"Shoot the doors down! Shoot them down, Don Mario!" yelled the mob.
The Alcalde threw himself heavily up against the doors. "_Caramba!_"
he shrilled. "Fools! Demons! Open!--or it will be the worse for you!"
Jose decided that their silence should no longer exasperate the angry man. He put his mouth to the crevice between the doors.
"Don Mario," he cried, "this is sacred ground! The Host is exposed on the altar. Take your mob away. Disperse, and we will come out. We may settle this trouble amicably, if you will but listen to reason."
The Alcalde jumped up and down in his towering wrath. "Puppy-face!" he screamed, "but I am the law--I am the Government! A curse upon you, priest of Satan! Will you unbar these doors?"
"No!" replied Jose. "And if you attack us you attack the Church!"
"A curse on the Church! _Amigos!_ _Muchachos!_" he bawled, turning to the mob, "we will batter down the doors!"
The crowd surged forward again. But the props held firm. Again and again the mob hurled itself upon the thick doors. They bent, they sagged, but they held. Don Mario became apoplectic. A torrent of anathemas streamed from his thick lips.
"The side door!" some one shouted, recovering a portion of his scant wit.
"Aye--and the door of the _sacristia_!"
"Try the windows!"
Round the building streamed the crazed mob, without head, without reason, l.u.s.ting only for the lives of the frightened little band huddled together in the gloom within. Jose kept an arm about Carmen.
Ana bent sobbing over her tiny babe. Don Jorge and Rosendo remained mute and grim. Jose knew that those two would cast a long reckoning before they died. Juan and Lazaro went from door to window, steadying the props and making sure that they were holding. The tough, hard, tropical wood, though pierced in places by _comjejen_ ants, was resisting.
The sun was already high, and the _plaza_ had become a furnace. The patience of the mob quickly evaporated in the ardent heat. Don Mario"s wits had gone completely. Revenge, mingled with insensate zeal to manifest the authority which he believed his intercourse with Wenceslas had greatly augmented, had driven all rationality from his motives. Flaming anger had unseated his reason. Descending from the platform on which stood the church, he blindly drew up his armed followers and bade them fire upon the church doors.
If Wenceslas, acting-Bishop by the grace of political machination, could have witnessed the stirring drama then in progress in ancient Simiti, he would have laughed aloud at the complete fulfillment of his carefully wrought plans. The cunning of the shrewd, experienced politician had never been more clearly manifested than in the carrying out of the little program which he had set for the unwise Alcalde of this almost unknown little town, whereby the hand of Congress should be forced and the inevitable revolt inaugurated. Don Mario had seized the government arms, the deposition of which in Simiti in his care had const.i.tuted him more than ever the representative of federal authority. But, in his wild zeal, he had fallen into the trap which Wenceslas had carefully arranged for him, and now was engaged in a mad attack upon the Church itself, upon ecclesiastical authority as vested in the priest Jose. How could Wenceslas interpret this but as an anticlerical uprising? There remained but the final scene. And while the soft-headed dupes and maniacal supporters of Don Mario were hurling bullets into the thick doors of the old church in Simiti, Wenceslas sat musing in his comfortable study in the cathedral of Cartagena, waiting with what patience he could command for further reports from Don Mario, whose last letter had informed him that the arrest of the priest Jose and his unfortunate victim, Carmen, was only a few hours off.
When the first shots rang out, and the bullets ploughed into the hard wood of the heavy doors, Jose"s heart sank, and he gave himself up as lost. Lazaro and Juan cowered upon the floor. Carmen crept close to Jose, as he sat limply upon a bench, and put her arms about him.
"Padre dear," she whispered, "it isn"t true--it isn"t true! They don"t really want to kill us! They don"t--really! Their thoughts have only the minus sign!"
The priest clasped her to his breast. The recriminating thought flashed over him that he alone was the cause of this. He had sacrificed them all--none but he was to blame. Ah, G.o.d above! if he could only offer himself to satiate the mob"s l.u.s.t, and save these innocent ones! Lurid, condemnatory thoughts burned through his brain like molten iron. He rose hastily and rushed to the door. Rosendo and Don Jorge seized him as he was about to lift a prop.
"What do you mean, Padre?" they exclaimed.
"I am going out, friends--I shall give myself to them for you all. It is the only way. I am the one they seek. Let them have me, if they will spare you!"
But the firing had ceased, and Don Mario was approaching the door.
Jose bent down and called to him. "Myself for the others, Don Mario!"
he cried. "But promise to spare them--but give me your word--and I will yield myself to arrest!"
