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Captain Macklin: His Memoirs

by Richard Harding Davis · English · Gutenberg #6015 · 423,223 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Captain Macklin: His Memoirs

Author: Richard Harding Davis


        
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6015]
                Most recently updated: March 4, 2018

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN MACKLIN: HIS MEMOIRS ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team







CAPTAIN MACKLIN

HIS MEMOIRS

By Richard Harding Davis

Illustrated By Walter Appleton Clark


{Illustration: “Go, Royal!” he cried, “and--God bless you!”}


To MY MOTHER




ILLUSTRATIONS (not available in this file)

“Go, Royal!” he cried, “and--God bless you!” FRONTISPIECE

He made our meeting something of a ceremony

We walked out to the woods

I was sure life in Sagua la Grande would always suit me

The moon rose over the camp ... but still we sat

And the next instant I fell sprawling inside the barrack yard

I sprang back against the cabin




I


UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY, WEST POINT

It may seem presumptuous that so young a man as myself should propose
to write his life and memoirs, for, as a rule, one waits until he has
accomplished something in the world, or until he has reached old age,
before he ventures to tell of the times in which he has lived, and of
his part in them. But the profession to which I belong, which is that
of a soldier, and which is the noblest profession a man can follow, is a
hazardous one, and were I to delay until to-morrow to write down what
I have seen and done, these memoirs might never be written, for, such
being the fortune of war, to-morrow might not come.

So I propose to tell now of the little I have accomplished in the first
twenty-three years of my life, and, from month to month, to add to these
memoirs in order that, should I be suddenly taken off, my debit and
credit pages may be found carefully written up to date and carried
forward. On the other hand, should I live to be an old man, this
record of my career will furnish me with material for a more complete
autobiography, and will serve as a safeguard against a failing memory.

In writing a personal narrative I take it that the most important events
to be chronicled in the life of a man are his choice of a wife and his
choice of a profession. As I am unmarried, the chief event in my life
is my choice of a profession, and as to that, as a matter of fact, I
was given no choice, but from my earliest childhood was destined to be
a soldier. My education and my daily environment each pointed to that
career, and even if I had shown a remarkable aptitude for any other
calling, which I did not, I doubt if I would have pursued it. I am
confident that had my education been directed in an entirely different
channel, I should have followed my destiny, and come out a soldier in
the end. For by inheritance as well as by instinct I was foreordained
to follow the fortunes of war, to delight in the clash of arms and the
smoke of battle; and I expect that when I do hear the clash of arms and
smell the smoke of battle, the last of the Macklins will prove himself
worthy of his ancestors.

I call myself the last of the Macklins for the reason that last year,
on my twenty-second birthday, I determined I should never marry. Women I
respect and admire, several of them, especially two of the young ladies
at Miss Butler’s Academy I have deeply loved, but a soldier cannot
devote himself both to a woman and to his country. As one of our young
professors said, “The flag is a jealous mistress.”

The one who, in my earliest childhood, arranged that I should follow
the profession of arms, was my mother’s father, and my only surviving
grandparent. He was no less a personage than Major-General John M.
Hamilton. I am not a writer; my sword, I fear and hope, will always be
easier in my hand than my pen, but I wish for a brief moment I could
hold it with such skill, that I might tell of my grandfather properly
and gratefully, and describe him as the gentle and brave man he was. I
know he was gentle, for though I never had a woman to care for me as a
mother cares for a son, I never missed that care; and I know how brave
he was, for that is part of the history of my country. During many years
he was my only parent or friend or companion; he taught me my lessons by
day and my prayers by night, and, when I passed through all the absurd
ailments to which a child is heir, he sat beside my cot and lulled me to
sleep, or told me stories of the war. There was a childlike and simple
quality in his own nature, which made me reach out to him and confide in
him as I would have done to one of my own age. Later, I scoffed at this
virtue in him as something old-fashioned and credulous. That was when
I had reached the age when I was older, I hope, than I shall ever be
again. There is no such certainty of knowledge on all subjects as one
holds at eighteen and at eighty, and at eighteen I found his care and
solicitude irritating and irksome. With the intolerance of youth, I
could not see the love that was back of his anxiety, and which should
have softened it for me with a halo and made me considerate and
grateful. Now I see it--I see it now that it is too late. But surely he
understood, he knew how I looked up to him, how I loved him, and how I
tried to copy him, and, because I could not, consoled myself inwardly by
thinking that the reason I had failed was because his way was the wrong
one, and that my way was the better. If he did not understand then,
he understands now; I cannot bear to think he does not understand and
forgive me.

Those were the best days of my life, the days I spent with him as a
child in his own home on the Hudson. It stands at Dobbs Ferry, set in
a grove of pines, with a garden about it, and a box hedge that shuts it
from the road. The room I best remember is the one that overlooks the
Hudson and the Palisades. From its windows you can watch the great
vessels passing up and down the river, and the excursion steamers flying
many flags, and tiny pleasure-boats and great barges. There is an open
fireplace in this room, and in a corner formed by the book-case, and
next to the wood-box, was my favorite seat. My grandfather’s place was
in a great leather chair beside the centre-table, and I used to sit
cross-legged on a cushion at his feet, with my back against his knees
and my face to the open hearth. I can still see the pages of “Charles
O’Malley” and “Midshipman Easy,” as I read them by the lifting light
of that wood fire, and I can hear the wind roaring down the chimney and
among the trees outside, and the steamers signalling to each other as
they pushed through the ice and fog to the great city that lay below us.
I can feel the fire burning my face, and the cold shivers that ran down
my back, as my grandfather told me of the Indians who had once hunted in
the very woods back of our house, and of those he had fought with on the
plains. With the imagination of a child, I could hear, mingled with the
shrieks of the wind as it dashed the branches against the roof, their
hideous war-cries as they rushed to some night attack, or the howling of
the wolves in the snow. When I think of myself as I was then I am very
fond of that little boy who sat shivering with excitement, and staring
with open eyes at the pictures he saw in the firelight, a little boy who
had made no enemies, no failures, who had harmed no one, and who knew
nothing of the world outside the walls that sheltered him, save the
brave old soldier who was his law and his example, his friend in
trouble, and his playmate.

I knew nothing then, and I know very little now, either of my father
or my mother. Whenever I asked my grandfather concerning them he always
answered vaguely that he would tell me some day, “when you are of age,”
 but whether he meant when I was twenty-one or of an age when I was best
fitted to hear the truth, I shall never know. But I guessed the truth
from what he let fall, and from what I have since heard from others,
although that is but little, for I could not ask strangers to tell me of
my own people. For some reason, soon after they were married my mother
and father separated and she brought me to live with her father, and he
entered the Southern army.

I like to think that I can remember my mother, and it seems I must,
for very dimly I recollect a young girl who used to sit by the window
looking out at the passing vessels. There is a daguerreotype of my
mother, and it may be that my recollection of her is builded upon that
portrait. She died soon after we came to live with my grandfather, when
I was only three years old, but I am sure I remember her, for no other
woman was ever in the house, and the figure of the young girl looking
out across at the Palisades is very clear to me.

My father was an Irish officer and gentleman, who came to the States
to better his fortunes. This was just before the war; and as soon as it
began, although he lived in the North, in New York City, he joined the
Southern army and was killed. I believe, from what little I have learned
of him, that he was both wild and reckless, but the few who remember
him all say that he had many noble qualities, and was much loved by men,
and, I am afraid, by women. I do not know more than that, except the one
story of him, which my grandfather often told me.

“Whatever a man may say of your father,” he would tell me, “you need not
believe; for they may not have understood him, and all that you need to
remember, until when you are of age I shall tell you the whole truth,
is how he died.” It is a brief story. My father was occupying a trench
which for some hours his company had held under a heavy fire. When the
Yankees charged with the bayonet he rose to meet them, but at the same
moment the bugle sounded the retreat, and half of his company broke and
ran. My father sprang to the top of the trench and called, “Come back,
boys, we’ll give them one more volley.” It may have been that he had
misunderstood the call of the bugle, and disobeyed through ignorance,
or it may have been that in his education the signal to retreat had been
omitted, for he did not heed it, and stood outlined against the sky,
looking back and waving his hand to his men. But they did not come to
him, and the advancing troop fired, and he fell upon the trench with his
body stretched along its length. The Union officer was far in advance of
his own company, and when he leaped upon the trench he found that it was
empty and that the Confederate troops were in retreat. He turned, and
shouted, laughing: “Come on! there’s only one man here--and he’s dead!”

But my father reached up his hand, to where the officer stood above him,
and pulled at his scabbard.

“Not dead, but dying, Captain,” my father said. “And that’s better than
retreating, isn’t it?”

“And that is the story,” my grandfather used to say to me, “you must
remember of your father, and whatever else he did does not count.”

At the age of ten my grandfather sent me to a military academy near
Dobbs Ferry, where boys were prepared for college and for West Point and
Annapolis. I was a very poor scholar, and, with the exception of what
I learned in the drill-hall and the gymnasium, the academy did me very
little good, and I certainly did not, at that time at least, reflect any
credit on the academy. Had I been able to take half the interest in my
studies my grandfather showed in them, I would have won prizes in every
branch; but even my desire to please him could not make me understand
the simplest problems in long division; and later here at the Point, the
higher branches of mathematics, combined with other causes, have nearly
deprived the United States Army of a gallant officer. I believe I have
it in me to take a piece of field artillery by assault, but I know I
shall never be able to work out the formula necessary to adjust its
elevation.

With the exception, perhaps, of Caesar’s “Commentaries,” I hated all of
my studies, not only on their own account, but because they cut me out
of the talks with which in the past my grandfather and I had been wont
to close each day. These talks, which were made up on my part of demands
for more stories, or for repetitions of those I already knew by heart,
did more than any other thing to inspire me with a desire for military
glory. My grandfather had served through the Mexican War, in the Indian
campaigns on the plains, and during the War of the Rebellion, and his
memory recalled the most wonderful and exciting of adventures. He was
singularly modest, which is a virtue I never could consider as a high
one, for I find that the world takes you at your own valuation, and
unless “the terrible trumpet of Fame” is sounded by yourself no one else
will blow your trumpet for you. Of that you may be sure. But I can’t
recall ever having heard my grandfather relate to people of his own
age any of the adventures which he told me, and once I even caught him
recounting a personal experience which redounded greatly to his credit
as having happened to “a man in his regiment.” When with childish
delight I at once accused him of this he was visibly annoyed, and
blushed like a girl, and afterward corrected me for being so forward in
the presence of my elders. His modesty went even to the length of his
keeping hidden in his bedroom the three presentation swords which had
been given him at different times for distinguished action on the field.
One came from the men of his regiment, one from his townspeople after
his return from the City of Mexico, and one from the people of the State
of New York; and nothing I could say would induce him to bring
them downstairs to our sitting room, where visitors might see them.
Personally, I cannot understand what a presentation sword is for except
to show to your friends; for, as a rule, they are very badly balanced
and of no use for fighting.

Had it not been for the colored prints of the different battles in
Mexico which hung in our sitting room, and some Indian war-bonnets
and bows and arrows, and a box of duelling pistols, no one would have
supposed that our house belonged to one of the most distinguished
generals of his day. You may be sure I always pointed these out to
our visitors, and one of my chief pleasures was to dress one of my
schoolmates in the Indian war bonnet, and then scalp him with a carving
knife. The duelling pistols were even a greater delight to me. They were
equipped with rifle barrels and hair triggers, and were inlaid richly
with silver, and more than once had been used on the field of honor.
Whenever my grandfather went out for a walk, or to play whist at the
house of a neighbor, I would get down these pistols and fight duels with
myself in front of the looking-glass. With my left hand I would hold the
handkerchief above my head, and with the other clutch the pistol at my
side, and then, at the word, and as the handkerchief fluttered to the
floor, I would take careful aim and pull the trigger. Sometimes I died
and made speeches before I expired, and sometimes I killed my adversary
and stood smiling down at him.

My grandfather was a member of the Aztec Club, which was organized
during the occupation of the City of Mexico by the American officers
who had stormed the capital; and on the occasion of one of its annual
meetings, which that year was held in Philadelphia, I was permitted to
accompany him to that city. It was the longest journey from home I had
ever taken, and each incident of it is still clearly fixed in my mind.
The event of the reunion was a dinner given at the house of General
Patterson, and on the morning before the dinner the members of the club
were invited to assemble in the garden which surrounded his house. To
this meeting my grandfather conducted me, and I found myself surrounded
by the very men of whom he had so often spoken. I was very frightened,
and I confess I was surprised and greatly disappointed also to find
that they were old and gray-haired men, and not the young and dashing
warriors he had described. General Patterson alone did not disappoint
me, for even at that late day he wore a blue coat with brass buttons and
a buff waistcoat and high black stock. He had a strong, fine profile and
was smooth shaven. I remember I found him exactly my ideal of the Duke
of Wellington; for though I was only then ten or twelve years of age,
I had my own ideas about every soldier from Alexander and Von Moltke to
our own Captain Custer.

It was in the garden behind the Patterson house that we met the General,
and he alarmed me very much by pulling my shoulders back and asking me
my age, and whether or not I expected to be as brave a soldier as my
grandfather, to which latter question I said, “Yes, General,” and then
could have cried with mortification, for all of the great soldiers
laughed at me. One of them turned, and said to the only one who was
seated, “That is Hamilton’s grandson.” The man who was seated did not
impress me very much. He was younger than the others. He wore a black
suit and a black tie, and the three upper buttons of his waistcoat were
unfastened. His beard was close-cropped, like a blacking-brush, and
he was chewing on a cigar that had burned so far down that I remember
wondering why it did not scorch his mustache. And then, as I stood
staring up at him and he down at me, it came over me who he was, and
I can recall even now how my heart seemed to jump, and I felt terribly
frightened and as though I were going to cry. My grandfather bowed
to the younger man in the courteous, old-fashioned manner he always
observed, and said: “General, this is my grandchild, Captain Macklin’s
boy. When he grows up I want him to be able to say he has met you. I am
going to send him to West Point.”

The man in the chair nodded his head at my grandfather, and took his
cigar from his mouth and said, “When he’s ready to enter, remind me,
let me know,” and closed his lips again on his cigar, as though he had
missed it even during that short space if time. But had he made a long
oration neither my grandfather nor I could have been more deeply moved.
My grandfather said: “Thank you, General. It is very kind of you,” and
led me away smiling so proudly that it was beautiful to see him. When
he had entered the house he stopped, and bending over me, asked. “Do you
know who that was, Roy?” But with the awe of the moment still heavy upon
me I could only nod and gasp at him.

“That was General Grant,” my grandfather said.

“Yes, I know,” I whispered.

I am not particularly proud of the years that preceded my entrance to
West Point, and of the years I have spent here I have still less reason
to be content. I was an active boy, and behaved as other young cubs
of that age, no better and no worse. Dobbs Ferry was not a place where
temptations beset one, and, though we were near New York, we were not of
it, and we seldom visited it. When we did, it was to go to a matinee
at some theatre, returning the same afternoon in time for supper. My
grandfather was very fond of the drama, and had been acquainted since he
was a young man with some of the most distinguished actors. With him I
saw Edwin Booth in “Macbeth,” and Lester Wallack in “Rosedale,” and John
McCullough in “Virginius,” a tragedy which was to me so real and moving
that I wept all the way home in the train. Sometimes I was allowed to
visit the theatre alone, and on these afternoons I selected performances
of a lighter variety, such as that given by Harrigan & Hart in their
theatre on Broadway. Every Thanksgiving Day I was allowed, after
witnessing the annual football match between the students from Princeton
and Yale universities, to remain in town all that night. On these great
occasions I used to visit Koster & Bial’s on Twenty-third Street, a
long, low building, very dark and very smoky, and which on those nights
was blocked with excited mobs of students, wearing different colored
ribbons and shouting the cries of their different colleges. I envied
and admired these young gentlemen, and thought them very fine fellows
indeed. They wore in those days long green coats, which made them look
like coachmen, and high, bell-shaped hats, both of which, as I now can
see, were a queer survival of the fashions of 1830, and which now for
the second time have disappeared.

To me, with my country clothes and manners and scanty spending money,
the way these young collegians wagered their money at the football match
and drank from their silver flasks, and smoked and swaggered in the
hotel corridors, was something to be admired and copied. And although
I knew none of them, and would have been ashamed had they seen me in
company with any of my boy friends from Dobbs Ferry, I followed
them from one hotel to another, pretending I was with them, and even
penetrated at their heels into the cafe of Delmonico. I felt then for a
brief moment that I was “seeing life,” the life of a great metropolis,
and in company with the young swells who made it the rushing, delightful
whirlpool it appeared to be.

It seemed to me, then, that to wear a green coachman’s coat, to rush the
doorkeeper at the Haymarket dance-hall, and to eat supper at the “Silver
Grill” was to be “a man about town,” and each year I returned to our
fireside at Dobbs Ferry with some discontent. The excursions made me
look restlessly forward to the day when I would return from my Western
post, a dashing young cavalry officer on leave, and would wake up the
cafes and clubs of New York, and throw my money about as carelessly as
these older boys were doing then.

My appointment to West Point did not, after all, come from General
Grant, but from President Arthur, who was in office when I reached my
nineteenth year. Had I depended upon my Congressman for the appointment,
and had it been made after a competitive examination of candidates, I
doubt if I would have been chosen.

Perhaps my grandfather feared this and had it in his mind when he asked
the President to appoint me. It was the first favor he had ever asked
of the Government he had served so well, and I felt more grateful to him
for having asked the favor, knowing what it cost him to do so, than I
did to the President for granting it.

I was accordingly entered upon the rolls of the Military Academy, and my
career as a soldier began. I wish I could say it began brilliantly, but
the records of the Academy would not bear me out. Had it not been that
I was forced to study books I would not have been a bad student; for in
everything but books, in everything that bore directly on the training
of a soldier and which depended upon myself, as, for example, drill,
riding, marksmanship, and a knowledge of the manual, I did as well, or
far better, than any of my classmates. But I could not, or would not,
study, and instead of passing high in my class at the end of the plebe
year, as my natural talents seemed to promise I would do, I barely
scraped through, and the outlook for the second year was not
encouraging. The campaign in Mexico had given my grandfather a knowledge
of Spanish, and as a boy he had drilled this language into me, for it
was a fixed belief of his, that if the United States ever went to war,
it would be with some of her Spanish-American neighbors, with Mexico,
or Central America, or with Spain on account of Cuba. In consequence
he considered it most essential that every United States officer should
speak Spanish. He also argued that a knowledge of French was of even
greater importance to an officer and a gentleman, as it was, as I have
since found it to be, the most widely spoken of all languages. I
was accordingly well drilled in these two tongues, and I have never
regretted time I spent on them, for my facility in them has often served
me well, has pulled me out of tight places, put money into my pocket,
and gained me friends when but for them I might have remained and
departed a stranger among strangers. My French accordingly helped me
much as a “yearling,” and in camp I threw myself so earnestly into the
skirmish, artillery, and cavalry drills that in spite of my low marks
I still stood high in the opinion of the cadet officers and of my
instructors. With my classmates, for some reason, although in all
out-of-door exercises I was the superior of most of them, I was not
popular. I would not see this at first, for I try to keep on friendly
terms with those around me, and I want to be liked even by people of
whom I have no very high opinion and from whom I do not want anything
besides. But I was not popular. There was no disguising that, and in the
gymnasium or the riding-hall other men would win applause for performing
a feat of horsemanship or a difficult trick on the parallel bars, which
same feat, when I repeated it immediately after them, and even a little
better than they had done it, would be received in silence. I could
not see the reason for this, and the fact itself hurt me much more than
anyone guessed. Then as they would not signify by their approbation that
I was the best athlete in the class, I took to telling them that I was,
which did not help matters. I find it is the same in the world as it is
at the Academy--that if one wants recognition, he must pretend not to
see that he deserves it. If he shows he does see it, everyone else will
grow blind, holding, I suppose, that a conceited man carries his own
comfort with him, and is his own reward. I soon saw that the cadet who
was modest received more praise than the cadet who was his superior,
but who, through repeated success, had acquired a self-confident, or, as
some people call it, a conceited manner; and so, for a time, I pretended
to be modest, too, and I never spoke of my athletic successes. But I was
never very good at pretending, and soon gave it up. Then I grew morbid
over my inability to make friends, and moped by myself, having as little
to do with my classmates as possible. In my loneliness I began to think
that I was a much misunderstood individual. My solitary state bred in me
a most unhealthy disgust for myself, and, as it always is with those
who are at times exuberantly light-hearted and self-assertive, I had
terrible fits of depression and lack of self-confidence, during which
spells I hated myself and all of those about me. Once, during one of
these moods, a First-Class man, who had been a sneak in his plebe year
and a bully ever since, asked me, sneeringly, how “Napoleon on the Isle
of St. Helena” was feeling that morning, and I told him promptly to go
to the devil, and added that if he addressed me again, except in the
line of his duty, I would thrash him until he could not stand or see. Of
course he sent me his second, and one of my classmates acted for me.
We went out that same evening after supper behind Fort Clinton, and I
thrashed him so badly that he was laid up in the hospital for several
days. After that I took a much more cheerful view of life, and as
it seemed hardly fair to make one cadet bear the whole brunt of my
displeasure toward the entire battalion, I began picking quarrels with
anyone who made pretensions of being a fighter, and who chanced to be
bigger than myself.

