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Suddenly from the shadows on the pier swarthy individuals climbed the Maracaibo's gangplank. The leader, stepping forward, introduced himself as Capt. Rafael Simon Urbina of Venezuela. Politely he asked Captain Morris to transport his rebel army to the Venezuelan mainland.
"Sorry, gentlemen," said Capt. Morris, "I don't want to have anything to do with rebels or rebellions."
Followed a whispered conversation between Capt. Urbina and his swarthy friends. They bowed to Capt. Morris, and slipped down the gangplank again. Almost immediately the Dutch calm of Willemstad was punctuated with shots, shouts and horrid outcry. Dark figures rushed along the waterfront to little Fort Amsterdam. Half an hour later Capt. Urbina, flushed, triumphant, returned to the S. S. Maracaibo with 400 followers and the disheveled Governor of Curaçao, His Excellency, Mr. L. A. Fruytier, captured in bed, and Willemstad's Chief of Police. Pressing an enormous pistol against Capt. Morris's abdomen, Rebel Urbina ordered him to sail for the Venezuelan mainland, 40 miles away. Capt. Morris agreed.
Ten blasts were blown on the Maracaibo's whistle. At this pre-arranged signal motor trucks loaded with guns and ammunition careened down to the pier. The munitions were stolen from Fort Amsterdam, three of whose 71 defenders had been killed in the raid.
"On to Caracas!" shouted Rebel Urbina as guns and crates were piled on deck. "Nobody can stop us!"
Capt. Morris obediently jangled the engine room telegraph. Wheezing asthmatically, the Maracaibo put out to sea. All the way to the mainland the Venezuelan rebels, inflamed with the success of the most daring filibuster in years, ate and drank and shouted again and again the words of their Captain, "On to Caracas! Nobody can stop us!"
Three miles off the mainland the Maracaibo anchored. The filibustered loaded their captured arms into the ship's lifeboats and lowered them to the sea, sinking two lifeboats in the process. Capt. Morris and kidnaped Governor Fruytier were left to return to Curaçao or to go anywhere else they pleased. Brash Capt. Urbina attacked the garrison of Vela de Coro, fatally wounded its commander, Gen. Gabriel Lale, and prepared to move forward against Caracas and the formidable ex-Dictator, General Juan Vicente Gomez (TIME, May 20).
U. S. newspapers dwelt fondly on the word "filibuster" in describing the Curaçao fracas, harked back to Richard Harding Davis and O. Henry.
At The Hague, Foreign Minister Beelaerts van Blockland of the Netherlands was outraged.
"Filibuster?" said blunt Beelaerts, "It was a putsch!"
The Dutch Government immediately despatched the battleship Hertog Hendrik and the destroyer Kortenaer to protect Curaçao from any more putsche.