Silencio arose, passed quickly through the casa and entered the patio. He ran up the stairs which ascended from the veranda to the flat roof above. He stood upon the roof, shading his eyes with his hand, and straining his vision to catch the first sight of Escobeda and his party of cut-throats. He was none too early. A cloud of dust on the near side of the cacao grove told him this, and then he heard the jingling of spurs and the sound of voices. A group of some thirty horsemen swept round the curve and came riding into full view. In their center rode a woman. She was so surrounded that by no effort of hers could she break through the determined-looking throng. One glance at those cruel faces, and Silencio's heart sank like lead.
The woman was gazing with appealing eyes at the Casa de Caoba. Silencio was not near enough to distinguish her features, but her attitude was hopeless and appealing, and he knew that it was Raquel the moment that he discovered her.
Suddenly she drew a handkerchief from her bosom and waved it above her head. There was something despairing and pitiable in her action. Silencio whirled his handkerchief wildly in the air. He was beside himself! Escobeda turned and struck the girl, who dropped her signal hand and drooped her head upon her breast.
Silencio put his hands to his mouth and shouted: "Do not fear; I will save you!" He shook his clenched hand at Escobeda. "You shall pay for that! By God in Heaven! you shall pay for that!"
Yes, pay for it, but how? How? Oh, God! how? He was so helpless. No one to aid him, no one to succour.
At this defiance of Silencio's there came an order to halt. The men faced the Casa de Caoba, Escobeda placed his rifle to his shoulder, but as he fired, Raquel quickly reached out her hand and dashed the muzzle downward. A crash of glass below stairs told Silencio where the shot had found entrance.
"And for that shot, also, you shall pay. Aye, for twenty thousand good glass windows." Glass windows are a luxury in the island.
A burst of derisive laughter and a scattering flight of bullets were thrown back at him by the motley crew. They reined their horses to the right, turned a corner, and were lost in their own dust.
Silencio descended the stairs, how he never knew. He ran through the patio and the main rooms, and out on to the veranda, from which the path led toward the gate of the enclosure. He was beside himself. He seized his gun from the rack; he cocked it as he ran.