Sometimes I got badly beaten, and sometimes I thrashed the other man,
but whichever way it went, those battles in the soft twilight evenings
behind the grass-grown ramparts of the old fort, in the shadow of
the Kosciusko Monument, will always be the brightest and pleasantest
memories of my life at this place.

My grandfather had one other daughter besides my mother, my Aunt Mary,
who had married a Harvard professor, Dr. Endicott, and who had lived in
Cambridge ever since they married.

In my second year here, Dr. Endicott died and my grandfather at once
went to Cambridge to bring Aunt Mary and her daughter Beatrice back
with him, installing them in our little home, which thereafter was to
be theirs as well. He wrote me saying he knew I would not disapprove of
this invasion of my place by my young cousin and assured me that no one,
girl or boy, could ever take the place in his heart that I had held. As
a matter of fact I was secretly pleased to hear of this addition to our
little household. I knew that as soon as I was graduated I would be sent
to some army post in the West, and that the occasional visit I was now
able to pay to Dobbs Ferry would be discontinued. I hated to think that
in his old age my grandfather would be quite alone. On the other hand,
when, after the arrival of my cousin, I received his first letter
and found it filled with enthusiastic descriptions of her, and of how
anxious she was to make him happy, I felt a little thrill of jealousy.
It gave me some sharp pangs of remorse, and I asked myself searchingly
if I had always done my utmost to please my grandfather and to give him
pride and pleasure in me. I determined for the future I would think only
of how to make him happy.

A few weeks later I was able to obtain a few hours’ leave, and I wasted
no time in running down from the Point to make the acquaintance of my
cousin, and to see how the home looked under the new regime. I found it
changed, and, except that I felt then and afterward that I was a guest,
it was changed for the better.

I found that my grandfather was much more comfortable in every way. The
newcomers were both eager and loving, although no one could help but
love my grandfather, and they invented wants he had never felt before,
and satisfied them, while at the same time they did not interfere with
the life he had formerly led. Aunt Mary is an unselfish soul, and most
content when she is by herself engaged in the affairs of the house and
in doing something for those who live in it. Besides her unselfishness,
which is to me the highest as it is the rarest of virtues, hers is a
sweet and noble character, and she is one of the gentlest souls that I
have ever known.

I may say the same of my cousin Beatrice. When she came into the room,
my first thought was how like she was to a statuette of a Dresden
shepherdess which had always stood at one end of our mantel-piece,
coquetting with the shepherd lad on the other side of the clock. As a
boy, the shepherdess had been my ideal of feminine loveliness. Since
then my ideals had changed rapidly and often, but Beatrice reminded me
that the shepherdess had once been my ideal. She wore a broad straw hat,
with artificial roses which made it hang down on one side, and, as
she had been working in our garden, she wore huge gloves and carried a
trowel in one hand. As she entered, my grandfather rose hastily from his
chair and presented us with impressive courtesy. “Royal,” he said, “this
is your cousin, Beatrice Endicott.” If he had not been present, I think
we would have shaken hands without restraint. But he made our meeting
something of a ceremony. I brought my heels together and bowed as I
have been taught to do at the Academy, and seeing this she made a low
courtesy. She did this apparently with great gravity, but as she kept
her eyes on mine I saw that she was mocking me. If I am afraid of
anything it has certainly never proved to be a girl, but I confess I was
strangely embarrassed. My cousin seemed somehow different from any of
the other girls I had met. She was not at all like those with whom I
had danced at the hotel hops, and to whom I gave my brass buttons
in Flirtation Walk. She was more fine, more illusive, and yet most
fascinating, with a quaint old-fashioned manner that at times made her
seem quite a child, and the next moment changed her into a worldly and
charming young woman. She made you feel she was much older than yourself
in years and in experience and in knowledge. That is the way my cousin
appeared to me the first time I saw her, when she stood in the middle
of the room courtesying mockingly at me and looking like a picture on
an old French fan. That is how she has since always seemed to me--one
moment a woman, and the next a child; one moment tender and kind and
merry, and the next disapproving, distant, and unapproachable.

{Illustration: He made our meeting something of a ceremony.}

Up to the time I met Beatrice I had never thought it possible to
consider a girl as a friend. For the matter of that, I had no friends
even among men, and I made love to girls. My attitude toward girls, if
one can say that a man of eighteen has an attitude, was always that of
the devoted admirer. If they did not want me as a devoted admirer, I put
them down as being proud and haughty or “stuck up.” It never occurred to
me then that there might be a class of girl who, on meeting you, did not
desire that you should at once tell her exactly how you loved her, and
why. The girls who came to Cranston’s certainly seemed to expect you to
set their minds at rest on that subject, and my point of view of girls
was taken entirely from them. I can remember very well my pause of
dawning doubt and surprise when a girl first informed me she thought
a man who told her she was pretty was impertinent. What bewildered
me still more on that occasion was that this particular girl was so
extremely beautiful that to talk about anything else but her beauty was
a waste of time. It made all other topics trivial, and yet she seemed
quite sincere in what she said, and refused to allow me to bring our
talk to the personal basis of “what I am to you” and “what you are to
me.” It was in discussing that question that I considered myself an
artist and a master. My classmates agreed with me in thinking as I did,
and from the first moment I came here called me “Masher” Macklin, a
sobriquet of which I fear for a time I was rather proud. Certainly, I
strove to live up to it. I believe I dignified my conduct to myself by
calling it “flirtation.” Flirtation, as I understood it, was a sort of
game in which I honestly believed the entire world of men and women, of
every class and age, were eagerly engaged. Indeed, I would have thought
it rather ungallant, and conduct unworthy of an officer and a gentleman,
had I not at once pretended to hold an ardent interest in every girl I
met. This seems strange now, but from the age of fourteen up to the age
of twenty that was my way of regarding the girls I met, and even today I
fear my attitude toward them has altered but slightly, for now, although
I no longer tend to care when I do not, nor make love as a matter of
course, I find it is the easiest attitude to assume toward most women.
It is the simplest to slip into, just as I have certainly found it
the one from which it is most difficult to escape, But I never seem to
remember that until it is too late. A classmate of mine once said to me:
“Royal, you remind me of a man walking along a road with garden gates
opening on each side of it. Instead of keeping to the road, you stop at
every gate, and say: ‘Oh! what a pretty garden! I’ll just slip in there,
and find out where that path will take me.’ And then--you’re either
thrown out, and the gate slammed after you, or you lose yourself in
a maze and you can’t get out--until you break out. But does that ever
teach you a lesson? No! Instead of going ahead along the straight and
narrow way, and keeping out of temptation, you halt at the very next
gate you come to, just as though you had never seen a gate before, and
exclaim: ‘Now, this _is_ a pretty garden, and _what_ a neat white fence!
I really must vault in and take a look round.’ And so the whole thing is
gone over again.”

I confess there may be some truth in what he said, but the trouble I
find with the straight and narrow way is that there’s not room enough
in it for two. And, then, it is only fair to me to say that some of the
gardens were really most beautiful, and the shade very deep and sweet
there, and the memories of the minutes I passed in them were very
refreshing when I went back to the dust of the empty road. And no one,
man or woman, can say that Royal Macklin ever trampled on the flowers,
or broke the branches, or trespassed in another man’s private grounds.

It was my cousin Beatrice who was responsible for the change of heart
in me toward womankind. For very soon after she came to live with us, I
noticed that in regard to all other young women I was growing daily more
exacting. I did not admit this to myself, and still less to Beatrice,
because she was most scornful of the girls I knew, and mocked at them.
This was quite unfair of her, because she had no real acquaintance with
them, and knew them only from photographs and tintypes, of which I had a
most remarkable collection, and of what I chose to tell her about them.
I was a good deal annoyed to find that the stories which appealed to me
as best illustrating the character of each of my friends, only seemed to
furnish Beatrice with fresh material for ridicule, and the girls of whom
I said the least were the ones of whom she approved. The only girls
of my acquaintance who also were friends of hers, were two sisters who
lived at Dobbs Ferry, and whose father owned the greater part of it, and
a yacht, in which he went down to his office every morning. But Beatrice
held that my manner even to them was much too free and familiar, and
that she could not understand why I did not see that it was annoying to
them as well. I could not tell her in my own defence that their manner
to me, when she was with us and when she was not, varied in a remarkable
degree. It was not only girls who carried themselves differently before
Beatrice: every man who met her seemed to try and show her the best in
him, or at least to suppress any thought or act which might displease
her. It was not that she was a prig, or an angel, but she herself was
so fine and sincere, and treated all with such an impersonal and yet
gracious manner that it became contagious, and everybody who met her
imitated the model she unconsciously furnished. I was very much struck
with this when she visited the Academy. Men who before her coming had
seemed bold enough for any game, became dumb and embarrassed in her
presence, and eventually it was the officers and instructors who
escorted her over the grounds, while I and my acquaintances among the
cadets formed a straggling rear-guard at her heels. On account of my
grandfather, both she and my aunt were made much of by the Commandant
and all the older officers, and when they continued to visit the Academy
they were honored and welcomed for themselves, and I found that on such
occasions my own popularity was enormously increased. I have always been
susceptible to the opinion of others. Even when the reigning belle or
the popular man of the class was not to me personally attractive, the
fact that she was the reigning belle and that he was the man of the
hour made me seek out the society of each. This was even so, when, as
a matter of fact, I should have much preferred to dance with some less
conspicuous beauty or talk with a more congenial companion. Consequently
I began to value my cousin, whom I already regarded with the most
tremendous admiration, for those lighter qualities which are common
to all attractive girls, but which in my awe of her I had failed to
recognize. There were many times, even, when I took myself by the
shoulders and faced the question if I were not in love with Beatrice. I
mean truly in love, with that sort of love that one does not talk about,
even to one’s self, certainly not to the girl. As the young man of the
family, I had assumed the position of the heir of the house, and treated
Beatrice like a younger sister, but secretly I considered her in no such
light.

Many nights when on post I would halt to think of her, and of her
loveliness and high sincerity, and forget my duty while I stood with
my arms crossed on the muzzle of my gun. In such moments the night,
the silence, the moonlight piercing the summer leaves and falling at my
feet, made me forget my promise to myself that I would never marry.
I used to imagine then it was not the unlicked cubs under the distant
tents I was protecting, but that I was awake to watch over and guard
Beatrice, or that I was a knight, standing his vigil so that he might
be worthy to wear the Red Cross and enter her service. In those lonely
watches I saw littlenesses and meannesses in myself, which I could not
see in the brisk light of day, and my self-confidence slipped from me
and left me naked and abashed. I saw myself as a vain, swaggering boy,
who, if he ever hoped to be a man among men, such as Beatrice was a
woman above all other women, must change his nature at once and forever.

I was glad that I owed these good resolutions to her. I was glad that
it was she who inspired them. Those nights, as I leaned on my gun, I
dreamed even that it might end happily and beautifully in our marriage.
I wondered if I could make her care, if I could ever be worthy of her,
and I vowed hotly that I would love her as no other woman was ever
loved.

And then I would feel the cold barrel of my musket pressing against the
palm of my hand, or the bayonet would touch my cheek, and at the touch
something would tighten in my throat, and I would shake the thoughts
from me and remember that I was sworn to love only my country and my
country’s flag.

In my third year here my grandfather died. As the winter closed in
he had daily grown more feeble, and sat hour after hour in his great
armchair, dozing and dreaming, before the open fire. And one morning
when he was alone in the room, Death, which had so often taken the man
at his side, and stood at salute to let him live until his work was
done, came to him and touched him gently. A few days later when his body
passed through the streets of our little village, all the townspeople
left their houses and shops, and stood in silent rows along the
sidewalks, with their heads uncovered to the falling snow. Soldiers of
his old regiments, now busy men of affairs in the great city below
us, came to march behind him for the last time. Officers of the Loyal
Legion, veterans of the Mexican War, regulars from Governor’s Island,
with their guns reversed, societies, political clubs, and strangers who
knew him only by what he had done for his country, followed in the long
procession as it wound its way through the cold, gray winter day to the
side of the open grave. Until then I had not fully understood what it
meant to me, for my head had been numbed and dulled; but as the body
disappeared into the grave, and the slow notes of the bugle rose in
the final call of “Lights out,” I put my head on my aunt’s shoulder and
cried like a child. And I felt as though I were a child again, as I did
when he came and sat beside my bed, and heard me say my prayers, and
then closed the door behind him, leaving me in the darkness and alone.

But I was not entirely alone, for Beatrice was true and understanding;
putting her own grief out of sight, caring for mine, and giving it the
first place in her thoughts. For the next two days we walked for hours
through the autumn woods where the dead leaves rustled beneath our feet,
thinking and talking of him. Or for hours we would sit in silence, until
the sun sank a golden red behind the wall of the Palisades, and we went
back through the cold night to the open fireside and his empty chair.



ST. CHARLES HOTEL, NEW ORLEANS


Six months ago had anyone told me that the day would come when I would
feel thankful for the loss of my grandfather, I would have struck him.
But for the last week I have been almost thankful that he is dead. The
worst that could occur has happened. I am in bitter disgrace, and I
am grateful that grandfather died before it came upon me. I have been
dismissed from the Academy. The last of the “Fighting” Macklins has
been declared unfit to hold the President’s commission. I am cast out
irrevocably; there is no appeal against the decision. I shall never
change the gray for the blue. I shall never see the U. S. on my
saddle-cloth, nor salute my country’s flag as it comes fluttering down
at sunset.

That I am on my way to try and redeem myself is only an attempt to patch
up the broken pieces. The fact remains that the army has no use for me.
I have been dismissed from West Point, in disgrace. It was a girl who
brought it about, or rather my own foolishness over a girl. And before
that there was much that led up to it. It is hard to write about it, but
in these memoirs I mean to tell everything--the good, with the bad. And
as I deserve no excuse, I make none.

During that winter, after the death of my grandfather, and the spring
which had followed, I tried hard to do well at the Point. I wanted
to show them that though my grandfather was gone, his example and his
wishes still inspired me. And though I was not a studious cadet, I was
a smart soldier, and my demerits, when they came, were for smoking in my
room or for breaking some other such silly rule, and never for slouching
through the manual or coming on parade with my belts twisted. And at the
end of the second year I had been promoted from corporal to be a cadet
first sergeant, so that I was fourth in command over a company of
seventy. Although this gave me the advantage of a light after “taps”
 until eleven o’clock, my day was so taken up with roll-calls, riding and
evening drills and parade, that I never seemed to find time to cram my
mechanics and chemistry, of which latter I could never see any possible
benefit. How a knowledge of what acid will turn blue litmus-paper red is
going to help an officer to find fodder for his troop horses, or inspire
him to lead a forlorn hope, was then, and still is, beyond my youthful
comprehension.

But these studies were down on the roster, and whether I thought well
of them or not I was marked on them and judged accordingly. But I cannot
claim that it was owing to them or my failure to understand them that my
dismissal came, for, in spite of the absence of 3’s in my markings and
the abundance of 2’s, I was still a soldierly cadet, and in spite of the
fact that I was a stupid student, I made an excellent drill-master.

The trouble, when it came, was all my own making, and my dismissal was
entirely due to an act of silly recklessness and my own idiocy. I had
taken chances before and had not been caught; several times I ran the
sentries at night for the sake of a noisy, drunken spree at a road-side
tavern, and several times I had risked my chevrons because I did not
choose to respect the arbitrary rules of the Academy which chafed my
spirit and invited me to rebellion. It was not so much that I enjoyed
those short hours of freedom, which I snatched in the face of such
serious penalties, but it was the risk of the thing itself which
attracted me, and which stirred the spirit of adventure that at times
sways us all.

It was a girl who brought about my dismissal. I do not mean that she was
in any way to blame, but she was the indirect cause of my leaving
the Academy. It was a piece of fool’s fortune, and I had not even the
knowledge that I cared in the least for the girl to console me. She was
only one of the several “piazza girls,” as we called certain ones of
those who were staying at Cranston’s, with whom I had danced, to whom
I had made pretty speeches, and had given the bell button that was sewn
just over my heart. She certainly was not the best of them, for I can
see now that she was vain and shallow, with a pert boldness, which I
mistook for vivacity and wit. Three years ago, at the age of twenty, my
knowledge of women was so complete that I divided them into six classes,
and as soon as I met a new one I placed her in one of these classes and
created her according to the line of campaign I had laid down as proper
for that class. Now, at twenty-three, I believe that there are as many
different kinds of women as there are women, but that all kinds are
good. Some women are better than others, but all are good, and all are
different. This particular one unknowingly did me a great harm, but
others have given me so much that is for good, that the balance side
is in their favor. If a man is going to make a fool of himself, I
personally would rather see him do it on account of a woman than for any
other cause. For centuries Antony has been held up to the scorn of the
world because he deserted his troops and his fleet, and sacrificed the
Roman Empire for the sake of Cleopatra. Of course, that is the one thing
a man cannot do, desert his men and betray his flag; but, if he is going
to make a bad break in life, I rather like his doing it for the love
of a woman. And, after all, it is rather fine to have for once felt
something in you so great that you placed it higher than the Roman
Empire.

I haven’t the excuse of any great feeling in my case. She, the girl at
Cranston’s, was leaving the Point on the morrow, and she said if all I
had sworn to her was true I would run the sentries that night to
dance with her at the hop. Of course, love does not set tests nor ask
sacrifices, but I had sworn that I had loved her, as I understood the
world, and I told her I would come. I came, and I was recognized as
I crossed the piazza to the ball-room. On the morning following I was
called to the office of the Commandant and was told to pack my trunk. I
was out of uniform in an hour, and that night at parade the order of the
War Department dismissing me from the service was read to the assembled
battalion.

{Illustration: We walked out to the woods.}

I cannot write about that day. It was a very bright, beautiful day, full
of life and sunshine, and I remember that I wondered how the world could
be so cruel and unfeeling. The other second classmen came in while I was
packing my things to say that they were sorry. They were kind enough;
and some of them wanted me to go off to New York to friends of theirs
and help upset it and get drunk. Their idea was, I suppose, to show the
authorities how mistaken they had been in not making me an officer. But
I could not be civil to any of them. I hated them all, and the place,
and everyone in it. When I was dismissed my first thought was one of
utter thankfulness that my grandfather died before the disgrace came
upon me, and after that I did not much care. I was desperate and
bitterly miserable. I knew, as the authorities could not know, that no
one in my class felt more loyal to the service than myself; that I would
have died twenty deaths for my country; that there was no one company
post in the West, however distant from civilization, that would not have
been a paradise to me; that there was no soldier in the army who would
have served more devotedly than myself. And now I was found wanting
and thrown out to herd with civilians, as unfit to hold the President’s
commission. After my first outbreak of impotent rage--for I blamed
everyone but myself--remorse set in, and I thought of grandfather and
of how much he had done for our country, and how we had talked so
confidently together of the days when I would follow in his footsteps,
as his grandchild, and as the son of “Fighting Macklin.”

All my life I had talked and thought of nothing else, and now, just as
I was within a year of it, I was shown the door which I never can enter
again.

That it might be easier for us when I arrived, I telegraphed Beatrice
what had happened, and when I reached the house the same afternoon
she was waiting for me at the door, as though I was coming home for
a holiday and it was all as it might have been. But neither of us was
deceived, and without a word we walked out of the garden and up the hill
to the woods where we had last been together six months before, Since
then all had changed. Summer had come, the trees were heavy with leaves,
and a warm haze hung over the river and the Palisades beyond We seated
ourselves on a fallen tree at the top of the hill and sat in silence,
looking down into the warm, beautiful valley. It was Beatrice who was
the first to speak.

