“Just try to arrest me, you poor fool, and I’ll shoot your head off!”
The police inspector jumped up from the table where he was seated, and, as he went out, he let one of the ballots fall. Cæsar looked over the men who were with the police inspector; one of them was “Sparkler.” Some days before he had come to Moncada’s headquarters to offer to work for him, and he was the director of the contaminating persons sent to Castro by the Government.
A CLANDESTINE MEETING
When he returned to the headquarters, they told him there was a meeting in “Furibis’s” tavern at nine that night. Cæsar got there a little later than the time set. The place was gloomy, and had some big earthen jars in it. They had put a table at the back of this cave, and an acetylene light illuminated it.
Those present formed a semicircle around the table.
Cæsar knocked at the tavern, and they opened the door to him; a workman who was speaking delayed his peroration, and they waited until Cæsar had reached the table and got seated. The atmosphere was suffocating. Everything was closed so that the Civil Guards would not see the light through the windows and suspect that there was a meeting being held there. The workmen were, for the most part, masons, weavers, brickmakers. There were women there with their little ones asleep in their bosoms. The air one breathed there was horrible. It looked like a gathering of desperate people. They had learned that their arrested comrades had been beaten in the prison, and that San Román and Dr. Ortigosa were in the infirmary as a result.
EULOGY OF VIOLENCE
The excitement among those present was terrible. “Limpy” was the most strenuous; he was in favour of their all going out that moment and storming the jail.
When they had all spoken, Cæsar got up and asked them to wait. If he won the election the next day, he promised them that the prisoners should be freed immediately; if he did not win and the prisoners remained there...
“Then what is to be done?” said a voice.