado had announced his intention of ascertaining from the prisoners who was the ringleader in the affair and whither he was likely to have fled; he was going to hunt him down, him and every other rebel he could catch, even if he had hidden in the heart of the unexplored mountains.
‘Are these people likely to have a ringleader?’ asked Rich. ‘They don’t appear to me to have enough sense.’
The Adelantado turned a cold eye upon him, and Rich was conscious of an uneasy feeling of being in a decided minority. It was by no means the first time since his arrival in the island that he had made suggestions in favour of moderation, and he was aware of the danger of being looked upon as a persistent wet blanket.
‘Could ten thousand people rise in rebellion without a ringleader?’ asked the Adelantado, sarcastically.
‘With these people I should say it was more likely in the case of ten thousand than in the case of ten,’ said Rich.
It was a sweltering hot night, and all those present were feeling trickles of sweat running down inside their clothes, and were moving uneasily on their wooden benches inside the bare room with its earthen walls.
‘I don’t believe,’ went on Rich, as the others remained silent, ‘that there’s an Indian alive in this island who could imagine a rebellion of ten thousand people, let alone organize one.’
‘Perhaps,’ said the Adelantado with elaborate irony, ‘the learned doctor will explain to these assembled gentlemen the events of today. I fancied I saw ten thousand Indians armed and in rebellion. Did my imagination deceive me? Were there really only ten?’
‘I think they took up arms spontaneously,’ said Rich. ‘Rebellion grows in misery, like maggots in putrid meat.’
‘Misery?’ said the Adelantado, genuinely surprised.
‘Yes, misery,’ said Rich. This was a different argument altogether from the one he had begun, but he was equally ready to debate it now that it had arisen. ‘The Indians work now when they never worked before. They see their friends burned alive, and hanged. Their women are raped. They believe that there will be no end to all this unless the Spaniards are all killed-and until the Spaniards came the Indians did not know what it meant to kill people!’
‘So!’ said the Adelantado. ‘They work. How else would we have the gold and the cotton we need? Of course they must work. Men work, relapsed heretics are burned and rebels are hanged, as in any Christian country. Rape? To an Indian woman there is no such thing. And if an Indian intends to kill me, I intend to kill him first. The learned doctor would not, I suppose. He would have us submit to being killed. No, of course, I know what he would advise. We ought all to get on board our ships and sail home again, leaving the gold in the earth and the pagans in their ignorance.’
Most of the men present were smiling now, even Acevedo, to whom Rich looked for sympathy. There was nobody present who could see his point of view, or understand what he was trying to say. Because the Indians were weaker than the Spaniards, because they were pagans, the Spaniards assumed it to be quite natural that they should be forced to work at unaccustomed labour to provide gold and cotton. The Spaniards could see no injustice in that. To them it was a natural law that the weaker should labour for the stronger. And as regards the question of cruelty, these countrymen of his had a tradition of centuries of warfare behind them; the shedding of human blood was a feat that redounded to a man’s credit. The man who killed was performing a natural function of a gentleman; justice in the abstract had no meaning for them. Rich remembered the reminiscent grins which had accompanied their comments on the day’s work, and was forced to a further conclusion; these were men who found pleasure in cruelty, apart from considering it merely as means to an end. They liked it.
Suetonius had written the lives of the twelve Caesars of Rome, and had shown how each in turn had been maddened by absolute power; their lust and their bloodthirstiness had grown with indulgence, like a
wine-bibber’s thirst, until no crime was too monstrous for them. These Spaniards in Espanola found themselves each in the position of a Caesar towards the feeble Indians. They were intoxicated with the power of life and death, and it was as hopeless to argue with them as it would be with drunken men. He could only sigh and remain silent while the discussion of the plans went on.
So Rich remained a witness of the taming of the Llanos, of all the great plain which stretched between the mountains and the sea in the south-east of the island. He saw the hangings and the floggings. He saw the great troops of Indians rounded up and driven back, after a sufficient number of examples had been made, to their labours. In the foothills of the mountains there ran little streams, in the sands of whose beds there were rare specks of gold; a hundred gourdfuls of sand, washed and painfully picked over, might contain one such speck. Every adult Indian had to produce, every three months, a hawk’s bell full of gold-the hawk’s bells which had once been so coveted in the island were now symbols of servitude.
Up in the mountains there hid little groups of Indians, those rare ones who had sufficient inventiveness to realize that there they had best chance of evading their oppressors. Every day little detachments marched out from Soco in pursuit. They were fierce men, trained in every ruse of war. They climbed the passes in the foothills, they hacked their way through the mountain forests; they moved by night to surprise their quarry at dawn, or spread out to make a wide drive that pinned the hapless refugees against impassable declivities. The hardships of the campaign were great, the exertions enormous. The nights spent in the drenching tropical rains brought on ague; not only the two hundred original colonists who followed the Adelantado’s banner, but the two hundred newcomers began to show a high proportion of fever victims in their ranks. Food was short; the little patches of roots and corn which the Indians cultivated soon went wild again with lack of attention. Everything, in fact, was short. There was no leather to repair the shoes which the forced marches wore out-no one could tan the hides of the slaughtered cattle, and the rawhide slippers which the men wore lasted only a few days. Clothing wore out, and there was only the flimsy cotton cloth of native weaving to replace it-and not much of that. Every luxury was missing, and every necessity was scarce.