“I have been thinking of what you can do,” she began, gently, “and it
seems to me, Royal, that what you need now is a good rest. It has been a
hard winter for you. You have had to meet the two greatest trials that I
hope will ever come to you. You took the first one well, as you should,
and you will take this lesser one well also; I know you will. But you
must give yourself time to get over this--this disappointment, and to
look about you. You must try to content yourself at home with mother and
with me. I am so selfish that I am almost glad it has happened, for now
for a time we shall have you with us, all to ourselves, and we can take
care of you and see that you are not gloomy and morbid. And then when
the fall comes you will have decided what is best to do, and you will
have a rest and a quiet summer with those who understand you and love
you. And then you can go out into the world to do your work, whatever
your work is to be.”

I turned toward her and stared at her curiously.

“Whatever my work is to be,” I repeated. “That was decided for me,
Beatrice, when I was a little boy.”

She returned my look for a moment in some doubt, and then leaned eagerly
forward. “You mean to enlist?” she asked.

“To enlist? Not I!” I answered hotly. “If I’m not fit to be an officer
now, I never shall be, at least not by that road. Do you know what it
means? It’s the bitterest life a man can follow. He is neither the one
thing nor the other. The enlisted men suspect him, and the officers may
not speak with him. I know one officer who got his commission that way.
He swears now he would rather have served the time in jail. The officers
at the post pointed him out to visitors, as the man who had failed at
West Point, and who was working his way up from the ranks, and the men
of his company thought that _he_ thought, God help him, that he was too
good for them, and made his life hell. Do you suppose I’d show my
musket to men of my old mess, and have the girls I’ve danced with see me
marching up and down a board walk with a gun on my shoulder? Do you see
me going on errands for the men I’ve hazed, and showing them my socks
and shirts at inspection so they can give me a good mark for being a
clean and tidy soldier? No! I’ll not enlist. If I’m not good enough to
carry a sword I’m not good enough to carry a gun, and the United States
Army can struggle along without me.”

Beatrice shook her head.

“Don’t say anything you’ll be sorry for, Royal,” she warned me.

“You don’t understand,” I interrupted. “I’m not saying anything against
my own country or our army--how can I? I’ve proved clearly enough that
I’m not fit for it. I’m only too grateful, I’ve had three years in the
best military school in the world, at my country’s expense, and I’m
grateful. Yes, and I’m miserable, too, that I have failed to deserve
it.”

I stood up and straightened my shoulders. “But perhaps there are other
countries less difficult to please,” I said, “where I can lose myself
and be forgotten, and where I can see service. After all, a soldier’s
business is to fight, not to sit at a post all day or to do a clerk’s
work at Washington.”

Even as I spoke these chance words I seemed to feel the cloud of failure
and disgrace passing from me. I saw vaguely a way to redeem myself, and,
though I had spoken with bravado and at random, the words stuck in my
mind, and my despondency fell from me like a heavy knapsack.

“Come,” I said, cheerfully, “there can be no talk of a holiday for me
until I have earned it. You know I would love to stay here now with you
and Aunt in the old house, but I have no time to mope and be petted. If
you fall down, you must not lie in the road and cry over your bruised
shins; you must pick yourself up and go on again, even if you are a bit
sore and dirty.”

We said nothing more, but my mind was made up, and when we reached
the house I went at once to my room and repacked my trunk for a long
journey. It was a leather trunk in which my grandfather used to carry
his sword and uniform, and in it I now proudly placed the presentation
sword he had bequeathed to me in his will, and my scanty wardrobe and
$500 of the money he had left to me. All the rest of his fortune, with
the exception of the $2,000 a year he had settled upon me, he had, I am
glad to say, bequeathed with the house to Aunt Mary and Beatrice. When I
had finished my packing I joined them at supper, and such was my elation
at the prospect of at once setting forth to redeem myself, and to seek
my fortune, that to me the meal passed most cheerfully. When it was
finished, I found the paper of that morning, and spreading it out upon
the table began a careful search in the foreign news for what tidings
there might be of war.

I told Beatrice what I was doing, and without a word she brought out my
old school atlas, and together under the light of the student-lamp we
sought out the places mentioned in the foreign despatches, and discussed
them, and the chances they might offer me.

There were, I remember, at the time that paper was printed, strained
relations existing between France and China over the copper mines in
Tonkin; there was a tribal war in Upper Burmah with native troops; there
was a threat of complications in the Balkans, but the Balkans, as I have
since learned, are always with us and always threatening. Nothing in
the paper seemed to offer me the chance I sought, and apparently peace
smiled on every other portion of the globe.

“There is always the mounted police in Canada,” I said, tentatively.

“No,” Beatrice answered, quietly, and without asking her reasons I
accepted her decision and turned again to the paper. And then my eyes
fell on a paragraph which at first I had overlooked--a modest, brief
despatch tucked away in a corner, and unremarkable, except for its
strange date-line. It was headed, “The Revolt in Honduras.” I pointed
to it with my finger, and Beatrice leaned forward with her head close to
mine, and we read it together. “Tegucigalpa, June 17th,” it read. “The
revolution here has assumed serious proportions. President Alvarez has
proclaimed martial law over all provinces, and leaves tomorrow for Santa
Barbara, where the Liberal forces under the rebel leader, ex-President
Louis Garcia, were last in camp. General Laguerre is coming from
Nicaragua to assist Garcia with his foreign legion of 200 men. He has
seized the Nancy Miller, belonging to the Isthmian Line, and has fitted
her with two Gatling guns. He is reported to be bombarding the towns
on his way along the coast, and a detachment of Government troops is
marching to Porto Cortez to prevent his landing. His force is chiefly
composed of American and other aliens, who believe the overthrow of the
present government will be beneficial to foreign residents.”

“General Laguerre!” I cried, eagerly, “that is not a Spanish name.
General Laguerre must be a Frenchman. And it says that the men with
him are Americans, and that the present government is against all
foreigners.”

I drew back from the table with a laugh, and stood smiling at Beatrice,
but she shook her head, even though she smiled, too.

“Oh, not that,” she said.

“My dear Beatrice,” I expostulated, “it certainly isn’t right that
American interests in--what’s the name of the place--in Honduras, should
be jeopardized, is it? And by an ignorant half-breed like this President
What’s-his-name? Certainly not. It must be stopped, even if we have to
requisition every steamer the Isthmian Line has afloat.”

“Oh, Royal,” Beatrice cried, “you are not serious. No, you wouldn’t,
you couldn’t be so foolish. That’s no affair of yours. That’s not
your country. Besides, that is not war; it is speculation. You are a
gentleman, not a pirate and a filibuster.”

“William Walker was a filibuster,” I answered. “He took Nicaragua
with 200 men and held it for two years against 20,000. I must begin
somewhere,” I cried, “why not there? A girl can’t understand these
things--at least, some girls can’t--but I would have thought you would.
What does it matter what I do or where I go?” I broke out, bitterly. “I
have made a failure of my life at the very start. I am sick and sore and
desperate. I don’t care where I go or what---”

I would have ranted on for some time, no doubt, but that a look from
Beatrice stopped me in mid-air, and I stood silent, feeling somewhat
foolish.

“I can understand this much,” she said, “that you are a foolish boy. How
dare you talk of having made a failure of your life? Your life has not
yet begun. You have yet to make it, and to show yourself something
more than a boy.” She paused, and then her manner changed, and she came
toward me, looking up at me with eyes that were moist and softened with
a sweet and troubled tenderness, and she took my hand and held it close
in both of hers.

I had never seen her look more beautiful than she did at that moment.
If it had been any other woman in the world but her, I would have caught
her in my arms and kissed her again and again, but because it was she
I could not touch her, but drew back and looked down into her eyes with
the sudden great feeling I had for her. And so we stood for a moment,
seeing each other as we had never seen each other before. And then she
caught her breath quickly and drew away. But she turned her face toward
me at once, and looked up at me steadily.

“I am so fond of you, Royal,” she said, bravely, “you know, that--that
I cannot bear to think of you doing anything in this world that is not
fine and for the best. But if you will be a knight errant, and seek out
dangers and fight windmills, promise me to be a true knight and that
you will fight only when you must and only on the side that is just, and
then you will come back bringing your sheaves with you.”

I did not dare to look at her, but I raised her hand and held the
tips of her fingers against my lips, and I promised, but I would have
promised anything at that moment.

“If I am to be a knight,” I said, and my voice sounded very hoarse and
boyish, so that I hardly recognized it as my own, “you must give me your
colors to wear on my lance, and if any other knight thinks his colors
fairer, or the lady who gave them more lovely than you, I shall kill
him.”

She laughed softly and moved away.

“Of course,” she said, “of course, you must kill him.” She stepped a few
feet from me, and, raising her hands to her throat, unfastened a little
gold chain which she wore around her neck. She took it off and held it
toward me. “Would you like this?” she said. I did not answer, nor
did she wait for me to do so, but wound the chain around my wrist and
fastened it, and I raised it and kissed it, and neither of us spoke.
She went out to the veranda to warn her mother of my departure, and I to
tell the servants to bring the carriage to the door.

A few minutes later, the suburban train drew out of the station at
Dobbs Ferry, and I waved my hand to Beatrice as she sat in the carriage
looking after me. The night was warm and she wore a white dress and
her head was uncovered. In the smoky glare of the station lamps I could
still see the soft tints of her hair; and as the train bumped itself
together and pulled forward, I felt a sudden panic of doubt, a piercing
stab at my heart, and something called on me to leap off the car that
was bearing me away, and go back to the white figure sitting motionless
in the carriage. As I gripped the iron railing to restrain myself, I
felt the cold sweat springing to the palm of my hand. For a moment I
forgot the end of my long journey. I saw it as something foolish, mad,
fantastic. I was snatching at a flash of powder, when I could warm my
hands at an open fire. I was deserting the one thing which counted and
of which I was certain; the one thing I loved. And then the train turned
a curve, the lamps of the station and the white ghostly figure were shut
from me, and I entered the glaring car filled with close air and smoke
and smelling lamps. I seated myself beside a window and leaned far out
into the night, so that the wind of the rushing train beat in my face.

And in a little time the clanking car-wheels seemed to speak to me,
beating out the words brazenly so that I thought everyone in the car
must hear them.

“Turn again, turn again, Royal Macklin,” they seemed to say to me. “She
loves you, Royal Macklin, she loves you, she loves you.”

And I thought of Dick Whittington when the Bow bells called to him, as
he paused in the country lane to look lack at the smoky roof of London,
and they had offered him so little, while for me the words seemed to
promise the proudest place a man could hold. And I imagined myself still
at home, working by day in some New York office and coming back by night
to find Beatrice at the station waiting for me, always in a white
dress, and with her brown hair glowing in the light of the lamps. And
I pictured us taking long walks together above the Hudson, and quiet,
happy evenings by the fire-side. But the rhythm of the car-wheels
altered, and from “She loves you, she loves you,” the refrain now came
brokenly and fiercely, like the reports of muskets fired in hate and
fear, and mixed with their roar and rattle I seemed to distinguish words
of command in a foreign tongue, and the groans of men wounded and
dying. And I saw, rising above great jungles and noisome swamps, a
long mountain-range piercing a burning, naked sky; and in a pass in the
mountains a group of my own countrymen, ragged and worn and with eyes
lit with fever, waving a strange flag, and beset on every side by
dark-faced soldiers, and I saw my own face among them, hollow-cheeked
and tanned, with my head bandaged in a scarf; I felt the hot barrel of
a rifle burning my palm, I smelt the pungent odor of spent powder, my
throat and nostrils were assailed with smoke. I suffered all the fierce
joy and agony of battle, and the picture of the white figure of Beatrice
grew dim and receded from me, and as it faded the eyes regarded me
wistfully and reproached me, but I would not heed them, but turned my
own eyes away. And again I saw the menacing negro faces and the burning
sunlight and the strange flag that tossed and whimpered in the air above
my head, the strange flag of unknown, tawdry colors, like the painted
face of a woman in the street, but a flag at which I cheered and shouted
as though it were my own, as though I loved it; a flag for which I would
fight and die.

The train twisted its length into the great station, the men about me
rose and crowded down the aisle, and I heard the cries of newsboys and
hackmen and jangling car-bells, and all the roar and tumult of a great
city at night.

But I had already made my choice. Within an hour I had crossed to the
Jersey side, and was speeding south, south toward New Orleans, toward
the Gulf of Mexico, toward Honduras, to Colonel Laguerre and his foreign
legion.




II


S.S. PANAMA, OFF COAST OF HONDURAS

To one who never before had travelled farther than is Dobbs Ferry from
Philadelphia, my journey south to New Orleans was something in the
way of an expedition, and I found it rich in incident and adventure.
Everything was new and strange, but nothing was so strange as my own
freedom. After three years of discipline, of going to bed by drum-call,
of waking by drum-call, and obeying the orders of others, this new
independence added a supreme flavor to all my pleasures. I took my
journey very seriously, and I determined to make every little incident
contribute to my better knowledge of the world. I rated the chance
acquaintances of the smoking-car as aids to a clear understanding of
mankind, and when at Washington I saw above the house-tops the marble
dome of the Capitol I was thrilled to think that I was already so much
richer in experience.

To me the country through which we passed spoke with but one meaning.
I saw it as the chess-board of the War of the Rebellion. I imagined
the towns fortified and besieged, the hills topped with artillery, the
forests alive with troops in ambush, and in my mind, on account of their
strategic value to the enemy, I destroyed the bridges over which we
passed. The passengers were only too willing to instruct a stranger in
the historical values of their country. They pointed out to me where
certain regiments had camped, where homesteads had been burned, and
where real battles, not of my own imagining, but which had cost the
lives of many men, had been lost and won. I found that to these chance
acquaintances the events of which they spoke were as fresh after twenty
years as though they had occurred but yesterday, and they accepted my
curiosity as only a natural interest in a still vital subject. I judged
it advisable not to mention that General Hamilton was my grandfather.
Instead I told them that I was the son of an officer who had died for
the cause of secession. This was the first time I had ever missed
an opportunity of boasting of my relationship to my distinguished
grandparent, and I felt meanly conscious that I was in a way disloyal.
But they were so genuinely pleased when they learned that my father had
fought for the South, that I lacked the courage to tell them that while
he was so engaged another relative of mine had driven one of their best
generals through three States.

I am one who makes the most of what he sees, and even the simplest
things filled me with delight; my first sight of cotton-fields, of
tobacco growing in the leaf, were great moments to me; and that the men
who guarded the negro convicts at work in the fields still clung to the
uniform of gray, struck me as a fact of pathetic interest.

I was delayed in New Orleans for only one day. At the end of that time
I secured passage on the steamer Panama. She was listed to sail for
Aspinwall at nine o’clock the next morning, and to touch at ports along
the Central American coast. While waiting for my steamer I mobilized
my transport and supplies, and purchased such articles as I considered
necessary for a rough campaign in a tropical climate. My purchases
consisted of a revolver, a money-belt, in which to carry my small
fortune, which I had exchanged into gold double-eagles, a pair
of field-glasses, a rubber blanket, a canteen, riding boots, and
saddle-bags. I decided that my uniform and saddle would be furnished
me from the quartermaster’s department of Garcia’s army, for in my
ignorance I supposed I was entering on a campaign conducted after the
methods of European armies.

We left the levees of New Orleans early in the morning, and for the
remainder of the day steamed slowly down the Mississippi River. I sat
alone upon the deck watching the low, swampy banks slipping past us
on either side, the gloomy cypress-trees heavy with gray moss, the
abandoned cotton-gins and disused negro quarters. As I did so a feeling
of homesickness and depression came upon me, and my disgraceful failure
at the Point, the loss of my grandfather, and my desertion of Beatrice,
for so it began to seem to me, filled me with a bitter melancholy.

The sun set the first day over great wastes of swamp, swamp-land, and
pools of inky black, which stretched as far as the eye could reach;
gloomy, silent, and barren of any form of life. It was a picture which
held neither the freedom of the open sea nor the human element of the
solid earth. It seemed to me as though the world must have looked so
when darkness brooded over the face of the waters, and as I went to
my berth that night I felt as though I were saying good-by forever to
allthat was dear to me--my country, my home, and the girl I loved.

I was awakened in the morning by a motion which I had never before
experienced. I was being gently lifted and lowered and rolled to and
fro as a hammock is rocked by the breeze. For some minutes I lay between
sleep and waking, struggling back to consciousness, until with a sudden
gasp of delight it came to me that at last I was at sea. I scrambled
from my berth and pulled back the curtains of the air port. It was as
though over night the ocean had crept up to my window. It stretched
below me in great distances of a deep, beautiful blue. Tumbling waves
were chasing each other over it, and millions of white caps glanced and
flashed as they raced by me in the sun. It was my first real view of the
ocean, and the restlessness of it and the freedom of it stirred me with
a great happiness. I drank in its beauty as eagerly as I filled my lungs
with the keen salt air, and thanked God for both.

The three short days which followed were full of new and delightful
surprises, some because it was all so strange and others because it was
so exactly what I had hoped it would be. I had read many tales of the
sea, but ships I knew only as they moved along the Hudson at the end of
the towing-line. I had never felt one rise and fall beneath me, nor
from the deck of one watched the sun sink into the water. I had never at
night looked up at the great masts, and seen them swing, like a pendulum
reversed, between me and the stars.

There was so much to learn that was new and so many things to see on
the waters, and in the skies, that it seemed wicked to sleep. So, during
nearly the whole of every night, I stood with Captain Leeds on his
bridge, or asked ignorant questions of the man at the wheel. The steward
of the Panama was purser, supercargo, and bar-keeper in one, and a most
interesting man. He apparently never slept, but at any hour was willing
to sit and chat with me. It was he who first introduced me to the
wonderful mysteries of the alligator pear as a salad, and taught me to
prefer, in a hot country, Jamaica rum with half a lime squeezed into the
glass to all other spirits. It was a most educational trip.

I had much entertainment on board the Panama by pretending that I was
her captain, and that she was sailing under my orders. Sometimes
I pretended that she was an American man-of-war, and sometimes a
filibuster escaping from an American man-of-war. This may seem an absurd
and childish game, but I had always wanted to hold authority, and as I
had never done so, except as a drill sergeant at the Academy, it was
my habit to imagine myself in whatever position of responsibility
my surroundings suggested. For this purpose the Panama served me
excellently, and in scanning the horizon for hostile fleets or a pirate
flag I was as conscientious as was the lookout in the bow. At the
Academy I had often sat in my room with maps spread out before me
planning attacks on the enemy, considering my lines of communication,
telegraphing wildly for reinforcements, and despatching my aides with
a clearly written, comprehensive order to where my advance column was
engaged. I believe this “play-acting,” as my room-mate used to call
it, helped me to think quickly, to give an intelligent command
intelligently, and made me rich in resources.

For the first few days I was so enchanted with my new surroundings that
the sinister purpose of my journey South lost its full value. And when,
as we approached Honduras, it was recalled to me, I was surprised to
find that I had heard no one on board discuss the war, nor refer to it
in any way. When I considered this, I was the more surprised because
Porto Cortez was one of the chief ports at which we touched, and I was
annoyed to find that I had travelled so far for the sake of a cause in
which those directly interested felt so little concern. I set about
with great caution to discover the reason for this lack of interest.
The passengers of the Panama came from widely different parts of Central
America. They were coffee planters and mining engineers, concession
hunters, and promoters of mining companies. I sounded each of them
separately as to the condition of affairs in Honduras, and gave as my
reason for inquiring the fact that I had thoughts of investing my
money there. I talked rather largely of my money. But this information,
instead of inducing them to speak of Honduras, only made each of them
more eloquent in praising the particular republic in which his own money
was invested, and each begged me to place mine with his. In the course
of one day I was offered a part ownership in four coffee plantations, a
rubber forest, a machine for turning the sea-turtles into fat and shell,
and the good-will and fixtures of a dentist’s office. Except that I
obtained some reputation on board as a young man of property, which
reputation I endeavored to maintain by treating everyone to drinks in
the social hall, my inquiries led to no result. No one apparently knew,
nor cared to know, of the revolution in Honduras, and passed it over as
a joke. This hurt me, but lest they should grow suspicious, I did not
continue my inquiries.



