Flames Coming out of the Top (25 page)

Sumultaneously every door in the hotel was wrenched open and the frightened guests appeared. Señor Muras was the first. He was dressed in scarlet silk pyjamas with magenta frogs. He ran up and down the landing roaring for the manager. Carmel Muras appeared behind him in a white wrap. She was not in the least alarmed, only curious.

“What the hell?” she asked, when she saw Dunnett.

The manager was no calmer than the rest when he could be found. He merely kept repeating that it was the first time that anything of the sort had happened in his hotel. He was still protesting when the stern gun of the
Hernando
came into action, and, firing over the steam-boat's funnel like a
mitrailleuse
, cast up a shell into the leper colony.

With a scream of terror the manager broke away from his guests and dashed down the street into the brick-built cellar of the
mercado
. He was thus the first of the hotel's occupants to be killed. A stray bullet of the Subrican defence corps got him as he came round the corner.

With the second explosion Señor Muras recovered his nerve. He drove Carmel back to her room and began snatching at the buttons of his own pyjama jacket. Dunnett felt absurdly superior simply by virtue of the fact that he already had his trousers on. By the time he had found his boots as well, two more shells had fallen. The last one cracked the glass of his bedroom window. He could feel the rush of air from it even inside the bedroom. And to his own surprise he felt strangely calm; calm but exhilarated. His fingers were tingling but his head was perfectly clear. On an impulse of the moment he returned to his room and removed Mr. Verking's revolver. There was something oddly reassuring in the feel of the massive walnut butt in his hand.

Not that General Orero had been inactive in the meantime. The ten-pounder in the gunboat had been got into action and the gun corps was going through the motions of artillery drill in grim earnest. Their firing was no better than the Paraguayans', but the eucalyptus branches above the Paraguayan boat were soon scattered. The
Hernando Arias de Saavedra
drew anchor and sailed down the stream round the bend. Its shots after that went wide of the mark. They fell idly and capriciously and some failed to explode. But they were deeply destructive to the
morale
.

General Orero did his best. He lined his men up in battle formation along the river bank to repel any landing party. But he did not reckon on concerted attack, and did not know that at that moment Major Schultz's vanguard were hacking their way through the tangled jungle on the eastern side of the town, proceeding in accordance with an impeccable strategy of which they understood nothing. The first to emerge were two Indians carrying the several parts of a machine gun. They put it together under the direction of a young Paraguayan
officer, and began spraying the street. The noise was like that of a mechanical riveter. General Orero hastily reversed his defences and sent a body of picked men to remove the machine gun nuisance. No sooner had they gone than Major Schultz moved up his landing forces under the cover of the
Hernando Arias de Saavedra
. They came up swiftly and efficiently in canoes, murdering the astonished sentries as they came. The Subrican gunboat was captured by a boarding-party of eight men and its officers jumped overboard. In the face of this colossal treachery, General Orero found himself trapped. He gave the command for hand-to-hand fighting. Rifles were dropped and
machetes
came back into their own. General Orero himself made his way to the hotel, dodging from house to house as he came.

Last of all, up the river in a small launch with a pair of binoculars in his hand came Major Schultz. He was in time to stop the Captain of the
Hernando
from killing his own men by a too enthusiastic bombardment. He ordered the man to restrict himself to demolishing the waterfront. And all the time he was speaking, he kept wiping the mist off his glasses: he was pathetically short-sighted and for most of the battle he was unable to see a thing.

Inside the hotel, Señor Muras had taken command of the situation. He acted throughout with commendable thoroughness. There were only two other guests in the hotel—a Frenchman interested in banana concessions and a Bolivian agent of the river steamboat company—and Señor Muras at once began instructing them in the art of defence. From the way he set about it, he might have been making barricades all his life. He piled the marble-topped tables up against the windows and doors so that anyone attempting to get in would find a solid sheet of stone confronting him, and wedged the whole construction in place with the chairs. Soon there was nowhere to sit and nothing to sit at; but at least the place was impregnable from the street. Just as they had finished, the Paraguayan Indian machine gunner shifted his emplacement a little and began absent-mindedly spraying the
buildings. A spurt of bullets—they came so fast that those inside the hotel never knew how many—came crashing in through the flimsy side wall, leaving a pattern of splintered holes, and cleared the bar of bottles. It was as though someone had gone along with a hammer smashing the whole row to ruins. The room reeked of spirits and the floor now glittered with broken glass.

