A Set of Six | Page 7

By noon the heat of that vaulted place crammed to suffocation had
become unbearable. The prisoners crowded towards the window,
begging their guards for a drop of water; but the soldiers remained
lying in indolent attitudes wherever there was a little shade under a wall,
while the sentry sat with his back against the door smoking a cigarette,
and raising his eyebrows philosophically from time to time. Gaspar
Ruiz had pushed his way to the window with irresistible force. His
capacious chest needed more air than the others; his big face, resting
with its chin on the ledge, pressed close to the bars, seemed to support
the other faces crowding up for breath. From moaned entreaties they
had passed to desperate cries, and the tumultuous howl- ing of those
thirsty men obliged a young officer who was just then crossing the
courtyard to shout in order to make himself heard.
"Why don't you give some water to these prisoners?"
The sergeant, with an air of surprised innocence, excused himself by
the remark that all those men were condemned to die in a very few
hours.
Lieutenant Santierra stamped his foot. "They are condemned to death,
not to torture," he shouted. "Give them some water at once."
Impressed by this appearance of anger, the soldiers bestirred
themselves, and the sentry, snatching up his musket, stood to attention.
But when a couple of buckets were found and filled from the well, it
was discovered that they could not be passed through the bars, which
were set too close. At the prospect of quenching their thirst, the shrieks
of those trampled down in the struggle to get near the opening became
very heartrending. But when the soldiers who had lifted the buckets
towards the window put them to the ground again helplessly, the yell of
dis- appointment was still more terrible.
The soldiers of the army of Independence were not equipped with
canteens. A small tin cup was found, but its approach to the opening
caused such a com- motion, such yells of rage and pain in the vague
mass of limbs behind the straining faces at the window, that Lieutenant
Santierra cried out hurriedly, "No, no -- you must open the door,
sergeant."

The sergeant, shrugging his shoulders, explained that he had no right to
open the door even if he had had the key. But he had not the key. The
adjutant of the garrison kept the key. Those men were giving much
unnecessary trouble, since they had to die at sun- set in any case. Why
they had not been shot at once early in the morning he could not
understand.
Lieutenant Santierra kept his back studiously to the window. It was at
his earnest solicitations that the Commandante had delayed the
execution. This favour had been granted to him in consideration of his
dis- tinguished family and of his father's high position amongst the
chiefs of the Republican party. Lieutenant Santierra believed that the
General commanding would visit the fort some time in the afternoon,
and he ingenu- ously hoped that his naive intercession would induce
that severe man to pardon some, at least, of those crim- inals. In the
revulsion of his feeling his interference stood revealed now as guilty
and futile meddling. It ap- peared to him obvious that the general
would never even consent to listen to his petition. He could never save
those men, and he had only made himself responsible for the sufferings
added to the cruelty of their fate.
"Then go at once and get the key from the adjutant," said Lieutenant
Santierra.
The sergeant shook his head with a sort of bashful smile, while his eyes
glanced sideways at Gaspar Ruiz's face, motionless and silent, staring
through the bars at the bottom of a heap of other haggard, distorted,
yelling faces.
His worship the adjutant de Plaza, the sergeant murmured, was having
his siesta; and supposing that he, the sergeant, would be allowed access
to him, the only result he expected would be to have his soul flogged
out of his body for presuming to disturb his worship's repose. He made
a deprecatory movement with his hands, and stood stock-still, looking
down modestly upon his brown toes.
Lieutenant Santierra glared with indignation, but hesitated. His
handsome oval face, as smooth as a girl's, flushed with the shame of his
perplexity. Its nature humiliated his spirit. His hairless upper lip
trembled; he seemed on the point of either bursting into a fit of rage or
into tears of dismay.
Fifty years later, General Santierra, the venerable relic of revolutionary

times, was well able to remem- ber the feelings of the young lieutenant.
Since he had given up riding altogether, and found it difficult to walk
beyond the limits of his garden, the general's greatest delight