“Does this include my friends?” he asked, nodding toward the Isthmian
men.
“You can pass them off as your servants,” I answered, and he smiled
grimly.
The men had formed around the gun, and it was being pushed toward me,
but as I turned to meet it I was again halted, this time by young Fiske,
who rode his horse in front of mine, and held out his hand.
“You must shake hands with me!” he cried, “I acted like a cad.” He bent
forward, raising his other arm to shield his face from the storm. “I
say, I acted like a cad,” he shouted, “and I ask your pardon.”
I took his hand and nodded. At the same moment as we held each other’s
hands the window of the carriage was pushed down and his sister leaned
out and beckoned to me. Her face, beaten by the rain, and with her hair
blown across it, was filled with distress.
“I want to thank you,” she cried. “Thank you,” she repeated, “for my
brother. I thank you. I wanted you to know.”
She stretched out her hand and I took it, and released it instantly, and
as she withdrew her face from the window of the carriage, I dug my spurs
into my pony and galloped on with the gun.
What followed is all confused.
I remember that we reached the third and last post just after the men
had abandoned it, but that we overtook them, and with them fought our
way through the streets. But through what streets, or how long it took
us to reach the palace I do not know. No one thing is very clear to me.
Even the day after, I remembered it only as a bad dream, in which I saw
innumerable, dark-skinned faces pressing upon me with open mouths, and
white eyeballs; lit by gleams of lightning and flashes of powder. I
remember going down under my pony and thinking how cool and pleasant it
was in the wet mud, and of being thrown back on him again as though I
were a pack-saddle, and I remember wiping the rain out of my eyes with a
wet sleeve, and finding the sleeve warm with blood. And then there was a
pitchy blackness through which I kept striking at faces that sprang out
of the storm, faces that when they were beaten down were replaced by
other faces; drunken, savage, exulting. I remember the ceaseless booming
of the thunder that shook the houseslike an earthquake, the futile
popping of revolvers, the whining shells overhead, the cries and groans,
the Spanish oaths, and the heavy breathing of my men about me, and
always just in front of us, the breathless whir of the gatling.
After that the next I remember I was inside the palace, and breaking
holes in the wall with an axe. Some of my men took the axe from me, and
said: “He’s crazy, clean crazy,” and Van Ritter and Miller fought with
me, and held me down upon a cot. From the cot I watched the others
making more holes in the wall, through which they shoved their rifles
and then there was a great cheer outside, and a man came running in
crying, “Alvarez and Heinze are at the corner with the twelve-pounders!”
Then our men cursed like fiends, and swept out of the room, and as
no one remained to hold me down, I stumbled after them into the big
reception-hall, and came upon Laguerre, lying rigid and still upon a
red-silk sofa. I thought he was dead, and screamed, and at that they
seized me again and hustled me back to the cot, telling me that he was
not dead, but that at any moment he might die, and that if I did not
rest, I would die also.
When I came to, it was early morning, and through the holes in the
plaster wall I could see the stars fading before the dawn. The gatlings
were gone and the men were gone, and I was wondering if they had
deserted me, when Von Ritter came back and asked if I were strong enough
to ride, and I stood up feeling dizzy and very weak. But my head was
clear and I could understand what he said to me. Of the whole of the
Foreign Legion only thirty were left. Miller was killed, Russell was
killed and old man Webster was killed. They told me how they had caught
him when he made a dash to the barracks for ammunition, and how, from
the roof, our men had seen them place him against the iron railings of
the University Gardens. There he died, as his hero, William Walker, had
died, on the soil of the country he had tried to save from itself,
with his arms behind him, and his blindfolded eyes turned upon a
firing-squad.
McGraw had been killed as he rode beside me, holding me in the saddle.
That hurt me worse than all. They told me a blow from behind had knocked
me over, and though, of that, I could remember nothing, I could still
feel McGraw’s arm pressing my ribs, and hear his great foolish laugh in
my ears.
They helped me out into the court-yard, where the men stood in a hollow
square, with Laguerre on a litter in the centre, and with the four
gatlings at each corner. The wound was in his throat, so he could not
speak, but when they led me down into the Patio he raised his eyes and
smiled. I tried to smile back, but his face was so white and drawn that
I had to turn away, that he might not see me crying.
There was much besides to make one weep. We were running away. We were
abandoning the country to which some of us had come to better their
fortunes, to which others had come that they might set the people free.
We were being driven out of it by the very men for whom we had risked
our lives. Some among us, the reckless, the mercenary, the adventurers,
had played like gamblers for a stake, and had lost. Others, as they
thought, had planned wisely for the people’s good, had asked nothing in
return but that they might teach them to rule themselves. But they, too,
had lost, and because they had lost, they were to pay the penalty.
Within the week the natives had turned from us to the painted idols of
their jungle, and the new gods toward whom they had wavered were to be
sacrificed on the altars of the old. They were waiting only until the
sun rose to fall upon our little garrison and set us up against the
barrack wall, as a peace offering to their former masters. Only one
chance remained to us. If, while it were still night, we could escape
from the city to the hills, we might be able to fight our way to the
Pacific side, and there claim the protection of our war-ship.
