waited behind those doors for the first of the rush.
“We can’t break through a bunch like that, Habert,” was Davies’ comment.
“And if we die under their feet we’ll be of little use to Billy Boy or anybody else
up the Panuco,” Wemple added. “And if—”
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64
A new movement of the mob caused him to break off. It was splitting before a
slow and silent advance of a file of white-clad men.
“Bluejackets—Mayo’s come back for us after all,” Habert muttered.
“Then we can get a navy launch,” Davies said.
The bedlam of the mob died away, and, in silence, the sailors reached the street
door and knocked for admittance. All three went down to open it, and to discover
that the callers were not Americans but two German lieutenants and half a dozen
German marines. At sight of the Americans, the rage of the mob rose again, and
was quelled by the grounding of the rifle butts of the marines.
“No, thank you;” the senior lieutenant, in passable English, declined the invitation
to enter. He unconcernedly kept his cigar alive at such times that the mob
drowned his voice. “We are on the way back to our ship. Our commander
conferred with the English and Dutch commanders; but they declined to
cooperate, so our commander has undertaken the entire responsibility. We have
been the round of the hotels. They are to hold their own until daybreak, when
we’ll take them off. We have given them rockets such as these.—Take them. If
your house is entered, hold your own and send up a rocket from the roof. We can
be here in force, in forty-five minutes. Steam is up in all our launches, launch
crews and marines for shore duty are in the launches, and at the first rocket we
shall start.”
“Since you are going aboard now, we should like to go with you,” Davies said,
after having rendered due thanks.
The surprise and distaste on both lieutenants’ faces was patent.
“Oh, no,” Davies laughed. “We don’t want refuge. We have friends fifty miles up
river, and we want to get to the river in order to go up after them.”
The pleasure on the officers’ faces was immediate as they looked a silent
conference at each other.
“Since our commander has undertaken grave responsibility on a night like this,
may we do less than take minor responsibility?” queried the elder.
To this the younger heartily agreed. In a trice, upstairs and down again, equipped
with extra ammunition, extra pistols, and a pocket-bulging supply of cigars,
cigarettes and matches, the three Americans were ready. Wemple called last
instructions up the stairway to imaginary occupants being left behind, ascertained
that the spring lock was on, and slammed the door.
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65
The officers led, followed by the Americans, the rear brought up by the six
marines; and the spitting, howling mob, not daring to cast a stone, gave way
before them.
As they came alongside the gangway of the cruiser, they saw launches and barges
lying in strings to the boat-booms, filled with men, waiting for the rocket signal
from the beleaguered hotels. A gun thundered from close at hand, up river,
followed by the thunder of numerous guns and the reports of many rifles fired
very rapidly.
“Now what’s the Topila whanging away at?” Habert complained, then joined the
others in gazing at the picture.
A searchlight, evidently emanating from the Mexican gunboat, was stabbing the
darkness to the middle of the river, where it played upon the water. And across
the water, the center of the moving circle of light, flashed a long, lean speedboat.
A shell burst in the air a hundred feet astern of it. Somewhere, outside the light,
other shells were bursting in the water; for they saw the boat rocked by the waves
from the explosions. They could guess the whizzing of the rifle bullets.
But for only several minutes the spectacle lasted. Such was the speed of the boat
that it gained shelter behind the German, when the Mexican gunboat was
compelled to cease fire. The speedboat slowed down, turned in a wide and heeling
circle, and ranged up alongside the launch at the gangway.
The lights from the gangway showed but one occupant, a tow-headed, greasyfaced,
blond youth of twenty, very lean, very calm, very much satisfied with
himself.
“If it ain’t Peter Tonsburg!” Habert ejaculated, reaching out a hand to shake.
“Howdy, Peter, howdy. And where in hell are you hell-bent for, surging by the
Topila in such scandalous fashion?”
