The river trip had had one positive effect, however. The time it had taken and the relative ease compared to riding horseback had allowed Luis to gain strength. When the time came to break camp, he was now able to discard the stretcher and walk along the beach with the rest, as long as he had the aid of a long, crotched stick. As they trudged, they stared out over the heaving blue waves of the gulf, but the line of the horizon stretched without hindrance, meeting the sky cleanly, without the clutter of sails or the black plume of a smokestack.
One other problem plagued them. It was water. They had with them three filled canteens, and the problem was not immediate, but what little water they came across was either muddy or brackish. It was disheartening to think that they might be forced inland before a ship was sighted. As if every league they covered increased the chances of their being picked up, Slim, striding at the point, quickened the pace. And seeing Luis still did not falter, he quickened it again.
As the second day of walking along the treacherous sands that dragged at their every footstep passed, Eleanora felt a creeping futility. In the rain forest she had been too frightened, too worried for apathy, but with rescue near, with Luis improving daily, she could feel her strength and her will leaving her, draining away into the hot, blistering sand. The silver glare of the sun, reflected from the dancing wavelets of the gulf, pierced her eyes, shafting into her skull. She had to watch her steps with exaggerated care, compensating for an increasing tendency to stagger. Nor did she want to fall behind, becoming a drag on Luis. He had enough to do just holding himself erect without adding her weight. Good intentions were not enough, however, to keep her on her feet. Toward evening her knees began to sag, and sinking down upon the sand, she held her head in her hands.
“Eleanora,” Luis said urgently. “Are you ill?”
“I don’t think so,” she answered, and was surprised at the weakness of her voice. “I just can’t take another step.”
“You are sure that is all, you are certain?” he insisted, scanning her face with an anxious gaze, noting the shadows like bruises beneath her eyes, the too-prominent cheekbones, and the pulse pounding in the golden-smooth fragility of her throat.
“I will be fine when I have rested,” she said, and hearing the trace of coolness in her tone, he did not press her further.
She lay with her forearm over her eyes, trying to blot out the all-too-familiar voices of the men around her. For an instant she was so tired of them, of their constant presence, of the lack of privacy, and most of all, of the jangling chain that marked her arm with an almost ineradicable reddish-brown stain from its crusting of rust. When Luis handed her supper of baked turtle eggs to her, she turned away, moving the utmost length of the chain from him. Such a revulsion of feeling would not last long, but for the moment she felt if he pressed her, if he touched her, she would scream.
After a time the wash of the waves soothed her, and scooping a hollow in the sand for her body, she slept.
A whispering scuffle of sound brought her awake. She lay still with her eyes closed for a moment, waiting for it to be repeated, then little by little she lifted her lids, peering through the slits.
The surf had fallen to a soft murmur. The blue-black waters spread as nearly still as they ever came. Upon their surface lay a phosphorescent path, and at the far end of it stood the fleeing moon, looking over its shoulder. In that light, the brown sand of the beach had taken on the glitter of gold dust. It lay heaped and piled, massed riches waiting to be plundered. The quiet was tense, echoing with that careful stealthiness which had awakened her.
Abruptly she opened her eyes wide. A man was crawling over the sand toward her, his face less than a yard from hers. The light of the moon turned his hair to silver-gilt and winked along the honed edge of the knife he clutched in his hand, leaving the sockets of his eyes in darkness. It was Kurt. In the instant of time in which they stared at each other across the space of golden sand, Eleanora realized his purpose; to kill the man sleeping behind her.
Without waiting for her reaction the Prussian levered himself to his hands and knees with bared teeth, preparing to lunge across her. She drew in her breath to scream.
A shot exploded at her shoulder. The knife slithered from Kurt’s grasp as with a strangled yell he grabbed at the spouting hole in his throat. The impact of the lead flung him back. He collapsed, shuddered once, and was still.
Before Eleanora could move the night was alive with gunfire, with shouts and orders and the sound of running feet. From the scrubby and twisted trees beyond the line of dunes that marked high tide, soldiers ran with bayonets fixed on guns held at the ready. There was no time to decide whether to fight their way free or declare themselves noncombatants. They were surrounded, staring up at their captors.
When nothing moved, and quiet had fallen, an officer, a zambo of mixed Indian and Negro blood, dressed in white with gold epaulettes, stepped from among the trees and walked gingerly across the sand with his breeches legs held high. He flicked glance over their dishevelment, smothered a yawn, and then said in a clipped British accent, “You are under arrest, in the name of the ruler of the sovereign kingdom of Mosquito.”
“This woman,” Luis said with a trace of Castilian arrogance in his tone, “is my prisoner. She is the mistress, and a much-beloved one, to the second in command — second only to General Walker — of the army of Nicaragua. It was my intention to hold her for ransom. Colonel Farrell will reward handsomely the man who can return her to him — unharmed.” He shrugged. “Unfortunately, my men and I lost our way. That is the way of it, is it not?”
