The Perfume of Egypt by C. W. Leadbeater (smart ebook reader .TXT) 📕

an instrument of divine vengeance; I moved through all those stirring scenes like a person in a dream, just as I had endured all through the ten days’ march when I was being carried alternately by my father and by Tito, feeling little, caring for nothing, enduring all things, because I was all the time waiting for my day to come, waiting for the moment when my vengeance should leap into active life. A curious state of mind, I know — a very unhealthy state; I am not defending myself; I am merely trying to describe as faithfully as I can exactly what I felt.

In just the same state of mind I rode day after day on my pony, by my father’s side, as the troops made their way through the forests in search of the insurgents. The details of those days of marching made no impression upon me; my mental vision was occupied only with one figure, that of Martinez, and regarded him with a steady, ever-burning, never-changing hate. Yet it was not so much even hatred as a calm certainty of doom — the knowledge that I should fulfil my destiny, and that that destiny was to slay this monster.

At last came the day when our guides told us that we were drawing near to the town which Martinez had occupied — that we might hope to come in sight of it by evening. Martinez, however, was ready for us. He had even come out to meet us, and arranged for us an ambush into which we promptly fell. For he had concealed his force in the forest upon our line of route, and they suddenly opened a tremendous fire upon us precisely when we least expected it.

Those Spanish-American troops are never very steady under fire, at the best of times; still less so when that fire comes as a terrifying surprise; and the front of our column wavered and crumpled up under it. Then was shown the advantage of a volunteer troop, whose members, as I have said, were mostly gentlemen by birth. Hearing the firing, and seeing the wavering of the men in front, my father shouted a command to his company, and in a moment we were moving steadily and swiftly forward, the rest of the volunteer regiment following hard on our heels. Instead of dashing into the little glade where the front ranks of our men were being shot down, or whence they were flying in disorder, we promptly scattered out on both sides and rushed through the forest itself upon the hidden soldiers of Martinez, who, thus taken in flank, had to turn and defend themselves.

This charge of the volunteers rallied the regulars, and in a few moments they also were joining in the fray. But that was no organised battle, and rarely had we any opportunity of falling into serried ranks at all. It resolved itself into a series of hand-to-hand combats, fought out among the trees. Friend and foe were so inextricably mingled that it was not always easy to distinguish them, for though the volunteers looked trim enough, many of the Government soldiers were scarcely smarter in appearance than the ragged and ill-appointed free-lances of Martinez.

The rebels fought bravely, for they knew that they were fighting for their lives, as well as for all the fantastic rewards which Martinez had promised them. How far they really believed his stories of the fabulous wealth and power which awaited them, it is difficult to say; it may be that they fully accepted them, for most of them were ignorant enough to believe anything; but at any rate they knew very well that after their capture of the town and the murders that they had committed, no mercy would be shown to any of them who might fall into the hands of the Government. The Government General had hoped to have considerable superiority in numbers. Counting the Indians as well as the mutinous regiments, it is by no means certain that he had any superiority at all, but it was difficult to form any estimate in a fight that took place in so irregular a manner and amidst such unusual surroundings.

There were several open glades in the forest, and twice in the course of that amorphous struggle I took part in a charge, which in each case cleared the glade of the rebels. It is a very curious experience for one who is not used to warfare — to find oneself one of a body of men animated by a single thought, to look at all the faces round one and watch them set in grim determination, forgetting all else but the stern resolve to hurtle down upon the enemy, to trample them under-foot or to drive them away — and to wonder, half-startled, whether one’s own face hooks like that. Then comes the sharp command, the wild ordered rush onwards, and then the rattle of rifles or the clash of steel, the leaping over dead bodies, foe and friend alike, not even noticing which they are, full only of the one idea, to press on, press on. And then the glade is won, and we halt and look back for a moment to see heaps of dead, to see the green grass all trampled and red with blood; and yet there is no time for horror, no time for anything but still that one idea; where are they whom we must conquer? — let us press on, press on.