Peter, a Texas-born Swede of immigrant parents, filled with the old Texas
traditions, greasily shook hands with Wemple and Davies as well, saying
“Howdy,” as only the Texan born can say it.
“Me,” he answered Habert. “I ain’t hell-bent nowhere exceptin’ to get away from
the shell-fire. She’s a caution, that Topila. Huh! but I limbered ’em up some. I was
goin’ every inch of twenty-five. They was like amateurs blazin’ away at
canvasback.”
“Which Chill is it?” Wemple asked.
“Chill II,” Peter answered. “It’s all that’s left. Chill I a Greaser—you know ‘m—
Campos—commandeered this noon. I was runnin’ Chill III when they caught me
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
66
at sundown. Made me come in under their guns at the East Coast outfit, and fired
me out on my neck. “Now the boss’d gone over in this one to Tampico in the early
evening, and just about ten minutes ago I spots it landin’ with a sousy bunch of
Federals at the East Coast, and swipes it back according. Where’s the boss? He
ain’t hurt, is he? Because I’m going after him.”
“No, you’re not, Peter,” Davies said. “Mr. Frisbie is safe at the Southern Hotel, all
except a five-inch scalp wound from a brick that’s got him down with a splitting
headache. He’s safe, so you’re going with us, going to take us, I mean, up beyond
Panuco town.”
“Huh?—I can see myself,” Peter retorted, wiping his greasy nose on a wad of
greasy cotton waste. “I got some cold. Besides, this night- drivin’ ain’t good for
my complexion.”
“My boy’s up there,” Habert said.
“Well, he’s bigger’n I am, and I reckon he can take care of himself.”
“And there’s a woman there—Miss Drexel,” Davies said quietly.
“Who? Miss Drexel? Why didn’t you say so at first?” Peter demanded grievedly.
He sighed and added, “Well, climb in an’ make a start. Better get your Dutch
friends to donate me about twenty gallons of gasoline if you want to get
anywhere.”
“Won’t do you no good to lay low,” Peter Tonsburg remarked, as, at full speed,
headed up river, the Topila’s searchlight stabbed them. “High or low, if one of
them shells hits in the vicinity—good night!”
Immediately thereafter the Topila erupted. The roar of the Chill’s exhaust nearly
drowned the roar of the guns, but the fragile hull of the craft was shaken and
rocked by the bursting shells. An occasional bullet thudded into or pinged off the
Chill, and, despite Peter’s warning that, high or low, they were bound to get it if it
came to them, every man on board, including Peter, crouched, with chest
contracted by drawn-in shoulders, in an instinctive and purely unconscious effort
to lessen the area of body he presented as a target or receptacle for flying
fragments of steel.
The Topila was a federal gunboat. To complicate the affair, the constitutionalists,
gathered on the north shore in the siege of Tampico, opened up on the speedboat
with many rifles and a machine gun.
“Lord, I’m glad they’re Mexicans, and not Americans,” Habert observed, after five
mad minutes in which no damage had been received. “Mexicans are born with
guns in their hands, and they never learn to use them.”
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Nor was the Chill or any man aboard damaged when at last she rounded the bend
of river that shielded her from the searchlight.
“I’ll have you in Panuco town in less’n three hours, . . . if we don’t hit a log,” Peter
leaned back and shouted in Wemple’s ear. “And if we do hit driftwood, I’ll have
you in the swim quicker than that.”
Chill II tore her way through the darkness, steered by the tow- headed youth who
knew every foot of the river and who guided his course by the loom of the banks
in the dim starlight. A smart breeze, kicking up spiteful wavelets on the wider
reaches, splashed them with sheeted water as well as fine-flung spray. And, in the
face of the warmth of the tropic night, the wind, added to the speed of the boat,
chilled them through their wet clothes.
“Now I know why she was named the Chill,” Habert observed betwixt chattering
teeth.
But conversation languished during the nearly three hours of drive through the
darkness. Once, by the exhaust, they knew that they passed an unlighted launch