The commandant of the outpost to which they had been taken leaned back in his chair, the stare he turned in Eleanora’s direction frankly skeptical. She could not blame him. After being marched at bayonet point for what had seemed like at least a hundred miles, they had reached this slattern collection of thatched shacks which had the look of a barracoon, a place where slaves might have been held in other days, the slaves that had eventually become absorbed into the community of the Indian kingdom of Mosquito. They had been thrown into a hut which had all the size and fetid smell of a privy. Inside were no accommodations for sleeping, not even space for them all to lie down and barely room to sit. They had not been fed since lunch the day before, and before sunup the interrogations had begun. One by one they were taken away until only Luis and Eleanora were left. Now it was their turn.
“The man you killed,” the zambo commandant said, playing with the pen on his desk, “attacked you for the sake of this reward?”
“He did.”
“And what do you say?” he asked Eleanora, rounding on her unexpectedly.
It would not do to uphold Luis too strictly, she thought, aware of the doubt that still lingered in the commandant’s eyes. “I am not certain,” she said, her tone soft. “He — may have had other plans.”
He nodded briefly, letting his eyes run disparagingly down her slender frame. They rested for a moment on the slimness of her waist and the chain about her wrist before he swung abruptly back to Luis. “You were a Falangista, were you not?”
“I was.”
“But you decided taking the colonel’s woman was better than taking the general’s shilling?”
Luis allowed himself a smile. “It seemed a more promising way of mending my fortunes.”
Picking up a palm-leaf fan, the commandant waved it languidly. To Eleanora he said, “What is your name?”
“Eleanora Colette Villars,” she told him, unconsciously raising her chin.
“Oh, yes. One has heard of you. The newspapers, you know? One must keep up with the enemy. It is possible,” he continued reflectively, “that you might make a valuable hostage. It just might be possible.”
“I do assure—” Luis began.
The commandant, his voice suddenly brisk, cut across his words. “You realize that the kingdom of Mosquito does not recognize the Democrático regime in Nicaragua?”
“Yes, but—”
“
We are allied with the Legitimistas. You will, therefore, consider yourselves political prisoners. That is all.”
It would have been unwise to argue with the bayonets of the guards. Luis stepped back, and with a stiff, somewhat awkward bow, allowed himself to be led away, with Eleanora, of necessity, at his side.
“Thank you for what you tried to do,” she said as the door of the hut was closed upon them once more.
Though Luis did not look at her, he caught her hand, gripping it tightly in his own. “Let us hope it is enough to buy for us a little time, and let us pray that it was not too much.”
They received an indication that his effort might be bearing fruit that evening. Two men, bearing an anvil, a hammer, and a chisel, entered their prison. Their intention was plain, and giving way to the inevitable, Luis took the key from a chain about his neck and unlocked the rusty manacles. Watching his bent head as he worked over her wrist, Eleanora wondered at his foresight. The key had not been around his neck before. All the chain had held was a gold religious medallion which she had seen often. Where had it been hidden? — not that it mattered. It was only that it was less painful to worry about a key than about the future.
A further hint of the impression they had made on the commandant was the quality of the food served to them at dinner that evening. But the greatest evidence was manifested early the next morning. Toward dawn there was a commotion in the town. A ship had dropped anchor offshore, they learned from the guard, and a short while later they saw through the cracks of the hut the arrival of a detachment of men in the uniforms of the British Navy, including an officer of high rank. The commandant of the small post greeted the visitors beneath the Mosquito flag in the center of the clearing, and escorted them with much deference and ceremony into his quarters.
The British conclave left within the hour, none of them so much as glancing at the hut where Eleanora and the men were imprisoned. Whether as a result of this meeting, as they suspected, or simply because they had been with the Democrático party, a short time later Eleanora and the former Falangistas were led from their hut, loaded into a bullock cart, and driven north under a mounted and armed guard numbering twenty or more toward the Honduran border.
They were not told where they were going. They could speculate, of course, but no more. Even that did not serve for long to beguile the tedium of the jolting journey.
After a time Eleanora turned to Luis. “Why do you suppose the British came this morning? What is their stake in all this?”
“Their reasoning is based on distrust,” Luis replied with a slight smile. “Like two strong men facing a weakling with a cake in his possession, neither trusts the other to keep hands off. Britain doesn’t want to see the United States add Central America to its territory, and the United States has no stomach for seeing this valuable isthmus fall into British control. According to the treaty signed a couple of years ago, neither is supposed to interfere with Nicaragua and the workings of free enterprise. Nothing is ever that simple. The British see an American gaining sway in a Central American country, and as a counterbalance they support his enemies, in this case, the Hondurans. Then, you can’t discount Vanderbilt’s influence in England. He wants Walker toppled — and money makes a very good lever if you know where to place it. He has spent a great deal of time, and money, in England in the last few years. Then, money means little when revenge drives a man of wealth.”
“And so the British, for purely political reasons, have advised the Mosquito commandant to turn us over to the enemy,” she said bitterly.
“That’s only a guess,” he reminded her. “And even if it’s so, when we explain who we are we may find the Hondurans most hospitable.”
Eleanora sent him a wan smile, but her fears were by no means stilled.
The Honduran prison had once been a Spanish fortress with projecting conical lookout towers that faced the sea. Its thick stone walls crumbling now, it was still impressive, dominating the small town behind it.
