Rare Vintage Books. Sard Harker: A novel. 1924

PART ONE

S

anta Barbara lies far to leeward, with a coast facing to the north and east. It is the richest of the sugar countries. Plantations cover all the lowland along its seven hundred miles of seaboard, then above the lowland is foothill, covered with forest, rising to the Sierras of the Three Kings, which make the country’s frontier.

The city of Santa Barbara lies at the angle of the coast in the bight of a bay. The Old Town covers the southern, the New Town the northern horn of the bay: in between are the docks and quays.

In the northern or New Town there is a plaza or square, called Of the Martyrdoms. Until about thirty years ago, there was a block of dwelling-houses on the western side of this square, which attracted the notice of visitors. Though the other buildings in the square were gay or smart, with flowers, colours and lights, these were always dingy, by decree. If any asked why they were dingy, they were told that those were the houses of the last sighs, “las casas de los sospiros ultimos,” and that they dated from the time of the Troubles under Don Lopez, who was Dictator de Santa Barbara from 1875 till 1887.

This Don Lopez de Meruel, called The Terrible, after nine years of murder and cruelty, began a year of madness by decreeing that he should be given divine honours in all the churches of the State. Finding himself opposed by some of the clergy and by many of the hidalgos, he seized the daughter of one of his richest landowners, Señorita Carlotta de Leyva de San Jacinto, then on a visit to the capital, and ordered her to pray to him while he sat throned in public on the high altar of the mission church. On her refusal, he ordered her to be enclosed in a house of common prostitutes.

The mistress of this house, an Englishwoman known as Aunt Jennings, refused to obey the order to receive her. “Miss Carlotta is a lady,” she said, “and she does not come in here. And none but a dirty dog would have thought of sending her. And as for praying to the dirty dog, Miss Carlotta has done quite right. If he wants folk to pray to him, let him come here, and my little Sunday school will give him all the pray he wants with a wet rag off the dresser.”

When this was reported to Don Lopez, he ordered that Carlotta and Aunt Jennings should be taken along the water-front by the hangman as far as the Plaza in the New Town, and that there their throats should be publicly cut against the walls of the houses on the west side, then used as houses of charity. This deed was at once done. The two women were killed by Don Lopez’ son, Don José, then a lad of twenty, assisted by a negro (Jorge) and two half-breeds (Zarzas and Don Livio).

Don Manuel San Substantio Encinitas, the betrothed lover of Carlotta, was then at his estate of Las Mancinillas, two hundred miles away. When the news of the crime was brought to him, he gathered his friends, sympathisers, and estate servants, some seven hundred in all, and marched to unseat Don Lopez and avenge the murder.

His army was routed by Don Lopez in a green savannah near the city; many of his friends, not killed in the fighting, were hunted down and killed; he himself, with about forty horsemen, rode from the battlefield, then swerved and made a dash for the city. They appeared at the Old Town at sunset and summoned the fortress to surrender.

Don Livio, who commanded in the fortress, recognised Don Manuel and determined to outwit him. While parleying at the gate as though for terms, he sent a lad, one Pablo de Chaco-Chaco, to some Republican troops quartered outside the fortress in a sugar warehouse. These troops, being warned by Pablo, took up their positions in windows commanding Don Manuel’s troop and suddenly fired in among them. In the skirmish which followed, Don Manuel’s men fell back along the water-front, and were shot down as they went. As darkness closed in, the last six of them, including Don Manuel, gathered at what is known in the ballads as the Bajel Verde, a green boat or lighter drawn up on the beach. Here they made a stand till their ammunition failed. They then took to the water, swimming, in the hope of reaching some English ship in the harbour. But by this time Don Livio had sent out soldiers in boats to patrol the water-front. All of the six except Don Manuel, were shot or clubbed, as they swam, by these patrols. Don Manuel, through fortune, and because he took to the water some minutes after the others, managed to reach the English barque Venturer, whose captain (Cary) took him aboard, and brought him a few days later to safety in Port Matoche.

Eighteen months later, having laid his plans with care, Don Manuel sailed from Calinche with another company, in a tramp steamer. He landed unexpectedly at Santa Barbara, shot Don Lopez with his own hand and made himself Dictator.

In spite of frequent risings of the Lopez faction, most of them led or inspired by Don José, who had escaped Don Manuel’s justice, the rule of the New Dictator was the most fruitful of modern times………………..