“What are we waiting for?” Carmel asked. “It won't be bottles next time.”

“It's worse in the street,” Dunnett answered. “Here they are just guessing at us. Out there they'd get us every time.” He was surprised how cool he was. He felt almost as though he had been under fire all his life.

The man who was feeling it worst was the French banana merchant. He was white-faced and jittery, and his eyes kept straying to the next circular gaps in the wall as though he expected all bullets to enter by the same holes. “There must be some way out,” he kept saying. “There must be some way out.” Then he remembered something and pointed to the back of the hotel. “There is a road that goes into the forest,” he said. “Please God it has been left open.”

Señor Muras stepped forward. He waved his hand deprecatingly in the Frenchman's face. “Not to move,” he said, “I will investigate for myself.” He turned to Dunnett. “You may come with me.” Señor Muras was really superb in his self-assurance.

The hotel seemed suddenly strangely quite. The gunboat had stopped firing, since the garrison had surrendered, and the only noise that now came from the town was the sound of desultory shooting from somewhere down by the river bank, the kind of sound that means that one or two men with rifles are picking off any stragglers whom they can see to fire at. When the native machine gunners without warning loosened off another round of ammunition at random it came as an unforgivable assault on the ears. At the back of the hotel the air of calm was even more pronounced. There might never have been a bombardment. The bank of forest trees,
brilliantly verdant now that the mist had cleared away, were waving unshuttered in the half breeze.

“It leads through the forest to the military river,” said the banana man indicating the narrow path before them: he had crept delicately along the passage in their wake and was now trembling with excitement at the thought of escape. “There's a little landing stage at the top. And some boats. Perhaps we could get one if we all stuck together.”

Señor Muras contemplated the pathway for a moment. He was not now so keen as he had been on trusting the Paraguayans. “We will go,” he said briefly. He went back into the saloon to get his company together; the flimsy walls rattled as he passed. “Out there,” he said, pointing down the passage and through the open door at the end, “is escape. Say your prayers and keep your heads low. As soon as you are clear of the buildings run for it. Run like a deer. We shall all meet again in the entrance to the forest.”

At that moment the light at the end of the passage was blocked out. It was General Orero. His face looked very drawn and grey above the gaudy tabs on his collar. In both hands he held a revolver as though he had been holding up the entire Paraguayan army single-handed. He advanced steadily down the passage without speaking, almost with the air of one leading a procession. At the door of the saloon he stood quite still staring full at Señor Muras.

Señor Muras greeted him with enthusiasm. “You are still alive,” he said. “That is wonderful. You can show us the way up the river.”

General Orero did not reply. He stood there, like a minister about to address a gathering. Then he lowered one of his revolvers until it was pointing somewhere in the middle of Señor Muras's body and said slowly: “You are a Paraguayan agent. I am going to shoot you.”

At the words Señor Muras opened his mouth like a fish gulping in air, but no sound came. He raised his hands in front of him as if to protect himself and began backing away across the room, his eyes fixed upon the small point of the
revolver. But it was no use. General Orero followed him as he moved. Then, carefully and deliberately, he pulled the trigger three times, firing the last two shots into the body as it lay on the ground. At that range the bullets went in their target with a soft
clup-clup:
it was quite distinct from the uproar of the discharge.

When the first shot was fired, Señor Muras was knocked over by the impact. But he was not dead. His knees were slowly arching and one foot was already off the ground when General Orero fired again. His body bounced right off the floor this time, and when he was still again he started groaning. No one interfered: perhaps it was the other revolver that dissuaded them. They stood round watching this sinister ritual between the two men, one living and one dying. Muras's groans increased. General Orero bent over and fired again at a two-foot range. This time there was silence. General Orero dropped the gun and walked silently out of the room.

