A crowd lined the street, for the most part silent, but among the Spaniards were some exclamations of joy. One foreigner, a Scotchman, watching the scene, was moved to cry aloud a brief good-by. A little company of Rizal’s former students at Dapitan stood together and wept. He looked out upon the bay and the ships. “How beautiful is the morning, Father! How clear is the view of Corregidor and the Cavite Mountains! I walked here with my sweetheart, Leonora, on mornings like this.” “The morning to be is still more beautiful, my son,” answered the priest. “Why is that, Father?” asked Rizal, not quite understanding his confessor’s words. The officer in charge of the squad stepped between them, and the father’s reply was not heard. Thus they moved to the place of execution, the dreadful Bagumbayan Field, the spot where so many others had been slain for defying tyranny, where Fathers Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora had given up their lives. To their memory he had dedicated his protest against the beast that had torn them. Now in his own turn he was come to be torn. A great troop of soldiers had formed a square to hold the people back. Artillery was drawn up as if a rescue were feared, and at one side—strange and incongruous spectacle!—a band to sound the national anthem of triumph over this one man. To the governing class the occasion was all holiday. Hundreds of that class stood there, men and women, and uttered cries of animal pleasure when they saw their enemy come bound and helpless to be killed before their eyes. Neither they nor the engines of death they had evoked seemed to pierce the serenity that wrapped him around. As they reached the field, he stopped before the captain in command and said quietly: “Will you shoot me in the front, please?” “It cannot be,” said the captain. “I have orders to shoot you in the back.” “But I was never traitor to my own country nor to Spain.” “My duty is to comply with the orders I have received.” “Very well, then; shoot me as you please.” [224] He asked that the soldiers be instructed to aim not at his head but his heart, and that he should not be compelled to kneel but might receive his death standing. These requests the captain granted. Into the square he marched, between two batteries of artillery, a company of cavalry in front, another behind. With him still went the priests, Fathers Estanislao March and José Villaclara, and behind them the man that had been his counsel in the mock trial, Luis de Andrade. Rizal stepped to the place where he was to die and looked out over the blue sea, bright in the sunlight. And then for the first time the iron composure seemed shaken. It may have been some thought of his lost youth, or the terror of the scene that reached out at him like something coldly palpable. A shiver seemed to go over him; the mortal man that he had so long suppressed in him reasserted itself; and one great sigh seemed to burst from his heart.