At least it was so with me. For the earlier part of that fight I kept by my father’s side. Quite early my pony was shot and fell under me, but I sprang clear and seized the bridle of a riderless horse as he came past, sprang upon his back (he was far too tall for me) and turned him again into the fray. But in doing this I lost my father for a moment, and could not at once get back to his side. So I ranged through the battle, looking everywhere for the man whom I knew I should find. I took my share in the fighting, I suppose; I know that wherever I saw a rebel or an Indian I fired at him, and I think that few of my bullets missed their mark.

But presently my big horse fell, as the pony had done (I think he had been wounded when I first mounted him); and this time I was thrown to the earth with a jar, and it took me a few moments to recover my senses. The rifle which I had carried was injured in the fall; some part of its mechanism was bent, so that when I tried to fire it I could not. I cast it aside, and seized in its stead the nearest weapon that offered, a long naked sword which was lying on the ground in front of me — dropped, I suppose, by some officer as he fell dead, or who perhaps was merely wounded and had crawled aside. I did not stop to think of that; I seized this great sword (far too heavy in reality for me to wield) and started off again on foot, still seeking for what I knew I should find.

By this time the result of the battle was a foregone conclusion. Everywhere the Government troops were steadily driving back the insurgents, and many of the latter were already in flight. It was said afterwards, and I fully believe it, that this success was due to a great extent to the fiery valour of my father. The Colonel in command of the volunteer corps fell, badly wounded, early in the fight, and my father instantly took command and carried the regiment to victory. There were others in it of the same nominal rank as he, yet no one for a moment questioned his assumption of the lead. They think highly over there of the bravery and fighting qualities of the English, and so I suppose it seemed natural to them to follow an Englishman. At any rate they did so, and, civilian though my father was, without any experience in military matters, he led them with dauntless courage, and he led them to victory. If he lacked, as he must have done, knowledge of tactics, that lack mattered comparatively little in this strange hand-to-hand fight in the forest. What told there was personal courage and dash, and of those he had plenty.

I was still far from strong, and I had been racing about for some hours through the battle — and a battle is probably one of the most fatiguing things in the world; yet I had no thought of being tired, no time to feel tired — for no feeling, no thought could be allowed to distract me for an instant from the certainty that God would give my vengeance into my hand. Long I looked for Martinez everywhere, and but for that inner conviction I must have been disappointed. But I knew so surely that I should find him, and that all this vague fighting was a mere preliminary, that I never hesitated for a moment, never doubted for a moment; and at last I saw him.

He stood under a great tree with his back to it, and two of the Government soldiers were attacking him, and for the moment that little group seemed to be apart from all the rest. Perhaps it was only in my mind that they were apart, for I saw that one figure only; and yet I think it is true that there were only the dead for some yards around. The two soldiers were assailing him boldly, and he was defending himself with his sword — the same sword, I thought, with the hatred surging up within me, the same sword that had slain my brother. But he had been famed in earlier days as the best swordsman in the army — some said the best swordsman in South America; and, even while I looked, one of the attacking soldiers went down before him, and then quickly the other, and he stood alone with the light of battle in his eye.

And then — he saw me, as I was springing towards him. His face changed and there came over it a look of diabolical hatred, and yet at the same time, I am sure, a look of fear.

“What,” he shouted, “are you here? You have brought all this ill-luck upon me; you and your cursed father and brother!”

“Yes,” replied I, “I am here; and I shall kill you.”

I sprang straight at him; I might have shot him from a distance, but I meant to kill him with the sword, as he had killed Gerald. I had seen the fear in his eyes — I am sure of that; but now he turned upon me with a laugh of scorn, seeing that I was armed only with a clumsy old sword, and knowing himself a master of his weapon. In a moment we were fencing; I had learnt some fencing at school, yet I doubt whether that was of use to me at this critical moment. I fought by instinct and not by knowledge; yet I must have fought better than I knew, for even as our swords clashed together again and again I saw a change in his eyes; I saw the look of triumphant malice fade away and the haunting fear show itself again, I suppose because in some strange unexpected way he could not strike me down at once, because he found me more nearly a match for him than he could possibly have expected.

I think he was scarcely taller than I — I have said that he was a short man: but his reach was longer, and his familiarity with the weapon incomparably greater. My will was indomitable as ever, but my