It was Carmel who spoke first. She went down on her knees but got up again hastily: her father was not in any state to be touched. “Isn't anyone going to do anything?” she asked. “That's murder.”

The inadequacy of the remark did not strike anyone at that moment: they were all too dazed to comprehend. They could only stand there trying to look away from the enormous figure on the floor. Just before the last shot, Señor Muras had endeavoured to shield his eyes. His arms were still crossed over his face as though he were expecting someone to strike him.

Carmel Muras turned on Dunnett suddenly. “You call yourself a man,” she started screaming, “and you allow someone to do that before your eyes without raising a hand to stop it. You're just a cowardly Englishman, that's what you are. You're a murderer yourself because you could have saved him. Murderer! Do you hear me? Murderer!” She looked round for something to throw but there was nothing within reach. Then her eye caught something. She bent down and picked up from the floor a great sliver of glass from
one of the broken bottles: it had a ragged edge like an icicle.

The edge was so sharp that Dunnett felt no pain. Only a momentary and passing hotness, as though a narrow fiery breath had been breathed on him. He saw his trousers leg split open for half its length and the blood spurt. Simula taneously with it there came a sudden fusilade from the street. It was from a firing party that had lined up opposite the house and was peppering the place: the marble barricade was fractured into chunks like a stonemason's yard and more holes were drilled in the woodwork. Major Schultz's instructions about consolidating the main street were being faithfully and properly carried out.

With the first burst of firing, Dunnett grabbed Carmel's arm and began to run for it. She struggled at first, trying to throw him off. But he was too strong for her. He forced her down the passage, putting his knee into the small of her back whenever she resisted. At the doorway the Bolivian and Frenchman were talking in frantic, impassioned whispers. They both wanted to surrender at once and get it over; only they were afraid that in their present excitable mood the Paraguayans would perhaps not recognise the gesture as one of surrender.

“Run for it,” said Dunnett. “They're here.”

Because the Bolivian and the Frenchman were still talking, Dunnett pushed his way past them, and in doing so he probably saved his life; his life and Carmel's. For as soon as the two men saw the other running for it, they came running desperately after them and so provided a kind of living screen when the bullets came. Dunnett and Carmel were halfway across to the trees when Major Schultz's scouts saw them. Dunnett turned his head and caught sight of one of the Paraguayan soldiers—he was a small man with bare brown knees like a Boy Scout's—steady himself against the wall of the hotel and take aim. Simultaneously with the noise of the rifle the Frenchman gave a little choke almost as though someone had punched him in the back, and he went down. There were other shots, but they did not hear the Bolivian hit; they only knew that
by the time they reached the protection of the trees he was no longer with them.

“I can run better if you leave go,” Carmel gasped. “You're stopping me.”

Dunnett let her go. Mr. Verking's revolver had been banging against his hips as he ran and, now that his hand was free, he bent down to steady it. In doing so, he caught sight of his leg. It was scarlet from the knee down. The wound in it was open and the blood was being squeezed out at every stride. There was still no pain from it, however: that was to come later. But at that moment his foot went into a hole up to his ankle and he fell forward on to his face. He lay there for a moment, all the breath knocked out of him. It was Carmel who pulled him to his feet again.

“Come on,” she said. She added something about his leg, but he could not hear what it was.

The track curved in its path and made detours round cochimba trees that were too big to have been cut down; their six foot trunks stood across the way like solid buttresses. Dunnett took comfort from the fact; every twist in the path was a new protection from those flying bullets. But they did not stop running. They ran like foxes. Something made them run. They weren't human beings any more, they were simply two madly racing animals trying to escape from the fury that was behind them. Carmel was holding her side as though she had a stitch, and the blood was being shaken from Dunnett's leg every time he put his foot down. But still they ran. They did not know that Major Schultz's perfectly trained gunmen had stopped exactly where they had been told to stop and were not attempting to follow the two fugitives. Dunnett and Carmel ran frantically on from the terror that was no longer there.