It was a forlorn hope, but we trusted to the gatlings to clear a road
for us, and there was no other way.
So just before the dawn, silently and stealthily the President and the
Cabinet, and all that was left of the Government and Army of General
Laguerre, stole out of his palace through a hole in the courtyard-wall.
We were only a shadowy blot in the darkness, but the instant we reached
the open street they saw us and gave cry.
From behind the barriers they had raised to shut off our escape, from
the house-tops, and from the darkened windows, they opened fire with
rifle and artillery. But our men had seen the dead faces of their
leaders and comrades, and they were frantic, desperate. They charged
like madmen. Nothing could hold them. Our wedge swept steadily forward,
and the guns sputtered from the front and rear and sides, flashing and
illuminating the night like a war-ship in action.
They drove our enemies from behind the barricades, and cleaned the
street beyond it to the bridge, and then swept the bridge itself. We
could hear the splashes when the men who held it leaped out of range of
the whirling bullets into the stream below.
In a quarter of an hour we were running swiftly through the sleeping
suburbs, with only one of our guns barking an occasional warning at the
ghostly figures in our rear.
We made desperate progress during the dark hours of the morning, but
when daylight came we were afraid to remain longer on the trail, and
turned off into the forest. And then, as the sun grew stronger, our
endurance reached its limit, and when they called a halt our fellows
dropped where they stood, and slept like dead men. But they could not
sleep for long. We all knew that our only chance lay in reaching San
Lorenzo, on the Pacific Ocean. Once there, we were confident that the
war-ship would protect us, and her surgeons save our wounded. By the
trail and unmolested, we could have reached it in three days, but in the
jungle we were forced to cut our way painfully and slowly, and at times
we did not know whether we were moving toward the ocean or had turned
back upon the capital.
I do not believe that slaves hunted through a swamp by blood-hounds have
ever suffered more keenly than did the survivors of the Foreign Legion.
Of our thirty men, only five were unwounded. Even those who carried
Laguerre wore blood-stained bandages. All were starving, and after the
second day of hiding in swamps and fording mountain-streams, half of our
little band was sick with fever. We lived on what we found in the woods,
or stole from the clearing, on plants, and roots, and fruit. We were no
longer a military body. We had ceased to be either officers or privates.
We were now only so many wretched fellow-beings, dependent upon each
other, like sailors cast adrift upon some desert island, and each worked
for the good of all, and the ties which bound us together were stronger
than those of authority and discipline. Men scarcely able to drag
themselves on, begged for the privilege of helping to carry Laguerre,
and he in turn besought and commanded that we leave him by the trail,
and hasten to the safety of the coast. In one of his conscious moments
he protested: “I cannot live, and I am only hindering your escape. It
is not right, nor human, that one man should risk the lives of all the
rest. For God’s sake, obey my orders and put me down.”
Hour after hour, by night as well as by day, we struggled forward,
staggering, stumbling, some raving with fever, others with set faces,
biting their yellow lips to choke back the pain.
Three times when we endeavored to gain ground by venturing on the level
trail, the mounted scouts of Alvarez overtook us, or attacked us from
ambush, and when we beat them off, they rode ahead and warned the
villages that we were coming; so, that, when we reached them, we were
driven forth like lepers. Even the village dogs snapped and bit at the
gaunt figures, trembling for lack of food, and loss of sleep and blood.
But on the sixth day, just at sunset, as we had dragged ourselves to
the top of a wooded hill we saw below us, beyond a league of unbroken
jungle, a great, shining sheet of water, like a cloud on the horizon,
and someone cried: “The Pacific!” and we all stumbled forward, and some
dropped on their knees, and some wept, and some swung their hats and
tried to cheer.
And then one of them, I never knew which, started singing, “Praise God,
from whom all blessings flow,” and we stood up, the last of the Legion,
shaken with fever, starving, wounded, and hunted by our fellow-men, and
gave praise to God, as we had never praised Him before.
That night the fever took hold of me, and in my tossings and turnings
I burst open the sword-wound at the back of my head. I remember someone
exclaiming “He’s bled to death!” and a torch held to my eyes, and then
darkness, and the sense that I was being carried and bumped about on
men’s shoulders.
The next thing I knew I was lying in a hammock, a lot of naked, brown
children were playing in the dirt beside me, the sun was shining, great
palms were bending in the wind above me, and the strong, sweet air of
the salt sea was blowing in my face.
I lay for a long time trying to guess where I was, and how I had come
there. But I found no explanation for it, so I gave up guessing, and
gazed contentedly at the bending palms until one of the children found
my eyes upon him, and gave a scream, and they all pattered off like
frightened partridges.
That brought a native woman from behind me, smiling, and murmuring
prayers in Spanish. She handed me a gourd filled with water.