The quixotic little uprising in Cuba a month ago and its accompanying 82-man rebel invasion there were never a major military threat to Strongman Fulgencio Batista, as even the revolutionaries would concede (Time, Dec. l0). But the rebels did hope that a bold show of opposition might rally the government's disorganized enemies to guerrilla war and sabotage that would, if long continued, shake Batista's government down. Last week, with bombing, killing and arson on the rise, the regime was clearly fearful of such a possibility--and trigger-happy at the thought.

Saboteurs were at work the length of the sugar-rich island. Buses were set on fire, power and telephone lines cut, store windows smashed, cars bombed, bridges burned. A train was derailed, and a railroad station burned down. In the Guantánamo power station, two bombs went off and plunged the big adjoining U.S. Navy base into darkness.

Strongman Batista conferred at length with his top military and police chiefs on ways to curb the spreading revolutionary fervor. Cops with rifles and machine guns went on guard at railroad stations and public buildings. Planes and warships patrolled the coasts.

Hundreds of suspect saboteurs were jailed. More ominously, bodies began to be found mysteriously in out-of-the-way places in the eastern province of Oriente. Most of the victims were shot through the head, but two were found hanging to trees. The dead, 21 in all, were young hotheaded revolutionary types, including a Communist leader, a student, a former police sergeant, a tobacco worker. An army spokesman let slip that they had all been wanted on charges of terrorism.

Officially, the army blamed the killings on a failing-out among the rebels themselves, but many Cubans blamed government executioners. The anti-Batista Ortodoxo Partly condemned "those in power who want to convert Cuba into a Hungary of the Antilles." The Auténtico Party, which Batista tossed out of power in 1952, blasted "the macabre spectacle of 21 Cubans slain precisely on the day peace and Christian love, the day of our Lord's Nativity."

And the sabotage went on, pointing up the fact that the rebel invaders (including their leader, Fidel Castro) who touched off the unrest were still at large, holed up somewhere in the Sierra Maestra range in Oriente. That they could still flaunt their flag of insurrection especially disconcerted Batista, for it seemed to show that his troops, sent to kill or capture the rebels, lacked the heart or the ability to do so.