My Father Was Warned By The Neighbours That We Were In Great Danger,
Since These Men Were Now Lawless And Would Not Hesitate To Plunder And
Kill In Their Retreat, And That All Riding-Horses Would Certainly Be
Seized By Them.
As a precaution he had the horses driven in and
concealed in the plantation, and that was all he would do.
"Oh no," he
said, with a laugh, "they won't hurt us," and so we were all out and
about all day with the front gate and all doors and windows standing
open. From time to time a band on tired horses rode to the gate and,
without dismounting, shouted a demand for fresh horses. In every case
he went out and talked to them, always with a smiling, pleasant face,
and after assuring them that he had no horses for them they slowly and
reluctantly took their departure.
About three o'clock in the afternoon, the hottest hour of the day, a
troop of ten men rode up at a gallop, raising a great cloud of dust,
and coming in at the gate drew rein before the verandah. My father as
usual went out to meet them, whereupon they demanded fresh horses in
loud menacing voices.
Indoors we were all gathered in the large sitting-room, waiting the
upshot in a state of intense anxiety, for no preparations had been
made and no means of defence existed in the event of a sudden attack
on the house. We watched the proceedings from the interior, which was
too much in shadow for our dangerous visitors to see that they were
only women and children there and one man, a visitor, who had
withdrawn to the further end of the room and sat leaning back in an
easy chair, trembling and white as a corpse, with a naked sword in his
hand. He explained to us afterwards, when the danger was all over,
that fortunately he was an excellent swordsman, and that having found
the weapon in the room, he had resolved to give a good account of the
ten ruffians if they had made a rush to get in.
My father replied to these men as he had done to the others, assuring
them that he had no horses to give them. Meanwhile we who were indoors
all noticed that one of the ten men was an officer, a beardless young
man of about twenty-one or two, with a singularly engaging face. He
took no part in the proceedings, but sat silent on his horse, watching
the others with a peculiar expression, half contemptuous and half
anxious, on his countenance. And he alone was unarmed, a circumstance
which struck us as very strange. The others were all old veterans,
middle-aged and oldish men with grizzled beards, all in scarlet jacket
and scarlet _chiripa_ and a scarlet cap of the quaint form then worn,
shaped like a boat turned upside down, with a horn-like peak in front,
and beneath the peak a brass plate on which was the number of the
regiment.
The men appeared surprised at the refusal of horses, and stated
plainly that they would not accept it; at which my father shook his
head and smiled. One of the men then asked for water to quench his
thirst. Some one in the house then took out a large jug of cold water,
and my father taking it handed it up to the man; he drank, then passed
the jug on to the other thirsty ones, and after going its rounds the
jug was handed back and the demand for fresh horses renewed in
menacing tones. There was some water left in the jug, and my father
began pouring it out in a thin stream, making little circles and
figures on the dry dusty ground, then once more shook his head and
smiled very pleasantly on them. Then one of the men, fixing his eyes
on my father's face, bent forward and suddenly struck his hand
violently on the hilt of his broadsword and, rattling the weapon, half
drew it from its sheath. This nerve-trying experiment was a complete
failure, its only effect being to make my father smile up at the man
even more pleasantly than before, as if the little practical joke had
greatly amused him.
The strange thing was that my father was not playing a part - that it
was his nature to act in just that way. It is a curious thing to say
of any person that his highest or most shining qualities were nothing
but defects, since, apart from these same singular qualities, he was
just an ordinary person with nothing to distinguish him from his
neighbours, excepting perhaps that he was not anxious to get rich and
was more neighbourly or more brotherly towards his fellows than most
men. The sense of danger, the instinct of self-preservation supposed
to be universal, was not in him, and there were occasions when this
extraordinary defect produced the keenest distress in my mother. In
hot summers we were subject to thunderstorms of an amazing violence,
and at such times, when thunder and lightning were nearest together
and most terrifying to everybody else, he would stand out of doors
gazing calmly up at the sky as if the blinding flashes and world-
shaking thunder-crashes had some soothing effect, like music, on his
mind. One day, just before noon, it was reported by one of the men
that the saddle-horses could not be found, and my father, with his
spy-glass in his hand, went out and ran up the wooden stairs to the
_mirador_ or look-out constructed at the top of the big barn-like
building used for storing wool. The _mirador_ was so high that
standing on it one was able to see even over the tops of the tall
plantation trees, and to protect the looker-out there was a high
wooden railing round it, and against this the tall flag-staff was
fastened.
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