THE CAFE SANTOS, SAGUA LA GRANDE, HONDURAS


We sighted land at seven in the morning, and as the ship made in toward
the shore I ran to the bow and stood alone peering over the rail. Before
me lay the scene set for my coming adventures, and as the ship threaded
the coral reefs, my excitement ran so high that my throat choked, and
my eyes suddenly dimmed with tears. It seemed too good to be real. It
seemed impossible that it could be true; that at last I should be about
to act the life I had so long only rehearsed and pretended. But the
pretence had changed to something living and actual. In front of me,
under a flashing sun, I saw the palm-fringed harbor of my dreams, a
white village of thatched mud houses, a row of ugly huts above which
drooped limply the flags of foreign consuls, and, far beyond, a deep
blue range of mountains, forbidding and mysterious, rising out of a
steaming swamp into a burning sky, and on the harbor’s only pier,
in blue drill uniforms and gay red caps, a group of dark-skinned,
swaggering soldiers. This hot, volcano-looking land was the one I had
come to free from its fetters. These swarthy barefooted brigands were
the men with whom I was to fight.

My trunk had been packed and strapped since sunrise, and before the
ship reached the pier, I had said “good-by” to everyone on board and was
waiting impatiently at the gang-way. I was the only passenger to leave,
and no cargo was unloaded nor taken on. She was waiting only for the
agent of the company to confer with Captain Leeds, and while these men
were conversing on the bridge, and the hawser was being drawn on board,
the custom-house officers, much to my disquiet, began to search my
trunk. I had nothing with me which was dutiable, but my grandfather’s
presentation sword was hidden in the trunk and its presence there and
prospective use would be difficult to explain. It was accordingly with
a feeling of satisfaction that I noticed on a building on the end of the
pier the sign of our consulate and the American flag, and that a young
man, evidently an American, was hurrying from it toward the ship. But
as it turned out I had no need of his services, for I had concealed the
sword so cleverly by burying each end of it in one of my long cavalry
boots, that the official failed to find it.

I had locked my trunk again and was waving final farewells to those on
the Panama, when the young man from the consulate began suddenly to race
down the pier, shouting as he came.

The gang-way had been drawn up, and the steamer was under way, churning
the water as she swung slowly seaward, but she was still within easy
speaking distance of the pierhead.

The young man rushed through the crowd, jostling the native Indians and
negro soldiers, and shrieked at the departing vessel.

“Stop!” he screamed, “stop! stop her!”

He recognized Captain Leeds on the bridge, and, running along the
pierhead until he was just below it, waved wildly at him.

“Where’s my freight?” he cried. “My freight! You haven’t put off my
freight.”

Captain Leeds folded his arms comfortably upon the rail, and regarded
the young man calmly and with an expression of amusement.

“Where are my sewing-machines?” the young man demanded. “Where are the
sewing-machines invoiced me by this steamer?”

“Sewing-machines, Mr. Aiken?” the Captain answered. “I left your
sewing-machines in New Orleans.”

“You what?” shrieked the young man. “You left them?”

“I left them sitting on the company’s levee,” the Captain continued,
calmly. “The revenue officers have ‘em by now, Mr. Aiken. Some parties
said they weren’t sewing-machines at all. They said you were acting for
Laguerre.”

The ship was slowly drawing away. The young man stretched out one arm as
though to detain her, and danced frantically along the stringhead.

“How dare you!” he cried. “I’m a commission merchant. I deal in whatever
I please--and I’m the American Consul!”

The Captain laughed, and with a wave of his hand in farewell backed away
from the rail.

“That may be,” he shouted, “but this line isn’t carrying freight for
General Laguerre, nor for you, neither.” He returned and made a speaking
trumpet of his hands. “Tell him from me,” he shouted, mockingly, “that
if he wants his sewing-machines he’d better go North and steal ‘em. Same
as he stole our Nancy Miller.”

The young man shook both his fists in helpless anger.

“You damned banana trader,” he shrieked, “you’ll lose your license for
this. I’ll fix you for this. I’ll dirty your card for you, you pirate!”

The Captain flung himself far over the rail. He did not need a speaking
trumpet now--his voice would have carried above the tumult of a
hurricane.

“You’ll what?” he roared. “You’ll dirty my card, you thieving
filibuster? Do you know what I’ll do to you? I’ll have your tin
sign taken away from you, before I touch this port again. You’ll
see--you--you--” he ended impotently for lack of epithets, but continued
in eloquent pantomime to wave his arms.

With an oath the young man recognized defeat, and shrugged his
shoulders.

“Oh, you go to the devil,” he shouted, and turned away. He saw me
observing him, and as I was the only person present who looked as though
he understood English, he grinned at me sheepishly, and nodded.

“I don’t care for him,” he said. “He can’t frighten me.”

I considered this as equivalent to an introduction.

“You are the United States Consul?” I asked. The young man nodded
briskly.

“Yes; I am. Where do you come from?”

“Dobbs Ferry, near New York,” I answered. “I’d---I’d like to have a talk
with you, when you are not busy.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m not busy now. That bumboat pirate
queered the only business I had. Where are you going to stop? There is
only one place,” he explained; “that’s Pulido’s. He’ll knife you if
he thinks you have five dollars in your belt, and the bar-room is half
under water anyway. Or you can take a cot in my shack, if you like, and
I’ll board and lodge you for two pesos a day--that’s one dollar in our
money. And if you are going up country,” he went on, “I can fit you out
with mules and mozos and everything you want, from canned meats to
an escort of soldiers. You’re sure to be robbed anyway,” he urged,
pleasantly, “and you might as well give the job to a fellow-countryman.
I’d hate to have one of these greasers get it.”

“You’re welcome to try,” I said, laughing.

In spite of his manner, which was much too familiar and patronizing, the
young man amused me, and I must confess moreover that at that moment I
felt very far from home and was glad to meet an American, and one not so
much older than myself. The fact that he was our consul struck me as a
most fortunate circumstance.

He clapped his hands and directed one of the negroes to carry my trunk
to the consulate, and I walked with him up the pier, the native soldiers
saluting him awkwardly as he passed. He returned their salute with a
flourish, and more to impress me I guessed than from any regard for
them.

“That’s because I’m Consul,” he said, with satisfaction. “There’s only
eight white men in Porto Cortez,” he explained, “and we’re all consular
agents. The Italian consular agent is a Frenchman, and an Italian,
Guessippi--the Banana King, they call him--is consular agent for both
Germany and England, and the only German here is consular agent for
France and Holland. You see, each of ‘em has to represent some other
country than his own, because his country knows why he left it.” He
threw back his head and laughed at this with great delight. Apparently
he had already forgotten the rebuff from Captain Leeds. But it had made
a deep impression upon me. I had heard Leeds virtually accuse the consul
of being an agent of General Laguerre, and I suspected that the articles
he had refused to deliver were more likely to be machine guns than
sewing-machines. If this were true, Mr. Aiken was a person in whom I
could confide with safety.

The consulate was a one-story building of corrugated iron, hot,
unpainted, and unlovely. It was set on wooden logs to lift it from the
reach of “sand jiggers” and the surf, which at high tide ran up the
beach, under and beyond it. Inside it was rude and bare, and the heat
and the smell of the harbor, and of the swamp on which the town was
built, passed freely through the open doors.

Aiken proceeded to play the host in a most cordial manner. He placed my
trunk in the room I was to occupy, and set out some very strong Honduran
cigars and a bottle of Jamaica rum. While he did this he began to
grumble over the loss of his sewing-machines, and to swear picturesquely
at Captain Leeds, bragging of the awful things he meant to do to him.
But when he had tasted his drink and lighted a cigar, his good-humor
returned, and he gave his attention to me.

“Now then, young one,” he asked, in a tone of the utmost familiarity,
“what’s your trouble?”

I explained that I could not help but hear what the Captain shouted
at him from the Panama, and I asked if it was contrary to the law of
Honduras for one to communicate with the officer Captain Leeds had
mentioned--General Laguerre.

“The old man, hey?” Aiken exclaimed and stared at me apparently with
increased interest. “Well, there are some people who might prevent your
getting to him,” he answered, diplomatically. For a moment he sipped his
rum and water, while he examined me from over the top of the cup. Then
he winked and smiled.

“Come now,” he said, encouragingly. “Speak up. What’s the game? You can
trust me. You’re an agent for Collins, or the Winchester Arms people,
aren’t you?”

“On the contrary,” I said, with some haughtiness, “I am serving no one’s
interest but my own. I read in the papers of General Laguerre and his
foreign legion, and I came here to join him and to fight with him.
That’s all. I am a soldier of fortune, I said.” I repeated this with
some emphasis, for I liked the sound of it. “I am a soldier of fortune,
and my name is Macklin. I hope in time to make it better known.”

“A soldier of fortune, hey?” exclaimed Aiken, observing me with a grin.
“What soldiering have you done?”

I replied, with a little embarrassment, that as yet I had seen no active
service, but that for three years I had been trained for it at West
Point.

“At West Point, the deuce you have!” said Aiken. His tone was now one
of respect, and he regarded me with marked interest. He was not a
gentleman, but he was sharp-witted enough to recognize one in me, and
my words and bearing had impressed him. Still his next remark was
disconcerting.

“But if you’re a West Point soldier,” he asked, “why the devil do you
want to mix up in a shooting-match like this?”

I was annoyed, but I answered, civilly: “It’s in a good cause,” I said.
“As I understand the situation, this President Alvarez is a tyrant. He’s
opposed to all progress. It’s a fight for liberty.”

Aiken interrupted me with a laugh, and placed his feet on the table.

“Oh, come,” he said, in a most offensive tone. “Play fair, play fair.”

“Play fair? What do you mean?” I demanded.

“You don’t expect me to believe,” he said, jeeringly, “that you came all
the way down here, just to fight for the sacred cause of liberty.”

I may occasionally exaggerate a bit in representing myself to be a more
important person than I really am, but if I were taught nothing else at
the Point, I was taught to tell the truth, and when Aiken questioned my
word I felt the honor of the whole army rising within me and stiffening
my back-bone.

“You had better believe what I tell you, sir,” I answered him, sharply.
“You may not know it, but you are impertinent!”

I have seldom seen a man so surprised as was Aiken when I made this
speech. His mouth opened and remained open while he slowly removed
his feet from the table and allowed the legs of his chair to touch the
floor.

“Great Scott,” he said at last, “but you have got a nasty temper. I’d
forgotten that folks are so particular.”

“Particular--because I object to having my word doubted,” I asked. “I
must request you to send my trunk to Pulido’s. I fancy you and I won’t
hit it off together.” I rose and started to leave the room, but he held
out his hands to prevent me, and exclaimed, in consternation:

“Oh, that’s no way to treat me,” he protested. “I didn’t say anything
for you to get on your ear about. If I did, I’m sorry.” He stepped
forward, offering to shake my hand, and as I took his doubtfully, he
pushed me back into my chair.

“You mustn’t mind me,” he went on. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen a
man from God’s country that I’ve forgotten how to do the polite. Here,
have another drink and start even.” He was so eager and so suddenly
humble that I felt ashamed of my display of offended honor, and we began
again with a better understanding.

I told him once more why I had come, and this time he accepted my story
as though he considered my wishing to join Laguerre the most natural
thing in the world, nodding his head and muttering approvingly. When I
had finished he said, “You may not think so now, but I guess you’ve come
to the only person who can help you. If you’d gone to anyone else you’d
probably have landed in jail.” He glanced over his shoulder at the open
door, and then, after a mysterious wink at me, tiptoed out upon the
veranda, and ran rapidly around and through the house. This precaution
on his part gave me a thrill of satisfaction. I felt that at last I
was a real conspirator that I was concerned in something dangerous and
weighty. I sipped at my glass with an air of indifference, but as a
matter of fact I was rather nervous.

“You can’t be too careful,” Aiken said as he reseated himself. “Of
course, the whole thing is a comic opera, but if they suspect you
are working against them, they’re just as likely as not to make it a
tragedy, with you in the star part. Now I’ll explain how I got into
this, and I can assure you it wasn’t through any love of liberty with
me. The consular agent here is a man named Quay, and he and I have
been in the commission business together. About three months ago, when
Laguerre was organizing his command at Bluefields, Garcia, who is the
leader of the revolutionary party, sent word down here to Quay to go
North for him and buy two machine guns and invoice ‘em to me at the
consulate. Quay left on the next steamer and appointed me acting consul,
but except for his saying so I’ve no more real authority to act as
consul than you have. The plan was that when Laguerre captured this port
he would pick up the guns and carry them on to Garcia. Laguerre was at
Bluefields, but couldn’t get into the game for lack of a boat. So when
the Nancy Miller touched there he and his crowd boarded her just like a
lot of old-fashioned pirates and turned the passengers out on the wharf.
Then they put a gun at the head of the engineer and ordered him to take
them back to Porto Cortez. But when they reached here the guns hadn’t
arrived from New Orleans. And so, after a bit of a fight on landing,
Laguerre pushed on without them to join Garcia. He left instructions
with me to bring him word when they arrived. He’s in hiding up there in
the mountains, waiting to hear from me now. They ought to have come this
steamer day on the Panama along with you, but, as you know, they didn’t.
I never thought they would. I knew the Isthmian Line people wouldn’t
carry ‘em. They’ve got to beat Garcia, and until this row is over they
won’t even carry a mail-bag for fear he might capture it.”

“Is that because General Laguerre seized one of their steamers?” I
asked.

“No, it’s an old fight,” said Aiken, “and Laguerre’s stealing the Nancy
Miller was only a part of it. The fight began between Garcia and the
Isthmian Line when Garcia became president. He tried to collect some
money from the Isthmian Line, and old man Fiske threw him out of the
palace and made Alvarez president.”

I was beginning to find the politics of the revolution into which I had
precipitated myself somewhat involved, and I suppose I looked puzzled,
for Aiken laughed.

“You can laugh,” I said, “but it is rather confusing. Who is Fiske? Is
he another revolutionist?”

“Fiske!” exclaimed Aiken. “Don’t tell me you don’t know who Fiske is?
I mean old man Fiske, the Wall Street banker--Joseph Fiske, the one who
owns the steam yacht and all the railroads.”

I had of course heard of that Joseph Fiske, but his name to me was only
a word meaning money. I had never thought of Joseph Fiske as a human
being. At school and at the Point when we wanted to give the idea of
wealth that could not be counted we used to say, “As rich as Joe Fiske.”
 But I answered, in a tone that suggested that I knew him intimately:

“Oh, that Fiske,” I said. “But what has he to do with Honduras?”

“He owns it,” Aiken answered. “It’s like this,” he began. “You must
understand that almost every republic in Central America is under
the thumb of a big trading firm or a banking house or a railroad. For
instance, all these revolutions you read about in the papers--it’s
seldom they start with the people. The _puebleo_ don’t often elect
a president or turn one out. That’s generally the work of a New York
business firm that wants a concession. If the president in office won’t
give it a concession the company starts out to find one who will. It
hunts up a rival politician or a general of the army who wants to be
president, and all of them do, and makes a deal with him. It promises
him if he’ll start a revolution it will back him with the money and the
guns. Of course, the understanding is that if the leader of the fake
revolution gets in he’ll give his New York backers whatever they’re
after. Sometimes they want a concession for a railroad, and sometimes
it’s a nitrate bed or a rubber forest, but you can take my word for
it that there’s very few revolutions down here that haven’t got a
money-making scheme at the bottom of them.

“Now this present revolution was started by the Isthmian Steamship Line,
of which Joe Fiske is president. It runs its steamers from New Orleans
to the Isthmus of Panama. In its original charter this republic gave it
the monopoly of the fruit-carrying trade from all Hondurian ports. In
return for this the company agreed to pay the government $10,000 a year
and ten per cent, on its annual receipts, if the receipts ever exceeded
a certain amount. Well, curiously enough, although the line has been
able to build seven new steamers, its receipts have never exceeded that
fixed amount. And if you know these people the reason for that is very
simple. The company has always given each succeeding president a lump
sum for himself, on the condition that he won’t ask any impertinent
questions about the company’s earnings. Its people tell him that it is
running at a loss, and he always takes their word for it. But Garcia,
when he came in, either was too honest, or they didn’t pay him enough to
keep quiet. I don’t know which it was, but, anyway, he sent an agent
to New Orleans to examine the company’s books. The agent discovered the
earnings have been so enormous that by rights the Isthmian Line owed the
government of Honduras $500,000. This was a great chance for Garcia, and
he told them to put up the back pay or lose their charter. They refused
and he got back at them by preventing their ships from taking on any
cargo in Honduras, and by seizing their plant here and at Truxillo.
Well, the company didn’t dare to go to law about it, nor appeal to the
State Department, so it started a revolution. It picked out a thief
named Alvarez as a figure-head and helped him to bribe the army and
capture the capital. Then he bought a decision from the local courts in
favor of the company. After that there was no more talk about collecting
back pay. Garcia was an exile in Nicaragua. There he met Laguerre, who
is a professional soldier of fortune, and together they cooked up this
present revolution. They hope to put Garcia back into power again. How
he’ll act if he gets in I don’t know. The common people believe he’s a
patriot, that he’ll keep all the promises he makes them--and he makes a
good many--and some white people believe in him, too. Laguerre believes
in him, for instance. Laguerre told me that Garcia was a second Bolivar
and Washington. But he might be both of them, and he couldn’t beat the
Isthmian Line. You see, while he has prevented the Isthmian Line from
carrying bananas, he’s cut off his own nose by shutting off his only
source of supply. For these big corporations hang together at times,
and on the Pacific side the Pacific Mail Company has got the word from
Fiske, and they won’t carry supplies, either. That’s what I meant by
saying that Joe Fiske owns Honduras. He’s cut it off from the world, and
only _his_ arms and _his_ friends can get into it. And the joke of it is
he can’t get out.”

“Can’t get out?” I exclaimed. “What do you mean?”

“Why, he’s up there at Tegucigalpa himself,” said Aiken. “Didn’t you
know that? He’s up at the capital, visiting Alvarez. He came in through
this port about two weeks ago.”

“Joseph Fiske is fighting in a Hondurian revolution?” I exclaimed.

“Certainly not!” cried Aiken. “He’s here on a pleasure trip; partly
pleasure, partly business. He came here on his yacht. You can see her
from the window, lying to the left of the buoy. Fiske has nothing to do
with this row. I don’t suppose he knows there’s a revolution going on.”

I resented this pretended lack of interest on the part of the Wall
Street banker. I condemned it as a piece of absurd affectation.

“Don’t you believe it!” I said. “No matter how many millions a man has,
he doesn’t stand to lose $500,000 without taking an interest in it.”

“Oh, but he doesn’t know about _that_,” said Aiken. “He doesn’t know
the ins and outs of the story--what I’ve been telling you. That’s on the
inside--that’s cafe scandal. That side of it would never reach him. I
suppose Joe Fiske is president of a _dozen_ steamship lines, and all he
does is to lend his name to this one, and preside at board meetings. The
company’s lawyers tell him whatever they think he ought to know. They
probably say they’re having trouble down here owing to one of the local
revolutions, and that Garcia is trying to blackmail them.”

“Then you don’t think Fiske came down here about this?” I asked.

“About this?” repeated Aiken, in a tone of such contempt that I disliked
him intensely. For the last half hour Aiken had been jumping unfeelingly
on all my ideals and illusions.

“No,” he went on. “He came here on his yacht on a pleasure trip around
the West India Islands, and he rode in from here to look over the Copan
Silver Mines. Alvarez is terribly keen to get rid of him. He’s afraid
the revolutionists will catch him and hold him for ransom. He’d bring a
good price,” Aiken added, reflectively. “It’s enough to make a man turn
brigand. And his daughter, too. She’d bring a good price.”

“His daughter!” I exclaimed.

Aiken squeezed the tips of his fingers together, and kissed them,
tossing the imaginary kiss up toward the roof. Then he drank what was
left of his rum and water at a gulp and lifted the empty glass high in
the air. “To the daughter,” he said.

It was no concern of mine, but I resented his actions exceedingly. I
think I was annoyed that he should have seen the young lady while I had
not. I also resented his toasting her before a stranger. I knew he could
not have met her, and his pretence of enthusiasm made him appear quite
ridiculous. He looked at me mournfully, shaking his head as though it
were impossible for him to give me an idea of her.

“Why they say,” he exclaimed, “that when she rides along the trail, the
native women kneel beside it.

“She’s the best looking girl I ever saw,” he declared, “and she’s a
thoroughbred too!” he added, “or she wouldn’t have stuck it out in this
country when she had a clean yacht to fall back on. She’s been riding
around on a mule, so they tell me, along with her father and the
engineering experts, and just as though she enjoyed it. The men up at
the mines say she tired them all out.”