"_Caramba_, fool priest!" shouted the Alcalde in derision. "It is not you that the good Bishop wants, but the girl! I have his letters demanding that I send her to him! If you will come out, you shall not be hurt. Only, Rosendo must stand trial for the harm he did in the fight this morning; and the girl must go to Cartagena. As for the rest of you, you will be free. Are the terms not reasonable? Give me your answer in five minutes."
Jose turned to the little band. There was awful determination in his voice. "Juan and Lazaro," he said, "we will open a window quickly in the rear of the church and let you out. It is not right that you should die with us. And Don Jorge, too--"
"Stop there, _amigo!_" interrupted the latter in a voice as cold as steel. "My life has not the value of a white heron. Can I do better than give it for a cause that I know to be right? Nay, man, I remain with you. Let the lads go, if they will--"
Lazaro forced himself between Don Jorge and the priest. "Padre," he said quietly, "to you I owe what I am. I remain here."
Jose looked through the gloom at Juan. The boy"s eyes were fixed on Carmen. He turned and gazed for a moment at a window, as if hesitating between two decisions. Then he shook his head slowly. "Padre," he said, though his voice trembled, "I, too, remain."
The Alcalde received his answer with a burst of inarticulate rage. He rushed back to his followers with his arms waving wildly. "Shoot!" he screamed. "Shoot! Pierce the doors! Batter them down! _Compadres_, get the poles and burst in the shutters. _Caramba!_ it is the Government they are defying!"
A volley from the rifles followed his words. The thick doors shook under the blast. A bullet pierced the wall and whizzed past Carmen.
Jose seized the girl and drew her down under a bench. The startled bats among the roof beams fluttered wildly about through the heavy gloom. Frightened rats scurried around the altar. The rusty bell in the tower cried out as if in protest against the sacrilege. Juan burst into tears and crept beneath a bench.
"Padre," said Rosendo, "it is only a question of time when the doors will fall. See--that bullet went clean through! _Bien_, let us place the women back of the altar, while we men stand here at one side of the doors, so that when they fall we may dash out and cut our way through the crowd. If we throw ourselves suddenly upon them, we may s.n.a.t.c.h away a rifle or two. Then Don Jorge and I, with the lads here, may drive them back--perhaps beat them! But my first blow shall be for Don Mario! I vow here that, if I escape this place, he shall not live another hour!"
"Better so, Rosendo, than that they should take us alive. But--Carmen?
Do we leave her to fall into Don Mario"s hands?"
Rosendo"s voice, low and cold, froze the marrow in the priest"s bones.
"Padre, she will not fall into the Alcalde"s hands."
"G.o.d above! Rosendo, do you--"
A piercing cry checked him. "_Santa Virgen! Padre--!_" Lazaro had collapsed upon the floor. Rosendo and Jose hurried to him.
"Padre!" The man"s breath came in gasps. "Padre--I confess--pray for me. It struck me--here!" He struggled to lay a hand upon his bleeding breast.
"To the altar, _amigos_!" cried Don Jorge, ducking his head as a bullet sang close to it.
Seizing the expiring Lazaro, they hurriedly dragged him down the aisle and took refuge back of the brick altar. The bullets, now piercing the walls of the church with ease, whizzed about them. One struck the pendant figure of the Christ, and it fell crashing to the floor.
Rosendo stood in horror, as if he expected a miracle to follow this act of sacrilege.
"Oh, G.o.d!" prayed Jose, "only Thy hand can save us!"
"He will save us, Padre--He will!" cried Carmen, creeping closer to him through the darkness. "G.o.d is everywhere, and right here!"
"Padre," said Don Jorge hurriedly, "the Host--is it on the altar?"
"Yes--why?" replied the priest.
"Then, when the doors fall, do you stand in front of the altar, holding it aloft and calling on the people to stand back, lest the hand of G.o.d strike them!"
Jose hesitated not. "It is a chance--yes, a bare chance. They will stop before it--or they will kill me! But I will do it!"
"Padre! You shall not--Padre! Then I shall stand with you!" Carmen"s voice broke clear and piercing through the din. Jose struggled to free himself from her.
"_Na_, Padre," interposed Rosendo, "it may be better so! Let her stand with you! But--_Caramba_! Make haste!"
The clamor without increased. Heavy poles and billets of wood had been fetched, and blow after blow now fell upon every shutter and door. The sharp spitting of the rifles tore the air, and bullets crashed through the walls and windows. In the heavy shadows back of the altar Rosendo and Don Jorge crouched over the sobbing women. Lazaro lay very still.
Jose knew as he stretched out a hand through the darkness and touched the cold face that the faithful spirit had fled. How soon his own would follow he knew not, nor cared. Keeping close to the floor, he crept out and around to the front of the altar. Reaching up, he grasped the Sacred Host, and then stood upright, holding it out before him. Carmen rose by his side and took his hand. Together in the gloom they waited.