Chapter XX: The Massacre at Caonao

Some weeks had passed, and all had hitherto gone well, when one day, on arriving at the suburbs of the native town of Caonao, Las Casas announced it to be his intention to remain there two or three days, making it the limit of his present expedition, and then to return to the head-quarters of Velasquez, with the report of their doings and adventures.

"Meantime," he said, with the cheerful good-humour proper to his nature when at ease for others--"meantime we will make holiday for the next forty-eight hours."

"And," said Diego smiling, "thanks to our good red brothers here, we can also give our holiday its proper accompaniment of feasting."

"Just so," agreed Las Casas, with an answering smile. "I confess the truth; it was the sight of the abundant supplies of all kinds with which we are provided, that led me to resolve on marking this terminus of our pleasant expedition with something of the nature of a festival. Gather the men for me, Diego, some into the surrounding houses, the remainder may well encamp out here in these gardens, fit for Paradise itself."

"And for yourself, father?" asked Montoro. "Are you bent on other explorations?"

"Not very distant ones," was the bright answer. "I am but about to explore yon temple, and endeavour to use my stammering tongue for God's glory with its inmates. They may now better believe, I trust, that we come as bearers of a message of mercy."

"Truly I hope so," replied Montoro, as he nodded the brief adieu to his friend, and then turned quickly to execute the duties committed to him. In thus hastily turning, he almost knocked over a man who, unobserved, had silently moved up close to the two chiefs of the party, until he stood almost shoulder to shoulder with de Diego.

Diego was about to administer a sharp and haughty reproof to the presumptuous intruder on the society of his superiors, but a second look at his companion checked the words on his lips; and he stood a listener instead of a speaker, as the man uttered, through drawn lips that scarcely moved, a wild denunciation of the Amorites, the Hivites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Gergashites, and the Jebusites.

Those who hear of the matter now may feel tempted to smile, but there was no smile on the countenance of the young nobleman, no feeling of mirth in his heart, as he stood facing the mad fanatic. The man's eyes were fixed in a glassy stare that saw nought then visible; and his eager, bloodthirsty curses against those he denounced as the enemies of God, and of his Christ, made Montoro's blood run cold.

"Friend," he began at last--"friend, rouse thyself. Recall thy scattered thoughts. Those enemies of God's people, and daring breakers of His laws, have perished for their iniquities more than two thousand years ago. What priestly tales from the Holy Scriptures have been startling thy ears of late?"

"He hath been ill, at death's door with malarious fever, but a few days before joining this expedition, Señor," answered another of the soldiers coming forward now, and hastily putting his hand on his comrade's arm, as though to draw him away, but at the same time with an air of secret warning which, at another time, would not have escaped the keen eyes of the young officer. Now, however, Montoro was anxious to get the clerigo's wishes carried out before his return on the scene, and he was more intent on taking a view of the ground around him, as to its capabilities for comfortable encampment, than in noting the actions of individuals.

"See," he said kindly, but somewhat absently, "yonder come our kind Indian friends with supplies of water; doubtless thy comrade is suffering from thirst. Go forward with him, and see that his wants are well attended to."

The man bowed, and quickly pulled his companion on to hinder the word answer he seemed about to give.

"Thou art a very fool, Botello," he muttered angrily, when out of earshot of Diego. "Of what good to rouse us up to help fulfil thy purpose, when thy blabbing lips must go well-nigh to betray it, to the one of all others most keen to hinder it. The clerigo hath some thoughts to spare from his red lambs to his own comfortable living, but this Señor Diego carrieth the vile heathen on his back to his own greatest detriment. Verily, methinks he would far sooner have that sword of thine pierce him than one of them."

Botello turned, with those dull-burning, sullen eyes of his fixed upon his friend.

"If it is thus with him," he said between his clenched teeth, "then will he receive due punishment in witnessing the slaughter of those he thus dares to cherish. But come, the hour has arrived, and the victims."

And suddenly, with a wild cry, he dashed forward towards a group of some hundreds of defenceless Indians--men, women, and children--laden with fruits, and jars of water for their Spanish guests. Snatching his sword from its sheath it flashed for a few moments in the sun, as he brandished it on high, and then, with a madman's howl, he plunged it into the bodies of an infant and its mother who was advancing with a timid smile to offer drink to the thirsty travellers.