I had no desire to discuss the young lady with Aiken, so I pretended not
to be interested, and he ceased speaking, and we smoked in silence. But
my mind was nevertheless wide awake to what he had told me. I could not
help but see the dramatic values which had been given to the situation
by the presence of this young lady. The possibilities were tremendous.
Here was I, fighting against her father, and here was she, beautiful and
an heiress to many millions. In the short space of a few seconds I had
pictured myself rescuing her from brigands, denouncing her father
for not paying his honest debt to Honduras, had been shot down by his
escort, Miss Fiske had bandaged my wounds, and I was returning North as
her prospective husband on my prospective father-in-law’s yacht.
Aiken aroused me from this by rising to his feet. “Now then,” he said,
briskly, “if you want to go to Laguerre you can come with me. I’ve got
to see him to explain why his guns haven’t arrived, and I’ll take you
with me.” He made a wry face and laughed. “A nice welcome he’ll give
me,” he said. I jumped to my feet. “There’s my trunk,” I said; “it’s
ready, and so am I. When do we start?”

“As soon as it is moonlight,” Aiken answered.

The remainder of the day was spent in preparing for our journey. I was
first taken to the commandante and presented to him as a commercial
traveller. Aiken asked him for a passport permitting me to proceed to
the capital “for purposes of trade.” As consular agent Aiken needed no
passport for himself, but to avoid suspicion he informed the commandante
that his object in visiting Tegucigalpa was to persuade Joseph Fiske,
as president of the Isthmian Line, to place buoys in the harbor of Porto
Cortez and give the commission for their purchase to the commandante.
Aiken then and always was the most graceful liar I have ever met. His
fictions were never for his own advantage, at least not obviously so.
Instead, they always held out some pleasing hope for the person to whom
they were addressed. His plans and promises as to what he would do were
so alluring that even when I knew he was lying I liked to pretend that
he was not. This particular fiction so interested the commandante that
he even offered us an escort of soldiers, which honor we naturally
declined.

That night when the moon had risen we started inland, each mounted on a
stout little mule, and followed by a third, on which was swung my trunk,
balanced on the other side by Aiken’s saddle bags. A Carib Indian whom
Aiken had selected because of his sympathies for the revolution walked
beside the third mule and directed its progress by the most startling
shrieks and howls. To me it was a most memorable and marvellous night,
and although for the greater part of it Aiken dozed in his saddle and
woke only to abuse his mule, I was never more wakeful nor more happy. At
the very setting forth I was pleasantly stirred when at the limit of the
town a squad of soldiers halted us and demanded our passports. This was
my first encounter with the government troops. They were barefooted
and most slovenly looking soldiers, mere boys in age and armed with
old-fashioned Remingtons. But their officer, the captain of the guard,
was more smartly dressed, and I was delighted to find that my knowledge
of Spanish, in which my grandfather had so persistently drilled me,
enabled me to understand all that passed between him and Aiken. The
captain warned us that the revolutionists were camped along the
trail, and that if challenged we had best answer quickly that we were
Americanos. He also told us that General Laguerre and his legion of
“gringoes” were in hiding in the highlands some two days’ ride from the
coast. Aiken expressed the greatest concern at this, and was for at
once turning back. His agitation was so convincing, he was apparently
so frightened, that, until he threw a quick wink at me, I confess I was
completely taken in. For some time he refused to be calmed, and it
was only when the captain assured him that his official position would
protect him from any personal danger that he consented to ride on.
Before we crossed the town limits he had made it quite evident that
the officer himself was solely responsible for his continuing on
his journey, and he denounced Laguerre and all his works with a
picturesqueness of language and a sincerity that filled me with
confusion. I even began to doubt if after all Aiken was not playing a
game for both sides, and might not end my career by leading me into
a trap. After we rode on I considered the possibility of this quite
seriously, and I was not reassured until I heard the _mozo_, with many
chuckles and shrugs of the shoulder, congratulate Aiken on the way he
had made a fool of the captain.

“That’s called diplomacy, Jose,” Aiken told him. “That’s my statecraft.
It’s because I have so much statecraft that I am a consul. You keep
your eye on this American consul, Jose, and you’ll learn a lot of
statecraft.”

Jose showed his teeth and grinned, and after he had dropped into a line
behind us we could hear him still chuckling.

“You would be a great success in secret service work, Aiken,” I said,
“or on the stage.”

We were riding in single file, and in order to see my face in the
moonlight he had to turn in his saddle.

“And yet I didn’t,” he laughed.

“What do you mean,” I asked, “were you ever a spy or an actor?”

“I was both,” he said. “I was a failure at both, too. I got put in jail
for being a spy, and I ought to have been hung for my acting.” I kicked
my mule forward in order to hear better.

“Tell me about it,” I asked, eagerly. “About when you were a spy.”

But Aiken only laughed, and rode on without turning his head.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said after a pause. Then he looked at me
over his shoulder. “It needs a big black background of experience and
hard luck to get the perspective on that story,” he explained. “It
wouldn’t appeal to you; you’re too young. They’re some things they don’t
teach at West Point.”

“They teach us,” I answered, hotly, “that if we’re detailed to secret
service work we are to carry out our orders. It’s not dishonorable to
obey orders. I’m not so young as you think. Go on, tell me, in what war
were you a spy?”

“It wasn’t in any war,” Aiken said, again turning away from me. “It was
in Haskell’s Private Detective Agency.”

I could not prevent an exclamation, but the instant it had escaped me
I could have kicked myself for having made it. “I beg your pardon,” I
murmured, awkwardly.

“I said you wouldn’t understand,” Aiken answered. Then, to show he did
not wish to speak with me further, he spurred his mule into a trot and
kept a distance between us.

Our trail ran over soft, spongy ground and was shut in on either hand
by a wet jungle of tangled vines and creepers. They interlaced like the
strands of a hammock, choking and strangling and clinging to each other
in a great web. From the jungle we came to ill-smelling pools of mud and
water, over which hung a white mist which rose as high as our heads.
It was so heavy with moisture that our clothing dripped with it, and
we were chilled until our teeth chattered. But by five o’clock in the
morning we had escaped the coast swamps, and reached higher ground and
the village of Sagua la Grande, and the sun was drying our clothes and
taking the stiffness out of our bones.



CANAL COMPANY’S FEVER HOSPITAL, PANAMA


The nurse brought me my diary this morning. She found it in the inside
pocket of my tunic. All of its back pages were scribbled over with
orders of the day, countersigns, and the memoranda I made after Laguerre
appointed me adjutant to the Legion. But in the first half of it was
what I see I was pleased to call my “memoirs,” in which I had written
the last chapter the day Aiken and I halted at Sagua la Grande. When I
read it over I felt that I was somehow much older than when I made that
last entry. And yet it was only two months ago. It seems like two years.
I don’t feel much like writing about it, nor thinking about it, but I
suppose, if I mean to keep my “memoirs” up to date, I shall never have
more leisure in which to write than I have now. For Dr. Ezequiel says it
will be another two weeks before I can leave this cot. Sagua seems very
unimportant now. But I must not write of it as I see it now, from this
distance, but as it appealed to me then, when everything about me was
new and strange and wonderful.

It was my first sight of a Honduranian town, and I thought it most
charming and curious. As I learned later it was like any other
Honduranian town and indeed like every other town in Central America.
They are all built around a plaza, which sometimes is a park with
fountains and tessellated marble pavements and electric lights, and
sometimes only an open place of dusty grass. There is always a church
at one end, and the cafe or club, and the alcalde’s house, or the
governor’s palace, at another. In the richer plazas there must always
be the statue of some Liberator, and in the poorer a great wooden cross.
Sagua la Grande was bright and warm and foreign looking. It reminded
me of the colored prints of Mexico which I had seen in my grandfather’s
library. The houses were thatched clay huts with gardens around them
crowded with banana palms, and trees hung with long beans, which broke
into masses of crimson flowers. The church opposite the inn was old and
yellow, and at the edge of the plaza were great palms that rustled and
courtesied. We led our mules straight through the one big room of the
inn out into the yard behind it, and while doing it I committed the
grave discourtesy of not first removing my spurs. Aiken told me about it
at once, and I apologized to everyone--to the alcalde, and the priest,
and the village school-master who had crossed the plaza to welcome
us--and I asked them all to drink with me. I do not know that I ever
enjoyed a breakfast more than I did the one we ate in the big cool inn
with the striped awning outside, and the naked brown children watching
us from the street, and the palms whispering overhead. The breakfast
was good in itself, but it was my surroundings which made the meal so
remarkable and the fact that I was no longer at home and responsible to
someone, but that I was talking as one man to another, and in a foreign
language to people who knew no other tongue. The inn-keeper was a fat
little person in white drill and a red sash, in which he carried two
silver-mounted pistols. He looked like a ring-master in a circus, but he
cooked us a most wonderful omelette with tomatoes and onions and olives
chopped up in it with oil. And an Indian woman made us tortillas, which
are like our buckwheat cakes. It was fascinating to see her toss them
up in the air, and slap them into shape with her hands. Outside the sun
blazed upon the white rim of huts, and the great wooden cross in the
plaza threw its shadow upon the yellow facade of the church. Beside the
church there was a chime of four bells swinging from a low ridge-pole.
The dews and the sun had turned their copper a brilliant green, but had
not hurt their music, and while we sat at breakfast a little Indian boy
in crumpled vestments beat upon them with a stick, making a sweet and
swinging melody. It did not seem to me a scene set for revolution, but I
liked it all so much that that one breakfast alone repaid me for my long
journey south. I was sure life in Sagua la Grande would always suit
me, and that I would never ask for better company than the comic-opera
landlord and the jolly young priest and the yellow-skinned, fever-ridden
schoolmaster with his throat wrapped in a great woollen shawl. But very
soon, what with having had no sleep the night before and the heat, I
grew terribly drowsy and turned in on a canvas cot in the corner, where
I slept until long after mid-day. For some time I could hear Aiken and
the others conversing together and caught the names of Laguerre and
Garcia, but I was too sleepy to try to listen, and, as I said, Sagua did
not seem to me to be the place for conspiracies and revolutions. I left
it with real regret, and as though I were parting with friends of long
acquaintanceship.

From the time we left Sagua the path began to ascend, and we rode in
single file along the edges of deep precipices. From the depths below
giant ferns sent up cool, damp odors, and we could hear the splash and
ripple of running water, and at times, by looking into the valley, I
could see waterfalls and broad streams filled with rocks, which churned
the water into a white foam. We passed under tall trees covered with
white and purple flowers, and in the branches of others were perched
macaws, giant parrots of the most wonderful red and blue and yellow, and
just at sunset we startled hundreds of parroquets which flew screaming
and chattering about our heads, like so many balls of colored worsted.

When the moon rose, we rode out upon a table-land and passed between
thick forests of enormous trees, the like of which I had never imagined.
Their branches began at a great distance from the ground and were
covered thick with orchids, which I mistook for large birds roosting for
the night. Each tree was bound to the next by vines like tangled ropes,
some drawn as taut as the halyards of a ship, and others, as thick as
one’s leg; they were twisted and wrapped around the branches, so that
they looked like boa-constrictors hanging ready to drop upon one’s
shoulders. The moonlight gave to this forest of great trees a weird,
fantastic look. I felt like a knight entering an enchanted wood. But
nothing disturbed our silence except the sudden awakening of a great
bird or the stealthy rustle of an animal in the underbrush. Near
midnight we rode into a grove of manacca palms as delicate as ferns, and
each as high as a three-story house, and with fronds so long that those
drooping across the trail hid it completely. To push our way through
these we had to use both arms as one lifts the curtains in a doorway.

{Illustration: I was sure life in Sagua la Grande would always suit me.}

Aiken himself seemed to feel the awe and beauty of the place, and called
the direction to me in a whisper. Even that murmur was enough to carry
above the rustling of the palms, and startled hundreds of monkeys into
wakefulness. We could hear their barks and cries echoing from every part
of the forest, and as they sprang from one branch to another the palms
bent like trout-rods, and then swept back into place again with a
strange swishing sound, like the rush of a great fish through water.

After midnight we were too stiff and sore to ride farther, and we
bivouacked on the trail beside a stream. I had no desire for further
sleep, and I sat at the foot of a tree smoking and thinking. I had often
“camped out” as a boy, and at West Point with the battalion, but I had
never before felt so far away from civilization and my own people. For
company I made a little fire and sat before it, going over in my mind
what I had learned since I had set forth on my travels. I concluded that
so far I had gained much and lost much. What I had experienced of the
ocean while on the ship and what little I had seen of this country
delighted me entirely, and I would not have parted with a single one of
my new impressions. But all I had learned of the cause for which I had
come to fight disappointed and disheartened me. Of course I had left
home partly to seek adventure, but not only for that. I had set out on
this expedition with the idea that I was serving some good cause--that
old-fashioned principles were forcing these men to fight for their
independence. But I had been early undeceived. At the same time that
I was enjoying my first sight of new and beautiful things I was being
robbed of my illusions and my ideals. And nothing could make up to me
for that. By merely travelling on around the globe I would always be
sure to find some new things of interest. But what would that count if I
lost my faith in men! If I ceased to believe in their unselfishness
and honesty. Even though I were young and credulous, and lived in
a make-believe world of my own imagining, I was happier so than in
thinking that everyone worked for his own advantage, and without justice
to others, or private honor. It harmed no one that I believed better
of others than they deserved, but it was going to hurt me terribly if I
learned that their aims were even lower than my own. I knew it was Aiken
who had so discouraged me. It was he who had laughed at me for believing
that Laguerre and his men were fighting for liberty. If I were going
to credit him, there was not one honest man in Honduras, and no one on
either side of this revolution was fighting for anything but money. He
had made it all seem commercial, sordid, and underhand. I blamed him
for having so shaken my faith and poisoned my mind. I scowled at his
unconscious figure as he lay sleeping peacefully on his blanket, and I
wished heartily that I had never set eyes on him. Then I argued that his
word, after all, was not final. He made no pretence of being a saint,
and it was not unnatural that a man who held no high motives should
fail to credit them to others. I had partially consoled myself with
this reflection, when I remembered suddenly that Beatrice herself had
foretold the exact condition which Aiken had described.

“That is not war,” she had said to me, “that is speculation!” She surely
had said that to me, but how could she have known, or was hers only a
random guess? And if she had guessed correctly what would she wish me to
do now? Would she wish me to turn back, or, if my own motives were good,
would she tell me to go on? She had called me her knight-errant, and I
owed it to her to do nothing of which she would disapprove. As I thought
of her I felt a great loneliness and a longing to see her once again.
I thought of how greatly she would have delighted in those days at sea,
and how wonderful it would have been if I could have seen this hot,
feverish country with her at my side. I pictured her at the inn at Sagua
smiling on the priest and the fat little landlord; and their admiration
of her. I imagined us riding together in the brilliant sunshine with the
crimson flowers meeting overhead, and the palms bowing to her and paying
her homage. I lifted the locket she had wound around my wrist, and
kissed it. As I did so, my doubts and questionings seemed to fall away.
I stood up confident and determined. It was not my business to worry
over the motives of other men, but to look to my own. I would go ahead
and fight Alvarez, who Aiken himself declared was a thief and a tyrant.
If anyone asked me my politics I would tell him I was for the side that
would obtain the money the Isthmian Line had stolen, and give it to
the people; that I was for Garcia and Liberty, Laguerre and the Foreign
Legion. This platform of principles seemed to me so satisfactory that I
stretched my feet to the fire and went to sleep.

I was awakened by the most delicious odor of coffee, and when I rolled
out of my blanket I found Jose standing over me with a cup of it in his
hand, and Aiken buckling the straps of my saddle-girth. We took a
plunge in the stream, and after a breakfast of coffee and cold tortillas
climbed into the saddle and again picked up the trail.

After riding for an hour Aiken warned me that at any moment we were
likely to come upon either Laguerre or the soldiers of Alvarez. “So you
keep your eyes and ears open,” he said, “and when they challenge throw
up your hands quick. The challenge is ‘Halt, who lives,’” he explained.
“If it is a government soldier you must answer, ‘The government.’ But if
it’s one of Laguerre’s or Garcia’s pickets you must say ‘The revolution
lives.’ And whatever else you do, _hold up your hands._”

I rehearsed this at once, challenging myself several times, and giving
the appropriate answers. The performance seemed to afford Aiken much
amusement.

“Isn’t that right?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “but the joke is that you won’t be able to tell which is
the government soldier and which is the revolutionist, and you’ll give
the wrong answer, and we’ll both get shot.”

“I can tell by our uniform,” I answered.

“Uniform!” exclaimed Aiken, and burst into the most uproarious laughter.
“Rags and tatters,” he said.

I was considerably annoyed to learn by this that the revolutionary party
had no distinctive uniform. The one worn by the government troops which
I had seen at the coast I had thought bad enough, but it was a great
disappointment to hear that we had none at all. Ever since I had started
from Dobbs Ferry I had been wondering what was the Honduranian
uniform. I had promised myself to have my photograph taken in it. I
had anticipated the pride I should have in sending the picture back to
Beatrice. So I was considerably chagrined, until I decided to invent
a uniform of my own, which I would wear whether anyone else wore it or
not. This was even better than having to accept one which someone else
had selected. As I had thought much on the subject of uniforms, I began
at once to design a becoming one.

We had reached a most difficult pass in the mountain, where the trail
stumbled over broken masses of rock and through a thick tangle of
laurel. The walls of the pass were high and the trees at the top shut
out the sunlight. It was damp and cold and dark.

“We’re sure to strike something here,” Aiken whispered over his
shoulder. It did not seem at all unlikely. The place was the most
excellent man-trap, but as to that, the whole length of the trail had
lain through what nature had obviously arranged for a succession of
ambushes.

Aiken turned in his saddle and said, in an anxious tone: “Do you know,
the nearer I get to the old man, the more I think I was a fool to come.
As long as I’ve got nothing but bad news, I’d better have stayed away.
Do you remember Pharaoh and the messengers of ill tidings?”

I nodded, but I kept my eyes busy with the rocks and motionless laurel.
My mule was slipping and kicking down pebbles, and making as much noise
as a gun battery. I knew, if there were any pickets about, they could
hear us coming for a quarter of a mile.

“Garcia may think he’s Pharaoh,” Aiken went on, “and take it into his
head it’s my fault the guns didn’t come. Laguerre may say I sold the
secret to the Isthmian Line.”

“Oh, he couldn’t think you’d do that!” I protested.

“Well, I’ve known it done,” Aiken said. “Quay certainly sold us out at
New Orleans. And Laguerre may think I went shares with him.”

I began to wonder if Aiken was not probably the very worst person I
could have selected to introduce me to General Laguerre. It seemed as
though it certainly would have been better had I found my way to him
alone. I grew so uneasy concerning my possible reception that I said,
irritably: “Doesn’t the General know you well enough to trust you?”

“No, he doesn’t!” Aiken snapped back, quite as irritably. “And he’s dead
right, too. You take it from me, that the fewer people in this country
you trust, the better for you. Why, the rottenness of this country is a
proverb. ‘It’s a place where the birds have no song, where the flowers
have no odor, where the women are without virtue, and the men without
honor.’ That’s what a gringo said of Honduras many years ago, and he
knew the country and the people in it.”

It was not a comforting picture, but in my discouragement I remembered
Laguerre.

“General Laguerre does not belong to this country,” I said, hopefully.

“No,” Aiken answered, with a laugh. “He’s an Irish-Frenchman and belongs
to a dozen countries. He’s fought for every flag that floats, and he’s
no better off to-day than when he began.”

He turned toward me and stared with an amused and tolerant grin. “He’s a
bit like you,” he said.

I saw he did not consider what he said as a compliment, but I was vain
enough to want to know what he did think of me, so I asked: “And in what
way am I like General Laguerre?”

The idea of our similarity seemed to amuse Aiken, for he continued to
grin.

“Oh, you’ll see when we meet him,” he said. “I can’t explain it. You
two are just different from other people--that’s all. He’s old-fashioned
like you, if you know what I mean, and young--”

“Why, he’s an old man,” I corrected.

“He’s old enough to be your grandfather,” Aiken laughed, “but I say he’s
young--like you, the way you are.”

Aiken knew that it annoyed me when he pretended I was so much younger
than himself, and I had started on some angry reply, when I was abruptly
interrupted.

A tall, ragged man rose suddenly from behind a rock, and presented a
rifle. He was so close to Aiken that the rifle almost struck him in the
face. Aiken threw up his hands, and fell back with such a jerk that he
lost his balance, and would have fallen had he not pitched forward and
clasped the mule around the neck. I pulled my mule to a halt, and held
my hands as high as I could raise them. The man moved his rifle from
side to side so as to cover each of us in turn, and cried in English,
“Halt! Who goes there?”

