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.