Tearing the reeking weapon from his first quivering victims he rushed on over them, dealing death and wounds frantically around him. For some moments he was alone in his dread activity. The Indians were spellbound with the dismal horror. Even his own fellows were awe-struck with the impetus of the hideous onslaught.

But quickly the scene changed. In his fatal career the wretched madman cut down the beloved young squaw of a tall and unusually powerful Indian, before he could fling himself before her as a cover. Baffled of his loving effort he threw himself upon the Spaniard, utterly regardless, in his despairing fury, of the blood-dripping sword. Snapping it with his hands as though it had been a thread from his native cotton plants, he tossed away the pieces, and then, with those sinewy, disengaged fingers, throttled his antagonist, and cast the dead body of the wretched Botello beside that of the murdered Indian.

The red man's ferocious shout of triumph was the signal for answering shouts of fury from the Spaniards. They had looked on while innocent and gentle women and children were ruthlessly slaughtered, but the sight of one of their own number slain was one that aroused all their fiercest feelings of revenge, and ere it could be well said that they had had time for thought swords and daggers were flashing in the light, the fair, flower-bestrewn earth was streaming with blood, and mangled bodies of dead and dying creatures, some still clasping their simple offerings, that pleaded for good-will, in their stiffening hands, were piled in awful heaps around the camping ground.

To this drear, sickening sight Montoro de Diego rushed forward as he saw the tumult that was raging. Guzman, one of the few who remained faithful to his leader's trust in him, flew to the temple to summon Las Casas. The redskins' friend was just issuing from the building when his follower reached it, breathless with haste, pallid with horror, and bespattered with gore from the pitiful victims who had been falling in wholesale crowds around him. The countenance of the clerigo turned pale also as he caught sight of the panting soldier.

"What is it?" he exclaimed. "Our brethren--what of them? Is it a massacre?"

Guzman nodded. He could not speak; one word he managed to gasp out--"Go." For a massacre it was indeed, though not of the nature imagined by Las Casas; not a massacre perpetrated by ignorant heathen of those from whom they had scarce ever received ought but wrong, but a massacre barbarously committed by Christians on those from whom they had received nought but kindness and submissive respect. But Las Casas waited not to learn more from his breathless retainer. He saw the wild tumult surging in the distance; he heard the confused roar of mingled shrieks, shouts, yells, and groans; and whatever was going forward that concerned his company his place was in their midst, to die with them if their rescue were no longer possible.

In a moment of time this decision had darted through his brain, and the next instant he was flying over the ground that intervened between the temple of Caonao, and the open plain where the deadliest of the uproar was in awful progress.

Two or three huts of less pretensions than the houses in the town were scattered here and there. Close to the fighting, dying, struggling multitudes stood one of these wooden buildings somewhat larger than the rest. In it a number of the hospitable Indian women had been gathered, a few minutes since, cooking and preparing food for their cruel invaders. Now a panic-stricken, shrieking rabble of both sexes and all ages was dashing into it, Indians pursued by Spaniards--Indians, as Las Casas perceived at the first horror-stricken glance, with nothing but crushed fruits and flowers in their hands, or wounded infants moaning in their arms, Spaniards with blood-dropping, crimsoned swords. Then he knew all. A groan of bitterest anguish burst from his lips--

"Oh, my God!"

The words were a prayer, an abject prayer to the Most High for mercy. Had the earth at that moment opened her black jaws and swallowed up every Spaniard present, had fire from heaven licked them up and carried them to hell, Las Casas would have felt no wonder. He wondered more that an all-powerful God should spare.

One moment he gave to that groan, one moment to that prayer, and then, throwing himself in the doorway of the hut, he dashed aside a half-frenzied soldier who was entering in pursuit of the wretched fugitives, and uttered a mighty, furious shout:

"Back, Spaniards, back, you dastardly mean hounds, every one of you, or run your swords thus hallowed with the blood of the innocents into your leader's body. I invite you to it, fiends every one of you rather than men, that I may the more speedily close mine eyes for ever on this scene fit only for the shades of hell."

Then he looked into the hut upon the huddled flock of trembling, weeping, wounded human sheep. Some had climbed, for refuge from their bloodthirsty pursuers, to the rafters of the roof, and hung there, with their wild eyes gleaming, through their long black hair, down upon events below, and their white teeth chattering for fear.