Aiken had not told me the answer to that challenge, so I kept silent. I
could hear Jose behind me interrupting his prayers with little sobs of
fright.

Aiken scrambled back into an upright position, held up his hands,
and cried: “Confound you, we are travellers, going to the capital on
business. Who the devil are you?”

“Qui vive?” the man demanded over the barrel of his gun.

“What does that mean?” Aiken cried, petulantly. “Talk English, can’t
you, and put down that gun.”

The man ceased moving the rifle between us, and settled it on Aiken.

“Cry ‘Long live the government,’” he commanded, sharply.

Aiken gave a sudden start of surprise, and I saw his eyelids drop and
rise again. Later when I grew to know him intimately, I could always
tell when he was lying, or making the winning move in some bit of
knavery, by that nervous trick of the eyelids. He knew that I knew about
it, and he once confided to me that, had he been able to overcome it, he
would have saved himself some thousands of dollars which it had cost him
at cards.

But except for this drooping of the eyelids he gave no sign.

“No, I won’t cry ‘Long live the government,’” he answered. “That is,” he
added hastily, “I won’t cry long live anything. I’m the American Consul,
and I’m up here on business. So’s my friend.”

The man did not move his gun by so much as a straw’s breadth.

“You will cry ‘Long live Alvarez’ or I will shoot you,” said the man.

I had more leisure to observe the man than had Aiken, for it is
difficult to study the features of anyone when he is looking at you down
a gun-barrel, and it seemed to me that the muscles of the man’s mouth as
he pressed it against the stock were twitching with a smile. As the side
of his face toward me was the one farther from the gun, I was able to
see this, but Aiken could not, and he answered, still more angrily: “I
tell you, I’m the American Consul. Anyway, it’s not going to do you any
good to shoot me. You take me to your colonel alive, and I’ll give you
two hundred dollars. You shoot me and you won’t get a cent.”

The moment was serious enough, and I was thoroughly concerned both for
Aiken and myself, but when he made this offer, my nervousness, or my
sense of humor, got the upper hand of me, and I laughed.

Having laughed I made the best of it, and said:

“Offer him five hundred for the two of us. Hang the expense.”

The rifle wavered in the man’s hands, he steadied it, scowled at me, bit
his lips, and then burst into shouts of laughter. He sank back against
one of the rocks, and pointed at Aiken mockingly.

“I knew it was you all the time,” he cried, “for certain I did. I knew
it was you all the time.”

I was greatly relieved, but naturally deeply indignant. I felt as though
someone had jumped from behind a door, and shouted “Boo!” at me. I hoped
in my heart that the colonel would give the fellow eight hours’ pack
drill. “What a remarkable sentry,” I said.

Aiken shoved his hands into his breeches pockets, and surveyed the man
with an expression of the most violent disgust.

“You’ve got a damned queer idea of a joke,” he said finally. “I might
have shot you!”

The man seemed to consider this the very acme of humor, for he fairly
hooted at us. He was so much amused that it was some moments before he
could control himself.

“I saw you at Porto Cortez,” he said, “I knew you was the American
Consul all the time. You came to our camp after the fight, and the
General gave you a long talk in his tent. Don’t you remember me? I was
standing guard outside.”

Aiken snorted indignantly.

“No, I don’t remember you,” he said. “But I’ll remember you next time.
Are you standing guard now, or just doing a little highway robbery on
your own account?”

“Oh, I’m standing guard for keeps,” said the sentry, earnestly. “Our
camp’s only two hundred yards back of me. And our Captain told me to let
all parties pass except the enemy, but I thought I’d have to jump you
just for fun. I’m an American myself, you see, from Kansas. An’ being
an American I had to give the American Consul a scare. But say,”
 he exclaimed, advancing enthusiastically on Aiken, with his hand
outstretched, “you didn’t scare for a cent.” He shook hands violently
with each of us in turn. “My name’s Pete MacGraw,” he added,
expectantly.

“Well, now, Mr. MacGraw,” said Aiken, “if you’ll kindly guide us to
General Laguerre we’ll use our influence to have you promoted. You need
more room. I imagine a soldier with your original ideas must find sentry
duty go very dull.”

MacGraw grinned appreciatively and winked.

“If I take you to my General alive, do I get that two hundred dollars?”
 he asked. He rounded off his question with another yell of laughter.

He was such a harmless idiot that we laughed with him. But we were
silenced at once by a shout from above us, and a command to “Stop
that noise.” I looked up and saw a man in semi-uniform and wearing an
officer’s sash and sword stepping from one rock to another and breaking
his way through the laurel. He greeted Aiken with a curt wave of the
hand. “Glad to see you, Consul,” he called. “You will dismount, please,
and lead your horses this way.” He looked at me suspiciously and then
turned and disappeared into the undergrowth.

“The General is expecting you, Aiken,” his voice called back to us. “I
hope everything is all right?”

Aiken and I had started to draw the mules up the hill. Already both the
officer and the trail had been completely hidden by the laurel.

“No, nothing is all right,” Aiken growled.

There was the sound of an oath, the laurels parted, and the officer’s
face reappeared, glaring at us angrily.

“What do you mean?” he demanded. “My information is for General
Laguerre,” Aiken answered, sulkily.

The man sprang away again muttering to himself, and we scrambled and
stumbled after him, guided by the sounds of breaking branches and
rolling stones.

From a glance I caught of Aiken’s face I knew he was regretting now,
with even more reason than before, that he had not remained at the
coast, and I felt very sorry for him. Now that he was in trouble and not
patronizing me and poking fun at me, I experienced a strong change of
feeling toward him. He was the only friend I had in Honduras, and as
between him and these strangers who had received us so oddly, I felt
that, although it would be to my advantage to be friends with the
greater number, my loyalty was owing to Aiken. So I scrambled up beside
him and panted out with some difficulty, for the ascent was a steep one:
“If there is any row, I’m with _you_, Aiken.”

“Oh, there won’t be any row,” he growled.

“Well, if there is,” I repeated, “you can count me in.”

“That’s all right,” he said.

At that moment we reached the top of the incline, and I looked down into
the hollow below. To my surprise I found that this side of the hill was
quite barren of laurel or of any undergrowth, and that it sloped to a
little open space carpeted with high, waving grass, and cut in half by
a narrow stream. On one side of the stream a great herd of mules and
horses were tethered, and on the side nearer us were many smoking
camp-fires and rough shelters made from the branches of trees. Men were
sleeping in the grass or sitting in the shade of the shelters, cleaning
accoutrements, and some were washing clothes in the stream. At the foot
of the hill was a tent, and ranged before it two Gatling guns
strapped in their canvas jackets. I saw that I had at last reached
my destination. This was the camp of the filibusters. These were the
soldiers of Laguerre’s Foreign Legion.




III


Although I had reached my journey’s end, although I had accomplished
what I had set out to do, I felt no sense of elation nor relief. I
was, instead, disenchanted, discouraged, bitterly depressed. It was
so unutterably and miserably unlike what I had hoped to find, what I
believed I had the right to expect, that my disappointment and anger
choked me. The picture I had carried in my mind was one of shining
tent-walls, soldierly men in gay and gaudy uniforms, fluttering guidons,
blue ammunition-boxes in orderly array, smart sentries pacing their
posts, and a head-quarters tent where busy officers bent over maps and
reports.

The scene I had set was one painted in martial colors, in scarlet
and gold lace; it moved to martial music, to bugle-calls, to words of
command, to the ringing challenge of the sentry, and what I had found
was this camp of gypsies, this nest of tramps, without authority,
discipline, or self-respect. It was not even picturesque. My indignation
stirred me so intensely that, as I walked down the hill, I prayed for a
rude reception, that I might try to express my disgust.

The officer who had first approached us stopped at the opening of the
solitary tent, and began talking excitedly to someone inside. And as we
reached the level ground, the occupant of the tent stepped from it. He
was a stout, heavy man, with a long, twisted mustache, at which he was
tugging fiercely. He wore a red sash and a bandman’s tunic, with two
stars sewn on the collar. I could not make out his rank, but his first
words explained him.

“I am glad to see you at last, Mr. Aiken,” he said. “I’m Major Reeder,
in temporary command. You have come to report, sir?”

Aiken took so long to reply that I stopped studying the remarkable
costume of the Major and turned to Aiken. I was surprised to see that he
was unquestionably frightened. His eyes were shifting and blinking, and
he wet his lips with his tongue. All his self-assurance had deserted
him. The officer who had led us to the camp was also aware of Aiken’s
uneasiness, and was regarding him with a sneer. For some reason the
spectacle of Aiken’s distress seemed to afford him satisfaction.

“I should prefer to report to General Laguerre,” Aiken said, at last.

“I am in command here,” Reeder answered, sharply. “General Laguerre is
absent--reconnoitering. I represent him. I know all about Mr. Quay’s
mission. It was I who recommended him to the General. Where are the
guns?”

For a moment Aiken stared at him helplessly, and then drew in a quick
breath.

“I don’t know where they are,” he said. “The Panama arrived two days
ago, but when I went to unload the guns Captain Leeds told me they had
been seized in New Orleans by the Treasury Department. Someone must
have--”

Both Major Reeder and the officer interrupted with a shout of anger.

“Then it’s true!” Reeder cried. “It’s true, and--and--you dare to tell
us so!”

Aiken raised his head and for a moment looked almost defiant.

“Why shouldn’t I tell you?” he demanded, indignantly. “Who else was
there to tell you? I’ve travelled two days to let you know. I can’t help
it if the news isn’t good. I’m just as sorry as you are.”

The other officer was a stout, yellow-haired German. He advanced a step
and shook a soiled finger in Aiken’s face. “You can’t help it, can’t
you?” he cried. “You’re sorry, are you? You won’t be sorry when you’re
paid your money, will you? How much did you get for us, hey! How much
did Joe Fiske--”

Reeder threw out his arm and motioned the officer back. “Silence,
Captain Heinze,” he commanded.

The men of the Legion who had happened to be standing near the tent when
we appeared had come up to look at the new arrivals, and when they heard
two of their officers attacking Aiken they crowded still closer in
front of us, forming a big half-circle. Each of them apparently was on a
footing with his officers of perfect comradeship, and listened openly to
what was going forward as though it were a personal concern of his own.
They had even begun to discuss it among themselves, and made so much
noise in doing so that Captain Heinze passed on Reeder’s rebuke as
though it had been intended for them, commanding, “Silence in the
ranks.”

They were not in ranks, and should not have been allowed where they
were in any formation, but that did not seem to occur to either of the
officers.

“Silence,” Reeder repeated. “Now, Mr. Aiken, I am waiting. What have you
to say?”

“What is there for me to say?” Aiken protested. “I have done all I
could. I told you as soon as I could get here.” Major Reeder drew close
to Aiken and pointed his outstretched hand at him.

“Mr. Aiken,” he said. “Only four people knew that those guns were
ordered--Quay, who went to fetch them, General Laguerre, myself, and
you. Some one of us must have sold out the others; no one else could
have done it. It was not Quay. The General and I have been here in the
mountains--we did not do it; and that--that leaves you.”

“It does not leave me,” Aiken cried. He shouted it out with such spirit
that I wondered at him. It was the same sort of spirit which makes a rat
fight because he can’t get away, but I didn’t think so then.

“It was Quay sold you out!” Aiken cried. “Quay told the Isthmian people
as soon as the guns reached New Orleans. I suspected him when he cabled
me he wasn’t coming back. I know him. I know just what he is. He’s been
on both sides before.”

“Silence, you--you,” Reeder interrupted. He was white with anger. “Mr.
Quay is my friend,” he cried. “I trust him. I trust him as I would trust
my own brother. How dare you accuse him!”

He ceased and stood gasping with indignation, but his show of anger
encouraged Captain Heinze to make a fresh attack on Aiken.

“Quay took you off the beach,” he shouted.

“He gave you food and clothes, and a bed to lie on. It’s like you, to
bite the hand that fed you. When have you ever stuck to any side or
anybody if you could get a dollar more by selling him out?”

The whole thing had become intolerable. It was abject and degrading,
like a falling-out among thieves. They reminded me of a group of drunken
women I had once seen, shameless and foul-mouthed, fighting in the
street, with grinning night-birds urging them on. I felt in some way
horribly responsible, as though they had dragged me into it--as though
the flying handfuls of mud had splattered me. And yet the thing which
inflamed me the most against them was their unfairness to Aiken. They
would not let him speak, and they would not see that they were so many,
and that he was alone. I did not then know that he was telling the
truth. Indeed, I thought otherwise. I did not then know that on those
occasions when he appeared to the worst advantage, he generally was
trying to tell the truth.

Captain Heinze pushed nearer, and shoved his fist close to Aiken’s face.

“We know what you are,” he jeered. “We know you’re no more on our side
than you’re the American Consul. You lied to us about that, and you’ve
lied to us about everything else. And now we’ve caught you, and we’ll
make you pay for it.”

One of the men in the rear of the crowd shouted, “Ah, shoot the beggar!”
 and others began to push forward and to jeer. Aiken heard them and
turned quite white.

“You’ve caught me?” Aiken stammered. “Why, I came here of my own will.
Is it likely I’d have done that if I had sold you out?”

“I tell you you did sell us out,” Heinze roared. “And you’re a coward
besides, and I tell you so to your face!” He sprang at Aiken, and Aiken
shrank back. It made me sick to see him do it. I had such a contempt for
the men against him that I hated his not standing up to them. It was to
hide the fact that he had stepped back, that I jumped in front of him
and pretended to restrain him. I tried to make it look as though had I
not interfered, he would have struck at Heinze.

The German had swung around toward the men behind him, as though he were
subpoenaing them as witnesses.

“I call him a coward to his face!” he shouted. But when he turned again
I was standing in front of Aiken, and he halted in surprise, glaring at
me. I don’t know what made me do it, except that I had heard enough of
their recriminations, and was sick with disappointment. I hated Heinze
and all of them, and myself for being there.

“Yes, you can call him a coward,” I said, as offensively as I could,
“with fifty men behind you. How big a crowd do you want before you
dare insult a man?” Then I turned on the others. “Aren’t you ashamed of
yourselves,” I cried, “to all of you set on one man in your own camp? I
don’t know anything about this row and I don’t want to know, but there’s
fifty men here against one, and I’m on the side of that one. You’re
a lot of cheap bullies,” I cried, “and this German drill-sergeant,”
 I shouted, pointing at Heinze, “who calls himself an officer, is the
cheapest bully of the lot.” I jerked open the buckle which held my belt
and revolver, and flung them on the ground. Then I slipped off my coat,
and shoved it back of me to Aiken, for I wanted to keep him out of it.
It was the luck of Royal Macklin himself that led me to take off my coat
instead of drawing my revolver. At the Point I had been accustomed to
settle things with my fists, and it had been only since I started from
the coast that I had carried a gun. A year later, in the same situation,
I would have reached for it. Had I done so that morning, as a dozen of
them assured me later, they would have shot me before I could have got
my hand on it. But, as it was, when I rolled up my sleeves the men began
to laugh, and some shouted: “Give him room,” “Make a ring,” “Fair play,
now,” “Make a ring.” The semi-circle spread out and lengthened until it
formed a ring, with Heinze and Reeder, and Aiken holding my coat, and
myself in the centre of it.

I squared off in front of the German and tapped him lightly on the chest
with the back of my hand.

“Now, then,” I cried, taunting him, “I call _you_ a coward to _your_
face. What are you going to do about it?”

For an instant he seemed too enraged and astonished to move, and the
next he exploded with a wonderful German oath and rushed at me, tugging
at his sword. At the same moment the men gave a shout and the ring
broke. I thought they had cried out in protest when they saw Heinze put
his hand on his sword, but as they scattered and fell back I saw that
they were looking neither at Heinze nor at me, but at someone behind me.
Heinze, too, halted as suddenly as though he had been pulled back by a
curbed bit, and, bringing his heels together, stood stiffly at salute.
I turned and saw that everyone was falling out of the way of a tall
man who came striding toward us, and I knew on the instant that he
was General Laguerre. At the first glance I disassociated him from
his followers. He was entirely apart. In any surroundings I would have
picked him out as a leader of men. Even a civilian would have known
he was a soldier, for the signs of his calling were stamped on him
as plainly as the sterling mark on silver, and although he was not in
uniform his carriage and countenance told you that he was a personage.

He was very tall and gaunt, with broad shoulders and a waist as small as
a girl’s, and although he must then have been about fifty years of age
he stood as stiffly erect as though his spine had grown up into the back
of his head.

At the first glance he reminded me of Van Dyke’s portrait of Charles I.
He had the same high-bred features, the same wistful eyes, and hewore
his beard and mustache in what was called the Van Dyke fashion, before
Louis Napoleon gave it a new vogue as the “imperial.”

It must have been that I read the wistful look in his eyes later, for
at the moment of our first meeting it was a very stern Charles I. who
confronted us, with the delicate features stiffened in anger, and the
eyes set and burning. Since then I have seen both the wistful look and
the angry look many times, and even now I would rather face the muzzle
of a gun than the eyes of General Laguerre when you have offended him.

His first words were addressed to Reeder.

“What does this mean, sir?” he demanded. “If you cannot keep order in
this camp when my back is turned I shall find an officer who can. Who is
this?” he added, pointing at me. I became suddenly conscious of the fact
that I was without my hat or coat, and that my sleeves were pulled up to
the shoulders. Aiken was just behind me, and as I turned to him for my
coat I disclosed his presence to the General. He gave an exclamation of
delight.

“Mr. Aiken!” he cried, “at last!” He lowered his voice to an eager
whisper. “Where are the guns?” he asked.

Apparently Aiken felt more confidence in General Laguerre than in his
officers, for at this second questioning he answered promptly.

“I regret to say, sir,” he began, “that the guns were seized at New
Orleans. Someone informed the Honduranian Consul there, and he--”

“Seized!” cried Laguerre. “By whom? Do you mean we have lost them?”

Aiken lowered his eyes and nodded.

“But how do you know?” Laguerre demanded, eagerly. “You are not sure?
Who seized them?”

“The Treasury officers,” Aiken answered

“The captain of the Panama told me he saw the guns taken on the
company’s wharf.”

For some moments Laguerre regarded him sternly, but I do not think he
saw him. He turned and walked a few steps from us and back again.
Then he gave an upward toss of his head as though he had accepted his
sentence. “The fortunes of war,” he kept repeating to himself, “the
fortunes of war.” He looked up and saw us regarding him with expressions
of the deepest concern.

“I thought I had had my share of them,” he said, simply. He straightened
his shoulders and frowned, and then looked at us and tried to smile. But
the bad news had cut deeply. During the few minutes since he had come
pushing his way through the crowd, he seemed to have grown ten years
older. He walked to the door of his tent and then halted and turned
toward Reeder.

“I think my fever is coming on again,” he said. “I believe I had better
rest. Do not let them disturb me.”

“Yes, General,” Reeder answered. Then he pointed at Aiken and myself.
“And what are we to do with these?” he asked.

“Do with these?” Laguerre repeated. “Why, what did you mean to do with
them?”

Reeder swelled out his chest importantly, “If you had not arrived when
you did, General,” he said, “I would have had them shot!”

The General stopped at the entrance to the tent and leaned heavily
against the pole. He raised his eyes and looked at us wearily and with
no show of interest.

“Shoot them?” he asked. “Why were you going to shoot them?”

“Because, General,” Reeder declared, theatrically, pointing an accusing
finger at Aiken, “I believe this man sold our secret to the Isthmian
Line. No one knew of the guns but our three selves and Quay. And Quay
is not a man to betray his friends. I wish I could say as much for Mr.
Aiken.”

At that moment Aiken, being quite innocent, said even less for himself,
and because he was innocent looked the trapped and convicted criminal.

Laguerre’s eyes glowed like two branding-irons. As he fixed them on
Aiken’s face one expected to see them leave a mark.

“If the General will only listen,” Aiken stammered. “If you will only
give me a hearing, sir. Why should I come to your camp if I had sold you
out? Why didn’t I get away on the first steamer, and stay away--as Quay
did?”

The General gave an exclamation of disgust, and shrugged his shoulders.
He sank back slowly against one of the Gatling guns.

“What does it matter?” he said, bitterly. “Why lock the stable door now?
I will give you a hearing,” he said, turning to Aiken, “but it would
be better for you if I listened to you later. Bring him to me to-morrow
morning after roll-call. And the other?” he asked. He pointed at me, but
his eyes, which were heavy with disappointment, were staring moodily at
the ground.

Heinze interposed himself quickly.

“Aiken brought him here!” he said. “I believe he’s an agent of the
Isthmian people, or,” he urged, “why did he come here? He came to spy
out your camp, General, and to report on our condition.”