They saw no official before being admitted. They were met by a detail of Legitimista soldiers in blue tunics with red facings. Despite the smell of stale aguardiente about them, the Lebel rifles and cartridge belts they carried were most menacing. At bayonet point, they were marched through heavy, iron-studded wooden doors, and without stopping, pushed down a dark corridor, musty with the smell of old limestone and uncleaned drains, to a common room.
Though large, with a high ceiling rising to darkness unreached by the light from small windows far above the floor, the room was overcrowded. People, men and women numbering perhaps two hundred, lay everywhere, their sharp faces, avid with curiosity, turned toward the door. Seeing the numbers of healthy men among the new arrivals, they turned away with their talonlike fingers clenching and unclenching in feral disappointment. Eleanora glanced at Luis, seeing in the flaring of his nostrils and the tightness of his lips an echo of what she suspected. They would not be attacked now, while they presented a united front with such small prospect of reward, but what little of value they possessed would be stripped from them bit by bit as soon as they could be separated.
These were not ordinary prisoners. From the length of the men’s beards and the state of the clothes they wore, she guessed that they had been incarcerated here for many years. Their faces mirrored only the most primitive of emotions; hate, fear, jealousy, and in the men, something that was even more disturbing, naked lust.
As the door clanged shut behind them, Slim leaned toward Luis. “What do you say we take ourselves one of those little rooms?”
Eleanora saw at once what he meant. Along one wall there were several doorless cubicles. Though small, they represented the only possible security. For the moment, they were a comparatively strong group. There could be no better time than now for what Slim proposed. This was not an occasion for sentiment or the recognition of rights. Such emotions were a liability here. They must take what they could while they had the strength.
With Luis limping in front, they moved in body toward the last cell on the end at the far side of the common room. The skirmish with the occupants, a pair of ferociously bearded men and their paramours, was brief.
Nursing his hand where one of the women had bitten him, Molina looked around. “Very nice,” he said. “Better than our last—”
“—Our last accommodation?” Luis finished. “Yes, I must agree. We will have to remember to thank them for their — hospitality.”
Though they could not all sleep on the bare stone shelf across the back, they could at least all be seated. This proved a definite advantage, since there was nothing to do but sit. By standing on the sleeping shelf they could peer out of the tiny, barred window set high in the wall, but there was nothing to be seen. The view was of a large, empty square enclosed by a stone wall. The light from the window was welcome during the day, making a pleasant dimness within the cell, but at night, because the torches could not reach their closed-in space, it was terrifyingly dark. And by some odd quirk of acoustics, the screams and cries, the grunts and moans and other bestial sounds of the natural and unnatural acts being committed outside in the common room, were funneled through their cell multiplied ten times over.
Before they had been in the prison a week they had learned to live with other sounds and their meanings, such as the clatter that heralded the coming of the two meals they were served a day. They knew when to stand back out of range of the guard’s bayonets, and when to surge forward to get their fair share of the food. They discovered who was considered to be the leader among the other prisoners, and what the rules, such as they were, consisted of. They came to the conclusion that as long as the four weakest members of their group remained in or near the cubicle, letting the two strongest, Slim and Gonzalez, bring their food, they were safe. This arrangement was made with so little discussion that it was several days before Eleanora, the person most benefited, was aware of it. It was done so quietly and matter-of-factly that it was difficult for her to comment on it, much less voice her gratit
ude.
“Don’t try,” Luis said in one of their rare moments of conversation while they took their exercise walking up and down outside their cell. “Not one of them will admit why they are taking such care not to leave you alone. Oh, they know, of course, but they will not admit it. Molina will say it is because you did not laugh when he ate the iguana, Gonzalez because you praised his cooking, and Slim perhaps because you remind him of his sister who died long ago. They will say it is because you cooked for them, smiled at them without teasing, did not scream at snakes and leeches, and took the splinters and thorns from their fingers with your long nails. All that will not be lies, and yet there is more. It may be that which the young soldier felt in you who called you an angel — a thing enhanced by your beauty though it does not depend upon it, a bright steadfastness that in a man might be called shining courage.”
“You flatter me, as always,” she said huskily, trying to smile.
“That is not possible,” he replied, and taking her arm, turned her gently back toward the safety of their cubicle.
More than all else, they learned to watch for the gray-haired priest, Father Sebastian, and to dread his arrival of an evening, for his prayers and his blessing unerringly marked the man he chose to give to them for death at dawn. For that, they discovered, was the use of the square which their cell overlooked. It was there, in its hot emptiness, that those whom Father Sebastian blessed were executed.
Time in that place of constant torchlight had no meaning. After so many calendarless days, they had little idea whether April was on the wane or May had already begun. Asking the other prisoners proved futile; they had even less idea. Money might have extracted the information from the guards, but of the few pesos they held between them there was none to spare for such luxurious knowledge. It may have been two weeks or three that they had been guests of the Hondurans, when a disturbance at the main door of the common room caught their attention. It was not mealtime, being only midafternoon, nor was it time for Father Sebastian. Glancing at Luis and Slim with a raised eyebrow, Molina sauntered to the doorway to take a look, his hands on his hips. Suddenly he was still.
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2 Page 72