The sudden appearance of Las Casas upon the spot, and the change of his usual mild demeanour to one of such haughty, biting indignation, had created a temporary, rapid lull about the spot where he stood. A permanent arrest of the massacre in that direction, he all too fondly believed, and so he began to soothe and reassure the poor creatures gathered together for death within the walls of that humble little dwelling. Some few words of comfort in their own language he knew, and spoke most eagerly, but the deep sympathy of his countenance, his pitying eyes, spoke still more eloquently, and above all, his fame had come before him even here, as a father and friend of the helpless.

Gradually some put back the hair from their faces and ventured to look around them, mothers loosened their convulsive grasp of their children, and the climbers on the rafters swung themselves down to the ground again. But even Las Casas could see that all was not yet achieved for the restoration of peace. At a few hundred yards' distance the horrible, shameful work of slaughter still continued, and once more quitting the hut and its defenceless multitude, Bartholomew Las Casas dashed onwards to repeat his efforts at arresting the wholesale murder of defenceless men, helpless women, the aged and the infant.

"Oh, Montoro!" he ejaculated as to himself, as he neared this fresh scene of horror. "Alas! Montoro de Diego, where canst thou have been to allow such things!"

A voice from beside his feet answered him--"I am here, my friend. Disabled at the first moment. But do not heed me. Hasten to save what poor remnant there may yet remain of these unhappy victims."

Las Casas looked at his half fainting friend, then at the dreadful _mêlée_ beyond, and with a hurried--"I will return immediately," he ran on, and a second time hurled his furious commands at his followers to cease their cowardly slaughter of their helpless prey.

A second time the leader's voice and the leader's presence cowed the Spaniards back to order--momentarily. From the rear where the hut lay there suddenly broke upon the air wilder shrieks and yells than had been heard before. Deep oaths and curses of Spanish throats were mingled with the shrill Indian cries, and off darted the soldiers gathered about Las Casas to join their other comrades. They were like so many score of bloodhounds, with the taste for blood so aroused that it could no more be satisfied. Not again could the friend of the Indians reach the doorway of that hut until it had become a charnel-house, so crammed with the dead and dying, that the stoutest heart might turn away from the ghastly task of learning if there were yet any, amongst those heaps of mangled bodies, to whom it might be possible to speak last words of pity.

There had been five hundred living human beings crowded into that building when Las Casas left it ten minutes ago, now there lay there five hundred mangled bodies lying in crimson pools, some already stiff and stark, some writhing in the death agonies, none ever to see the sun in this world again, or to learn on earth that the religion called the Christian faith, which those white intruders came to spread, was not the religion of a demon more vile than any their untaught imaginings had ever dared portray.

A poor mother's despairing wail over her mortally wounded child, had been the slight spark needed to rekindle the blind rage of the Spanish soldiers. A soldier had held a crucifix before the infant's dying eyes, and the mother, fearing fresh cruelties, had wildly dashed it from the man's hand. That was more than provocation enough for gold-seekers who salved their greed for wealth and fame with the plea, that their journeyings were to widen the limits of Christ's kingdom.

Scarcely had the crucifix fallen to the ground ere the murdered woman fell beside it. Many a dead body had the man to move the following day ere he recovered the treasured symbol of an immortal love. All that night the leader of the expedition knelt, alone, in prayer.

All that night Montoro de Diego lay praying, faint and weak from loss of blood, shed at the commencement of the hideous fray in the vain effort to arrest the massacre. Never, so long as Montoro lived, did he hear the name of the little town of Caonao without a shudder, never did he remember the sounds of those women's wails, the sounds of those children's cries of dying agony, without a moan escaping his own lips, and a shivering horror overwhelming him that such things should have been.

One day for a day of burial, and then, in a solemn hush as though a funeral _cortége_, or a train of vanquished fugitives, the expedition formed again for marching, and retraced its steps to St. Jago. Montoro made one attempt to cheer his friend, but the soothing words were hurriedly put aside.

"Nay, nay, Diego. Speak not to me of comfort in our shame and bitter affliction. I came forth confident in my own strength, in my own power to rule man and to guide those under me in the ways of peace, and the Lord of Hosts has thus humbled my presumptuousness in the dust. Speak not to me of comfort; there is none save in prayer."