“A spy!” said Laguerre, raising his head and regarding me sharply.

“Yes,” Heinze declared, with conviction. “A spy, General. A Government
spy, and he has found out our hiding-place and counted our men.”

Aiken turned on him with a snarl.

“Oh, you ass!” he cried. “He came as a volunteer. He wanted to fight
with you,--for the sacred cause of liberty!”

“Yes, he wanted to fight with us,” shouted Heinze, indignantly. “As soon
as he got into the camp, he wanted to fight with us.”

Laguerre made an exclamation of impatience, and rose unsteadily from the
gun-carriage.

“Silence!” he commanded. “I tell you I cannot listen to you now. I will
give these men a hearing after roll-call. In the meantime if they are
spies, they have seen too much. Place them under guard; and if they try
to escape, shoot them.”

I gave a short laugh and turned to Aiken.

“That’s the first intelligent military order I’ve heard yet,” I said.

Aiken scowled at me fearfully, and Reeder and Heinze gasped. General
Laguerre had caught the words, and turned his eyes on me. Like the real
princess who could feel the crumpled rose-leaf under a dozen mattresses,
I can feel it in my bones when I am in the presence of a real soldier.
My spinal column stiffens, and my fingers twitch to be at my visor. In
spite of their borrowed titles, I had smelt out the civilian in Reeder
and had detected the non-commissioned man in Heinze, and just as surely
I recognized the general officer in Laguerre.

So when he looked at me my heels clicked together, my arm bent to my hat
and fell again to my trouser seam, and I stood at attention. It was as
instinctive as though I were back at the Academy, and he had confronted
me in the uniform and yellow sash of a major-general.

“And what do you know of military orders, sir,” he demanded, in a low
voice, “that you feel competent to pass upon mine?”

Still standing at attention, I said: “For the last three years I have
been at West Point, sir, and have listened to nothing else.”

“You have been at West Point?” he said, slowly, looking at me in
surprise and with evident doubt. “When did you leave the Academy?”

“Two weeks ago,” I answered. At this, he looked even more incredulous.

“How does it happen,” he asked, “if you are preparing for the army at
West Point, that you are now travelling in Honduras?”

“I was dismissed from the Academy two weeks ago,” I answered. “This was
the only place where there was any fighting, so I came here. I read that
you had formed a Foreign Legion, and thought that maybe you would let me
join it.”

General Laguerre now stared at me in genuine amazement. In his interest
in the supposed spy, he had forgotten the loss of his guns.

“You came from West Point,” he repeated, incredulously, “all the way to
Honduras--to join me!” He turned to the two officers. “Did he tell you
this?” he demanded.

They answered, “No,” promptly, and truthfully as well, for they had not
given me time to tell them anything.

“Have you any credentials, passports, or papers?” he said.

When he asked this I saw Reeder whisper eagerly to Heinze, and then walk
away. He had gone to search my trunk for evidence that I was a spy, and
had I suspected this I would have protested violently, but it did not
occur to me then that he would do such a thing.

“I have only the passport I got from the commandante at Porto Cortez,” I
said.

At the words Aiken gave a quick shake of the head, as a man does when he
sees another move the wrong piece on the chess-board. But when I
stared at him inquiringly his expression changed instantly to one of
interrogation and complete unconcern.

“Ah!” exclaimed Heinze, triumphantly, “he has a permit from the
Government.”

“Let me see it,” said the General.

I handed it to him, and he drew a camp-chair from the tent, and, seating
himself, began to compare me with the passport.

“In this,” he said at last, “you state that you are a commercial
traveller; that you are going to the capital on business, and that you
are a friend of the Government.”

I was going to tell him that until it had been handed me by Aiken, I had
known nothing of the passport, but I considered that in some way this
might involve Aiken, and so I answered:

“It was necessary to tell them any story, sir, in order to get into
the interior. I could not tell them that I was _not_ a friend of the
Government, nor that I was trying to join you.”

“Your stories are somewhat conflicting,” said the General. “You are led
to our hiding-place by a man who is himself under suspicion, and the
only credentials you can show are from the enemy. Why should I believe
you are what you say you are? Why should I believe you are not a spy?”

I could not submit to having my word doubted, so I bowed stiffly and did
not speak.

“Answer me,” the General commanded, “what proofs have I?”

“You have nothing but my word for it,” I said.

General Laguerre seemed pleased with that, and I believe he was really
interested in helping me to clear myself. But he had raised my temper by
questioning my word.

“Surely you must have something to identify you,” he urged.

“If I had I’d refuse to show it,” I answered. “I told you why I came
here. If you think I am a spy, you can go ahead and shoot me as a spy,
and find out whether I told you the truth afterward.”

The General smiled indulgently.

“There would be very little satisfaction in that for me, or for you,” he
said.

“I’m an officer and a gentleman,” I protested, “and I have a right to be
treated as one. If you serve every gentleman who volunteers to join
you in the way I have been served, I’m not surprised that your force is
composed of the sort you have around you.”

The General raised his head and looked at me with such a savage
expression that during the pause which ensued I was most uncomfortable.

“If your proofs you are an officer are no stronger than those you offer
that you are a gentleman,” he said, “perhaps you are wise not to show
them. What right have you to claim you are an officer?”

His words cut and mortified me deeply, chiefly because I felt I deserved
them.

“Every cadet ranks a non-commissioned man,” I answered.

“But you are no longer a cadet,” he replied. “You have been dismissed.
You told me so yourself. Were you dismissed honorably, or dishonorably?”

“Dishonorably,” I answered. I saw that this was not the answer he had
expected. He looked both mortified and puzzled, and glanced at Heinze
and Aiken as though he wished that they were out of hearing.

“What was it for--what was the cause of your dismissal?” he asked. He
now spoke in a much lower tone. “Of course, you need not tell me,” he
added.

“I was dismissed for being outside the limits of the Academy without a
permit,” I answered. “I went to a dance at a hotel in uniform.”

“Was that all?” he demanded, smiling.

“That was the crime for which I was dismissed,” I said, sulkily. The
General looked at me for some moments, evidently in much doubt. I
believe he suspected that I had led him on to asking me the reason for
my dismissal, in order that I could make so satisfactory an answer. As
he sat regarding me, Heinze bent over him and said something to him in
a low tone, to which he replied: “But that would prove nothing. He might
have a most accurate knowledge of military affairs, and still be an
agent of the Government.”

“That is so, General,” Heinze answered, aloud. “But it would prove
whether he is telling the truth about his having been at West Point. If
his story is false in part, it is probably entirely false, as I believe
it to be.”

“Captain Heinze suggests that I allow him to test you with some
questions,” the General said, doubtfully; “questions on military
matters. Would you answer them?”

I did not want them to see how eager I was to be put to such a test, so
I tried to look as though I were frightened, and said, cautiously,
“I will try, sir.” I saw that the proposition to put me through an
examination had filled Aiken with the greatest concern. To reassure him,
I winked covertly.

Captain Heinze glanced about him as though looking for a text.

“Let us suppose,” he said, importantly, “that you are an
inspector-general come to inspect this camp. It is one that I myself
selected; as adjutant it is under my direction. What would you report as
to its position, its advantages and disadvantages?”

I did not have to look about me. Without moving from where I stood,
I could see all that was necessary of that camp. But I first asked,
timidly: “Is this camp a temporary one, made during a halt on the march,
or has it been occupied for some days?”

“We have been here for two weeks,” said Heinze.

“Is it supposed that a war is going on?” I asked, politely; “I mean, are
we in the presence of an enemy?”

“Of course,” answered Heinze. “Certainly we are at war.”

“Then,” I said, triumphantly, “in my report I should recommend that the
officer who selected this camp should be court-martialled.”

Heinze gave a shout of indignant laughter, and Aiken glared at me as
though he thought I had flown suddenly mad, but Laguerre only frowned
and waved his hand impatiently.

“You are bold, sir,” he said, grimly; “I trust you can explain
yourself.”

I pointed from the basin in which we stood, to the thickly wooded hills
around us.

“This camp has the advantage of water and grass,” I said. I spoke
formally, as though I were really making a report. “Those are its only
advantages. Captain Heinze has pitched it in a hollow. In case of an
attack, he has given the advantage of position to the enemy. Fifty
men could conceal themselves on those ridges and fire upon you as
effectively as though they had you at the bottom of a well. There are no
pickets out, except along the trail, which is the one approach the enemy
would not take. So far as this position counts, then,” I summed up, “the
camp is an invitation to a massacre.”

I did not dare look at the General, but I pointed at the guns at his
side. “Your two field-pieces are in their covers, and the covers are
strapped on them. It would take three minutes to get them into action.
Instead of being here in front of the tent, they should be up there on
those two highest points. There are no racks for the men’s rifles or
ammunition belts. The rifles are lying on the ground and scattered
everywhere--in case of an attack the men would not know where to lay
their hands on them. It takes only two forked sticks and a ridge-pole
with nicks in it, to make an excellent gun-rack, but there is none of
any sort. As for the sanitary arrangements of the camp, they are _nil_.
The refuse from the troop kitchen is scattered all over the place, and
so are the branches on which the men have been lying. There is no way
for them to cross that stream without their getting their feet wet; and
every officer knows that wet feet are worse than wet powder. The place
does not look as though it had been policed since you came here. It’s a
fever swamp. If you have been here two weeks, it’s a wonder your whole
force isn’t as rotten as sheep. And there!” I cried, pointing at the
stream which cut the camp in two--“there are men bathing and washing
their clothes up-stream, and those men below them are filling buckets
with water for cooking and drinking. Why have you no water-guards?
You ought to have a sentry there, and there. The water above the first
sentry should be reserved for drinking, below him should be the place
for watering your horses, and below the second sentry would be the water
for washing clothes. Why, these things are the A, B, C, of camp life.”
 For the first time since I had begun to speak, I turned on Heinze and
grinned at him.

“How do you like my report on your camp?” I asked. “Now, don’t you agree
with me that you should be court-martialled?” Heinze’s anger exploded
like a shell.

“You should be court-martialled yourself!” he shouted. “You are
insulting our good General. For me, I do not care. But you shall not
reflect upon my commanding officer, for him I--”

“That will do, Captain Heinze,” Laguerre said, quietly. “That will do,
thank you.” He did not look up at either of us, but for some time sat
with his elbow on his knee and with his chin resting in the palm of his
hand, staring at the camp. There was a long, and, for me, an awkward
silence. The General turned his head and stared at me. His expression
was exceedingly grave, but without resentment.

“You are quite right,” he said, finally. Heinze and Aiken moved
expectantly forward, anxious to hear him pass sentence upon me. Seeing
this he raised his voice and repeated: “You are quite right in what you
say about the camp. All you say is quite true.”

He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and, as he continued
speaking with his face averted, it was as though he were talking to
himself.

“We grow careless as we grow older,” he said, “One grows less difficult
to please.” His tone was that of a man excusing himself to himself. “The
old standards, the old models, pass away and--and failures, failures
come and dull the energy.” His voice dropped into a monotone; he seemed
to have forgotten us entirely.

It must have been then that for the first time I saw the wistful look
come into his eyes, and suddenly felt deeply sorry for him and wished
that I might dare to tell him so. I was not sorry for any act or speech
of mine. They had attacked me, and I had only defended myself. I was not
repentant for anything I had said; my sorrow was for what I read in the
General’s eyes as he sat staring out into the valley. It was the saddest
and loneliest look that I had ever seen. There was no bitterness in
it, but great sadness and weariness and disappointment, and above all,
loneliness, utter and complete loneliness.

He glanced up and saw me watching him, and for a moment regarded me
curiously, and then, as though I had tried to force my way into his
solitude, turned his eyes quickly away.

I had forgotten that I was a suspected spy until the fact was recalled
to me at that moment by the reappearance of Major Reeder. He came
bustling past me, carrying as I saw, to my great indignation, the sword
which had been presented to my grandfather, and which my grandfather had
given to me. I sprang after him and twisted it out of his hand.

“How dare you!” I cried. “You have opened my trunk! How dare you pry
into my affairs? General Laguerre!” I protested. “I appeal to you, sir.”

“Major Reeder,” the General demanded, sharply, “what does this mean?”

“I was merely seeking evidence, General,” said Reeder. “You asked for
his papers, and I went to look for them.”

“I gave you no orders to pry into this gentleman’s trunk,” said the
General. “You have exceeded your authority. You have done very ill, sir.
You have done very ill.”

While the General was reproving Reeder, his eyes, instead of looking at
the officer, were fixed upon my sword. It was sufficiently magnificent
to attract the attention of anyone, certainly of any soldier. The
scabbard was of steel, wonderfully engraved, the hilt was of ivory, and
the hilt-guard and belt fastenings were all of heavy gold. The General’s
face was filled with appreciation.

“You have a remarkably handsome sword there,” he said, and hesitated,
courteously, “--I beg your pardon, I have not heard your name?”

I was advancing to show the sword to him, when my eye fell upon the
plate my grandfather had placed upon it, and which bore the inscription:
“To Royal Macklin, on his appointment to the United States Military
Academy, from his Grandfather, John M. Hamilton, Maj. Gen. U.S.A.”

“My name is Macklin, sir,” I said, “Royal Macklin.” I laid the sword
lengthwise in his hands, and then pointed at the inscription. “You will
find it there,” I said. The General bowed and bent his head over the
inscription and then read the one beside it. This stated that the sword
had been presented by the citizens of New York to Major-General John
M. Hamilton in recognition of his distinguished services during the war
with Mexico. The General glanced up at me in astonishment.

“General Hamilton!” he exclaimed. “General John Hamilton! Is that--was
he your grandfather?”

I bowed my head, and the General stared at me as though I had
contradicted him.

“But, let me tell you, sir,” he protested, “that he was my friend.
General Hamilton was my friend for many years. Let me tell you, sir,”
 he went on, excitedly, “that your grandfather was a brave and courteous
gentleman, a true friend and--and a great soldier, sir, a great soldier.
I knew your grandfather well. I knew him well.” He rose suddenly, and,
while still holding the sword close to him, shook my hand.

“Captain Heinze,” he said, “bring out a chair for Mr. Macklin.” He did
not notice the look of injury with which Heinze obeyed this request.
But I did, and I enjoyed the spectacle, and as Heinze handed me the
camp-chair I thanked him politely. I could afford to be generous.

The General was drawing the sword a few inches from its scabbard and
shoving it back, again, turning it over in his hands.

“And to think that this is John Hamilton’s sword,” he said, “and that
you are John Hamilton’s grandson!” As the sword lay across his knees he
kept stroking it and touching it as one might caress a child, glancing
up at me from time to time with a smile. It seemed to have carried him
back again into days and scenes to which we all were strangers, and
we watched him without speaking. He became suddenly conscious of our
silence, and, on looking up, seemed to become uncomfortably aware of the
presence of Aiken and the two officers.

“That will do, gentlemen,” he said. “You will return with Mr. Aiken
after roll-call.” The officers saluted as they moved away, with Aiken
between them. He raised his eyebrows and tapped himself on the chest. I
understood that he meant by this that I was to say a good word for
him, and I nodded. When they had left us the General leaned forward and
placed his hand upon my shoulder.

“Now tell me,” he said. “Tell me everything. Tell me what you are doing
here, and why you ran away from home. Trust me entirely, and do not be
afraid to speak the whole truth.”

I saw that he thought I had left home because I had been guilty of some
wildness, if not of some crime, and I feared that my story would prove
so inoffensive that he would think I was holding something back. But his
manner was so gentle and generous that I plunged in boldly. I told
him everything; of my life with my grandfather, of my disgrace at the
Academy, of my desire, in spite of my first failure, to still make
myself a soldier. And then I told him of how I had been disappointed and
disillusioned, and how it had hurt me to find that this fight seemed so
sordid and the motives of all engaged only mercenary and selfish. But
once did he interrupt me, and then by an exclamation which I mistook for
an exclamation of disbelief, and which I challenged quickly. “But it
is true, sir,” I said. “I joined the revolutionists for just that
reason--because they were fighting for their liberty and because they
had been wronged and were the under-dogs in the fight, and because
Alvarez is a tyrant. I had no other motive. Indeed, you must believe me,
sir,” I protested, “or I cannot talk to you. It is the truth.”

“The truth!” exclaimed Laguerre, fiercely; and as he raised his eyes I
saw that they had suddenly filled with tears. “It is the first time I
have heard the truth in many years. It is what I have preached myself
for half a lifetime; what I have lived for and fought for. Why, here,
now,” he cried, “while I have been sitting listening to you, it was as
though the boy I used to be had come back to talk to me, bringing my old
ideals, the old enthusiasm.” His manner and his tone suddenly altered,
and he shook his head and placed his hand almost tenderly upon my own.
“But I warn you,” he said, “I warn you that you are wrong. You have
begun young, and there is yet time for you to turn back; but if you hope
for money, or place, or public favor, you have taken the wrong road. You
will be a rolling-stone among milestones, and the way is all down
hill. I began to fight when I was even younger than you. I fought for
whichever party seemed to me to have the right on its side. Sometimes I
have fought for rebels and patriots, sometimes for kings, sometimes for
pretenders. I was out with Garibaldi, because I believed he would give a
republic to Italy; but I fought against the republic of Mexico, because
its people were rotten and corrupt, and I believed that the emperor
would rule them honestly and well. I have always chosen my own side,
the one which seemed to me promised the most good; and yet, after
thirty years, I am where you see me to-night. I am an old man without
a country, I belong to no political party, I have no family, I have no
home. I have travelled over all the world looking for that country which
was governed for the greater good of the greater number, and I have
fought only for those men who promised to govern unselfishly and as the
servants of the people. But when the fighting was over, and they were
safe in power, they had no use for me nor my advice. They laughed, and
called me a visionary and a dreamer. ‘You are no statesman, General,’
they would say to me. ‘Your line is the fighting-line. Go back to it.’
And yet, when I think of how the others have used their power, I believe
that I could have ruled the people as well, and yet given them more
freedom, and made more of them more happy.”

The moon rose over the camp, and the night grew chill; but still we
sat, he talking and I listening as I had used to listen when I sat at
my grandfather’s knee and he told me tales of war and warriors. They
brought us coffee and food, and we ate with an ammunition-box for a
table, he still talking and I eager to ask questions, and yet fearful of
interrupting him. He told of great battles which had changed the history
of Europe, of secret expeditions which had never been recorded even
in his own diary, of revolutions which after months of preparation
had burst forth and had been crushed between sunset and sunrise; of
emperors, kings, patriots, and charlatans. There was nothing that I
had wished to do, and that I had imagined myself doing, that he had not
accomplished in reality--the acquaintances he had made among the leaders
of men, the adventures he had suffered, the honors he had won, were
those which to me were the most to be desired.

{Illustration: The moon rose over the camp ... but still we sat.}

The scene around us added color to his words. The moonlight fell on
ghostly groups of men seated before the camp-fires, their faces glowing
in the red light of the ashes; on the irregular rows of thatched
shelters and on the shadowy figures of the ponies grazing at the
picket-line. All the odors of a camp, which to me are more grateful than
those of a garden, were borne to us on the damp night-air; the clean
pungent smell of burning wood, the scent of running water, the smell of
many horses crowded together and of wet saddles and accoutrements. And
above the swift rush of the stream, we could hear the ceaseless pounding
of the horses’ hoofs on the turf, the murmurs of the men’s voices, and
the lonely cry of the night-birds.

It was past midnight when the General rose, and my brain rioted with the
pictures he had drawn for me. Surely, if I had ever considered turning
back, I now no longer tolerated the thought of it. If he had wished to
convince me that the life of a soldier of fortune was an ungrateful one
he had set about proving it in the worst possible way. At that moment I
saw no career so worthy to be imitated as his own, no success to be so
envied as his failures. And in the glow and inspiration of his talk, and
with the courage of a boy, I told him so. I think he was not ill pleased
at what I said, nor with me. He seemed to approve of what I had related
of myself, and of the comments I had made upon his reminiscences. He had
said, again and again: “That is an intelligent question,” “You have put
your finger on the real weakness of the attack,” “That was exactly the
error in his strategy.”

When he turned to enter his tent he shook my hand. “I do not know when I
have talked so much,” he laughed, “nor,” he added, with grave courtesy,
“when I have had so intelligent a listener. Good-night.”

Throughout the evening he had been holding my sword, and as he entered
the tent he handed it to me.

“Oh, I forgot,” he said. “Here is your sword, Captain.”

The flaps of the tent fell behind him, and I was left outside of them,
incredulous and trembling.

I could not restrain myself, and I pushed the flaps aside.

“I beg your pardon, General,” I stammered.

He had already thrown himself upon his cot, but he rose on his elbow and
stared at me.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” I gasped, “but what did you call me then--just
now?”

“Call you,” he said. “Oh, I called you ‘captain.’ You are a captain. I
will assign you your troop to-morrow.”

He turned and buried his face in his arm, and unable to thank him I
stepped outside of the tent and stood looking up at the stars, with my
grandfather’s sword clasped close in my hands. And I was so proud and
happy that I believe I almost prayed that he could look down and see me.

That was how I received my first commission--in a swamp in Honduras,
from General Laguerre, of the Foreign Legion, as he lay half-asleep
upon his cot. It may be, if I continue as I have begun, I shall receive
higher titles, from ministers of war, from queens, presidents, and
sultans. I shall have a trunk filled, like that of General Laguerre’s,
with commissions, brevets, and patents of nobility, picked up in many
queer courts, in many queer corners of the globe. But to myself I shall
always be Captain Macklin, and no other rank nor title will ever count
with me as did that first one, which came without my earning it, which
fell from the lips of an old man without authority to give it, but which
seemed to touch me like a benediction.

   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

The officer from whom I took over my troop was a German, Baron Herbert
von Ritter. He had served as an aide-de-camp to the King of Bavaria,
and his face was a patchwork of sword-cuts which he had received in the
students’ duels. No one knew why he had left the German army. He had
been in command of the troop with the rank of captain, but when the next
morning Laguerre called him up and told him that I was now his captain
he seemed rather relieved than otherwise.

“They’re a hard lot,” he said to me, as we left the General. “I’m glad
to get rid of them.”

The Legion was divided into four troops of about fifty men each. Only
half of the men were mounted, but the difficulties of the trail were so
great that the men on foot were able to move quite as rapidly as those
on mule-back. Under Laguerre there were Major Webster, an old man, who
as a boy had invaded Central America with William Walker’s expedition,
and who ever since had lived in Honduras; Major Reeder and five
captains, Miller, who was in charge of a dozen native Indians and
who acted as a scout; Captain Heinze, two Americans named Porter and
Russell, and about a dozen lieutenants of every nationality. Heinze had
been adjutant of the force, but the morning after my arrival the General
appointed me to that position, and at roll-call announced the change to
the battalion.

“We have been waiting here for two weeks for a shipment of machine
guns,” he said to them. “They have not arrived and I cannot wait for
them any longer. The battalion will start at once for Santa Barbara,
where I expect to get you by to-morrow night. There we will join General
Garcia, and continue with him until we enter the capital.”

The men, who were properly weary of lying idle in the swamp, interrupted
him with an enthusiastic cheer and continued shouting until he lifted
his hand.

“Since we have been lying here,” he said, “I have allowed you certain
liberties, and discipline has relaxed. But now that we are on the march
again you will conduct yourselves like soldiers, and discipline will be
as strictly enforced as in any army in Europe. Since last night we have
received an addition to our force in the person of Captain Macklin, who
has volunteered his services. Captain Macklin comes of a distinguished
family of soldiers, and he has himself been educated at West Point. I
have appointed him Captain of D Troop and Adjutant of the Legion. As
adjutant you will recognize his authority as you would my own. You will
now break camp, and be prepared to march in half an hour.”

Soon after we had started we reached a clearing, and Laguerre halted
us and formed the column into marching order. Captain Miller, who was
thoroughly acquainted with the trail, and his natives, were sent on two
hundred yards ahead of us as a point. They were followed by Heinze with
his Gatling guns. Then came Laguerre and another troop, then Reeder with
the two remaining troops and our “transport” between them. Our transport
consisted of a dozen mules carrying bags of coffee, beans, and flour,
our reserve ammunition, the General’s tent, and whatever few private
effects the officers possessed over and above the clothes they stood in.
I brought up the rear with D Troop. We moved at a walk in single file
and without flankers, as the jungle on either side of the trail was
impenetrable. Our departure from camp had been so prompt that I had
been given no time to become acquainted with my men, but as we tramped
forward I rode along with them or drew to one side to watch them pass
and took a good look at them. Carrying their rifles, and with their
blanket-rolls and cartridge-belts slung across their shoulders, they
made a better appearance than when they were sleeping around the camp.
As the day grew on I became more and more proud of my command. The baron
pointed out those of the men who could be relied upon, and I could pick
out for myself those who had received some military training. When I
asked these where they had served before, they seemed pleased at
my having distinguished the difference between them and the other
volunteers, and saluted properly and answered briefly and respectfully.

If I was proud of the men, I was just as pleased with myself, or, I
should say, with my luck. Only two weeks before I had been read out to
the battalion at West Point, as one unfit to hold a commission, and here
I was riding at the head of my own troop. I was no second lieutenant
either, with a servitude of five years hanging over me before I could
receive my first bar, but a full-fledged captain, with fifty men under
him to care for and discipline and lead into battle. There was not a man
in my troop who was not at least a few years older than myself, and as
I rode in advance of them and heard the creak of the saddles and the
jingle of the picket-pins and water-bottles, or turned and saw the long
line stretching out behind me, I was as proud as Napoleon returning
in triumph to Paris. I had brought with me from the Academy my scarlet
sash, and wore it around my waist under my sword-belt. I also had my
regulation gauntlets, and a campaign sombrero, and as I rode along
I remembered the line about General Stonewall Jackson, in “Barbara
Frietchie.”

“The leader glancing left and right.”

I repeated it to myself, and scowled up at the trees and into the
jungle. It was a tremendous feeling to be a “leader.”

At noon the heat was very great, and Laguerre halted the column at
a little village and ordered the men to eat their luncheon. I posted
pickets, appointed a detail to water the mules, and asked two of the
inhabitants for the use of their clay ovens. In the other troops each
man, or each group of men, were building separate fires and eating alone
or in messes of five or six but by detailing four of my men to act
as cooks for the whole troop, and six others to tend the fires in the
ovens, and six more to carry water for the coffee, all of my men were
comfortably fed before those in the other troops had their fires going.

Von Ritter had said to me that during the two weeks in camp the men had
used up all their tobacco, and that their nerves were on edge for lack
of something to smoke. So I hunted up a native who owned a tobacco
patch, and from him, for three dollars in silver, I bought three hundred
cigars. I told Von Ritter to serve out six of them to each of the men of
D Troop. It did me good to see how much they enjoyed them. For the next
five minutes every man I met had a big cigar in his mouth, which he
would remove with a grin, and say, “Thank you, Captain.” I did not give
them the tobacco to gain popularity, for in active service I consider
that tobacco is as necessary for the man as food, and I also believe
that any officer who tries to buy the good-will of his men is taking the
quickest way to gain their contempt.

Soldiers know the difference between the officer who bribes and pets
them, and the one who, before his own tent is set up, looks to his
men and his horses, who distributes the unpleasant duties of the camp
evenly, and who knows what he wants done the first time he gives an
order, and does not make unnecessary work for others because he cannot
make up his mind.

After I had seen the mules watered and picketed in the public corral,
I went to look for the General, whom I found with the other officers at
the house of the Alcalde. They had learned news of the greatest moment.
Two nights previous, General Garcia had been attacked in force at Santa
Barbara, and had abandoned the town without a fight. Nothing more was
known, except that he was either falling back along the trail to join
us, or was waiting outside the city for us to come up and join him.

Laguerre at once ordered the bugles to sound “Boots and saddles,” and
within five minutes we were on the trail again with instructions to
press the men forward as rapidly as possible. The loss of Santa Barbara
was a serious calamity. It was the town third in importance in Honduras,
and it had been the stronghold of the revolutionists. The moral effect
of the fact that Garcia held it, had been of the greatest possible
benefit. As Garcia’s force consisted of 2,000 men and six pieces of
artillery, it was inexplicable to Laguerre how without a fight he had
abandoned so valuable a position.

The country through which we now passed was virtually uninhabited, and
wild and rough, but grandly beautiful. At no time, except when we passed
through one of the dusty little villages, of a dozen sun-baked huts set
around a sun-baked plaza, was the trail sufficiently wide to permit
us to advance unless in single file. And yet this was the highway of
Honduras from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and the only road
to Tegucigalpa, the objective point of our expedition. The capital lay
only one hundred miles from Porto Cortez, but owing to the nature of
this trail it could not be reached from the east coast, either on foot
or by mule, in less than from six to nine days. No wheeled vehicle could
have possibly attempted the trip without shaking to pieces, and it was
only by dragging and lifting our Gatling guns by hand that we were able
to bring them with us.

At sunset we halted at a little village, where, as usual, the people
yelled “Vivas!” at us, and protested that they were good revolutionists.
The moon had just risen, and, as the men rode forward, kicking up the
white dust and with the Gatlings clanking and rumbling behind them,
they gave a most war-like impression. Miller, who had reconnoitered the
village before we entered it, stood watching us as we came in. He said
that we reminded him of troops of United States cavalry as he had seen
them on the alkali plains of New Mexico and Arizona. It was again my
duty to station our pickets and out-posts, and as I came back after
placing the sentries, the fires were twinkling all over the plaza and
throwing grotesque shadows of the men and the mules against the white
walls of the houses. It was a most weird and impressive picture.

The troopers were exhausted with the forced march, and fell instantly
to sleep, but for a long time I sat outside the Town Hall talking with
General Laguerre and two of the Americans, Miller and old man Webster.
Their talk was about Aiken, who so far had accompanied us as an untried
prisoner. From what he had said to me on the march, and from what I
remembered of his manner when Captain Leeds informed him of the loss of
the guns, I was convinced that he was innocent of any treachery.

I related to the others just what had occurred at the coast, and after
some talk with Aiken himself, Laguerre finally agreed that he was
innocent of any evil against him, and that Quay was the man who had sold
the secret. Laguerre then offered Aiken his choice of continuing on with
us, or of returning to the coast, and Aiken said that he would prefer to
go on with our column. Now that the Isthmian Line knew that he had tried
to assist Laguerre, his usefulness at the coast was at an end. He added
frankly that his only other reason for staying with us was because he
thought we were going to win. General Laguerre gave him charge of our
transport and commissary, that is of our twelve pack-mules and of
the disposition of the coffee, flour, and beans. Aiken possessed real
executive ability, and it is only fair to him to say that as commissary
sergeant he served us well. By the time we had reached Tegucigalpa the
twelve mules had increased to twenty, and our stock of rations, instead
of diminishing as we consumed them, increased daily. We never asked how
he managed it. Possibly, knowing Aiken, it was wiser not to inquire.

We broke camp at four in the morning, but in spite of our early start
the next day’s advance was marked by the most cruel heat. We had left
the shade of the high lands and now pushed on over a plain of dry,
burning sand, where nothing grew but naked bushes bristling with thorns,
and tall grayish-green cacti with disjointed branching arms. They
stretched out before us against the blazing sky, like a succession of
fantastic telegraph-poles. We were marching over what had once been the
bed of a great lake. Layers of tiny round pebbles rolled under our feet,
and the rocks which rose out of the sand had been worn and polished by
the water until they were as smooth as the steps of a cathedral. A mile
away on each flank were dark green ridges, but ahead of us there was
only a great stretch of glaring white sand. No wind was stirring, and
not a drop of moisture. The air was like a breath from a brick oven,
and the heat of the sun so fierce that if you touched your fingers to a
gun-barrel it burned the flesh.

We did not escape out of this lime-kiln until three in the afternoon,
when the trail again led us into the protecting shade of the jungle. The
men plunged into it as eagerly as though they were diving into water.

About four o’clock we heard great cheering ahead of us, and word was
passed to the rear that Miller had come in touch with Garcia’s scouts. A
half hour later, we marched into the camp of the revolutionists. It was
situated about three miles outside of Santa Barbara, on the banks of the
river where the trail crossed it at a ford. Our fellows made a rather
fine appearance as they rode out of the jungle among the revolutionists;
and, considering the fact that we had come to fight for them, I thought
the little beggars might have given us a cheer, but they only stared
at us, and nodded stupidly. They were a mixed assortment, all of them
under-size and either broad or swarthy, with the straight hair and wide
cheek-bones of the Carib Indian, or slight and nervous looking, with the
soft eyes and sharp profile of the Spaniard. The greater part of
them had deserted in companies from the army, and they still wore
the blue-jean uniform and carried the rifle and accoutrements of the
Government. To distinguish themselves from those soldiers who had
remained with Alvarez, they had torn off the red braid with which their
tunics were embroidered.

All the officers of the Foreign Legion rode up the stream with Laguerre
to meet General Garcia, whom we found sitting in the shade of his
tent surrounded by his staff. He gave us a most enthusiastic greeting,
embracing the General, and shaking hands with each of us in turn. He
seemed to be in the highest state of excitement, and bustled about
ordering us things to drink, and chattering, gesticulating, and
laughing. He reminded me of a little, fat French poodle trying to
express his delight by bounds and barks. They brought us out a great
many bottles of rum and limes, and we all had a long, deep drink. After
the fatigue and dust of the day, it was the best I ever tasted. Garcia’s
officers seemed just as much excited over nothing as he was, but were
exceedingly friendly, treating us with an exaggerated “comrades-in-arms”
 and “brother-officers” sort of manner. The young man who entertained me
was quite a swell, with a tortoise-shell visor to his cap and a Malacca
sword-cane which swung from a gold cord. He was as much pleased over it
as a boy with his first watch, and informed me that it had been used to
assassinate his uncle, ex-President Rojas. As he seemed to consider it a
very valuable heirloom, I moved my legs so that, as though by accident,
my sword fell forward where he could see it. When he did he exclaimed
upon its magnificence, and I showed him my name on the scabbard. He
thought it had been presented to me for bravery. He was very much
impressed.

Garcia and Laguerre talked together for a long time and then shook hands
warmly, and we all saluted and returned to the ford.

As soon as we had reached it Laguerre seated himself under a tree and
sent for all of his officers.

“We are to attack at daybreak to-morrow morning,” he said. “Garcia is
to return along the trail and make a demonstration on this side of the
town, while we are here to attack from the other. The plaza is about
three hundred yards from where we will enter. On the corner of the plaza
and the main street there is a large warehouse. The warehouse looks
across the plaza to the barracks, which are on the other side of the
square. General Garcia’s plan is that our objective point shall be this
warehouse. It has two stories, and men on its roof will have a great
advantage over those in the barracks and in the streets. He believes
that when he begins his attack from this side, the Government troops
will rush from the barracks and hasten toward the sound of the firing.
At the same signal we are to hurry in from the opposite side of the
town, seize the warehouse, and throw up barricades across the plaza.
Should this plan succeed, the Government troops will find themselves
shut in between two fires. It seems to be a good plan, and I have agreed
to it. The cattle-path to the town is much too rough for our guns, so
Captain Heinze and the gun detail will remain here and co-operate with
General Garcia. Let your men get all the sleep they can now. They must
march again at midnight. They will carry nothing but their guns and
ammunition and rations for one meal. If everything goes as we expect, we
will breakfast in Santa Barbara.”

I like to remember the happiness I got out of the excitement of that
moment. I lived at the rate of an hour a minute, and I was as upset from
pure delight as though I had been in a funk of abject terror. And I was
scared in a way, too, for whenever I remembered I knew nothing of actual
fighting, and of what chances there were to make mistakes, I shivered
down to my heels. But I would not let myself think of the chances to
make a failure, but rather of the opportunities of doing something
distinguished and of making myself conspicuous. I laughed when I thought
of my classmates at the Point with their eyes bent on a book of tactics,
while here was I, within three hours of a real battle, of the most
exciting of all engagements, an attack upon a city. A full year, perhaps
many years, would pass before they would get the chance to hear a
hostile shot, the shot fired in anger, which every soldier must first
hear before he can enter upon his inheritance, and hold his own in the
talk of the mess-table. I felt almost sorry for them when I thought
how they would envy me when they read of the fight in the newspapers. I
decided it would be called the battle of Santa Barbara, and I imagined
how it would look in the head-lines. I was even generous enough to wish
that three or four of the cadets were with me; that is, of course, under
me, so that they could tell afterward how well I had led them.

At midnight we filed silently out of camp, and felt our way in the dark
through the worst stretch of country we had yet encountered. The
ferns rose above our hips, and the rocks and fallen logs over which we
stumbled were slippery with moss. Every minute a man was thrown by a
trailing vine or would plunge over a fallen tree-trunk, and there would
be a yell of disgust and an oath and a rattle of accoutrements. The men
would certainly have been lost if they had not kept in touch by calling
to one another, and the noise we made hissing at them for silence only
added to the uproar.

At the end of three hours our guides informed us that for the last
half-mile they had been guessing at the trail, and that they had now
completely lost themselves. So Laguerre sent out Miller and the
native scouts to buskey about and find out where we were, and almost
immediately we heard the welcome barking of a dog, and one of the men
returned to report that we had walked right into the town. We found that
the first huts were not a hundred yards distant. Laguerre accordingly
ordered the men to conceal themselves and sent Miller, one of Garcia’s
officers, and myself to reconnoitre.

The moonlight had given way to the faint gray light which comes just
before dawn, and by it we could distinguish lumps of blackness which as
we approached turned into the thatched huts of the villagers. Until we
found the main trail into the town we kept close to the bamboo fences
of these huts, and then, still keeping in the shadows, we followed the
trail until it turned into a broad and well-paved street.

Except for many mongrel dogs that attacked us, and the roosters that
began to challenge us from every garden, we had not been observed, and,
so far as we could distinguish, the approach to the town was totally
unprotected. By this time the light had increased sufficiently for us
to see the white fronts of the houses, and the long empty street, where
rows of oil-lamps were sputtering and flickering, and as they went out,
filling the clean, morning air with the fumes of the dying wicks. It
had been only two weeks since I had seen paved streets, and shops, and
lamp-posts, but I had been sleeping long enough in the open to make
the little town of Santa Barbara appear to me like a modern and
well-appointed city. Viewed as I now saw it, our purpose to seize
it appeared credulous and grotesque. I could not believe that we
contemplated such a piece of folly. But the native officer pointed down
the street toward a square building with overhanging balconies. In the
morning mist the warehouse loomed up above its fellows of one story like
an impregnable fortress.

Miller purred with satisfaction.

“That’s the place,” he whispered; “I remember it now. If we can get into
it, they can never get us out.” It seemed to me somewhat like burglary,
but I nodded in assent, and we ran back through the outskirts to
where Laguerre was awaiting us. We reported that there were no pickets
guarding our side of the town, and the building Garcia had designated
for defence seemed to us most admirably selected.

It was now near to the time set for the attack to begin, and Laguerre
called the men together, and, as was his custom, explained to them what
he was going to do. He ordered that when we reached the warehouse I was
to spread out my men over the plaza and along the two streets on which
the warehouse stood. Porter was to mount at once to the roof and open
fire on the barracks, and the men of B and C Troops were to fortify the
warehouse and erect the barricades.

It was still dark, but through the chinks of a few of the mud huts
we could see the red glow of a fire, and were warned by this to move
forward and take up our position at the head of the main street. Before
we advanced, skirmishers were sent out to restrain any of the people in
the huts who might attempt to arouse the garrison. But we need not have
concerned ourselves, for those of the natives who came to their doors,
yawning and shivering in the cool morning air, shrank back at the sight
of us, and held up their hands. I suppose, as we crept out of the mist,
we were a somewhat terrifying spectacle, but I know that I personally
felt none of the pride of a conquering hero. The glimpse I had caught of
the sleeping town, peaceful and unconscious, and the stealth and silence
of our movements, depressed me greatly, and I was convinced that I had
either perpetrated or was about to perpetrate some hideous crime. I had
anticipated excitement and the joy of danger, instead of which, as I
tiptoed between the poor gardens, I suffered all the quaking terrors of
a chicken thief.

We had halted behind a long adobe wall to the right of the main street,
and as we crouched there the sun rose like a great searchlight and
pointed us out, and exposed us, and seemed to hold up each one of us to
the derision of Santa Barbara. As the light flooded us we all ducked our
heads simultaneously, and looked wildly about us as though seeking
for some place to hide. I felt as though I had been caught in the open
street in my night-gown. It was impossible to justify our presence. As I
lay, straining my ears for Garcia’s signal, I wondered what we would do
if the worthy citizen who owned the garden wall, against which we lay
huddled, should open the gate and ask us what we wanted. Could we reply
that we, a hundred and fifty men, proposed to seize and occupy his city?
I felt sure he would tell us to go away at once or he would call the
police. I loo

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