Little Nell, sometimes called the Blessed Damosel, was a war
correspondent for the _New York Eclipse_, and at sea on the despatch
boats he wore pajamas, and on shore he wore whatever fate allowed him,
which clothing was in the main unsuitable to the climate. He had been
cruising in the Caribbean on a small tug, awash always, habitable
never, wildly looking for Cervera's fleet; although what he was going
to do with four armoured cruisers and two destroyers in the event of
his really finding them had not been explained by the managing editor.
The cable instructions read:--"Take tug; go find Cervera's fleet." If
his unfortunate nine-knot craft should happen to find these great
twenty-knot ships, with their two spiteful and faster attendants,
Little Nell had wondered how he was going to lose them again. He had
marvelled, both publicly and in secret, on the uncompromising asininity
of managing editors at odd moments, but he had wasted little time. The
_Jefferson G. Johnson_ was already coaled, so he passed the word to his
skipper, bought some tinned meats, cigars, and beer, and soon the
_Johnson_ sailed on her mission, tooting her whistle in graceful
farewell to some friends of hers in the bay.
So the _Johnson_ crawled giddily to one wave-height after another, and
fell, aslant, into one valley after another for a longer period than
was good for the hearts of the men, because the _Johnson_ was merely a
harbour-tug, with no architectural intention of parading the high-seas,
and the crew had never seen the decks all white water like a mere
sunken reef. As for the cook, he blasphemed hopelessly hour in and hour
out, meanwhile pursuing the equipment of his trade frantically from
side to side of the galley. Little Nell dealt with a great deal of
grumbling, but he knew it was not the real evil grumbling. It was
merely the unhappy words of men who wished expression of comradeship
for their wet, forlorn, half-starved lives, to which, they explained,
they were not accustomed, and for which, they explained, they were not
properly paid. Little Nell condoled and condoled without difficulty. He
laid words of gentle sympathy before them, and smothered his own misery
behind the face of a reporter of the _New York Eclipse_. But they
tossed themselves in their cockleshell even as far as Martinique; they
knew many races and many flags, but they did not find Cervera's fleet.
If they had found that elusive squadron this timid story would never
have been written; there would probably have been a lyric. The
_Johnson_ limped one morning into the Mole St. Nicholas, and there
Little Nell received this despatch:--"Can't understand your inaction.
What are you doing with the boat? Report immediately. Fleet transports
already left Tampa. Expected destination near Santiago. Proceed there
immediately. Place yourself under orders.--ROGERS, _Eclipse_."
One day, steaming along the high, luminous blue coast of Santiago
province, they fetched into view the fleets, a knot of masts and
funnels, looking incredibly inshore, as if they were glued to the
mountains. Then mast left mast, and funnel left funnel, slowly, slowly,
and the shore remained still, but the fleets seemed to move out toward
the eager _Johnson_. At the speed of nine knots an hour the scene
separated into its parts. On an easily rolling sea, under a crystal
sky, black-hulled transports--erstwhile packets--lay waiting, while
grey cruisers and gunboats lay near shore, shelling the beach and some
woods. From their grey sides came thin red flashes, belches of white
smoke, and then over the waters sounded boom--boom--boom-boom. The crew
of the _Jefferson G. Johnson_ forgave Little Nell all the suffering of
a previous fortnight.
To the westward, about the mouth of Santiago harbour, sat a row of
castellated grey battleships, their eyes turned another way, waiting.
The _Johnson_ swung past a transport whose decks and rigging were
aswarm with black figures, as if a tribe of bees had alighted upon a
log. She swung past a cruiser indignant at being left out of the game,
her deck thick with white-clothed tars watching the play of their
luckier brethren. The cold blue, lifting seas tilted the big ships
easily, slowly, and heaved the little ones in the usual sinful way, as
if very little babes had surreptitiously mounted sixteen-hand trotting
hunters. The _Johnson_ leered and tumbled her way through a community
of ships. The bombardment ceased, and some of the troopships edged in
near the land. Soon boats black with men and towed by launches were
almost lost to view in the scintillant mystery of light which appeared
where the sea met the land. A disembarkation had begun. The _Johnson_
sped on at her nine knots, and Little Nell chafed exceedingly, gloating
upon the shore through his glasses, anon glancing irritably over the
side to note the efforts of the excited tug. Then at last they were in
a sort of a cove, with troopships, newspaper boats, and cruisers on all
sides of them, and over the water came a great hum of human voices,
punctuated frequently by the clang of engine-room gongs as the steamers
manoeuvred to avoid jostling.
In reality it was the great moment--the moment for which men, ships,
islands, and continents had been waiting for months; but somehow it did
not look it. It was very calm; a certain strip of high, green, rocky
shore was being rapidly populated from boat after boat; that was all.
Like many preconceived moments, it refused to be supreme.
But nothing lessened Little Nell's frenzy. He knew that the army was
landing--he could see it; and little did he care if the great moment
did not look its part--it was his virtue as a correspondent to
recognise the great moment in any disguise. The _Johnson_ lowered a
boat for him, and he dropped into it swiftly, forgetting everything.
However, the mate, a bearded philanthropist, flung after him a
mackintosh and a bottle of whisky. Little Nell's face was turned toward
those other boats filled with men, all eyes upon the placid, gentle,
noiseless shore. Little Nell saw many soldiers seated stiffly beside
upright rifle barrels, their blue breasts crossed with white shelter
tent and blanket-rolls. Launches screeched; jack-tars pushed or pulled
with their boathooks; a beach was alive with working soldiers, some of
them stark naked. Little Nell's boat touched the shore amid a babble of
tongues, dominated at that time by a single stern voice, which was
repeating, "Fall in, B Company!"
He took his mackintosh and his bottle of whisky and invaded Cuba. It
was a trifle bewildering. Companies of those same men in blue and brown
were being rapidly formed and marched off across a little open
space--near a pool--near some palm trees--near a house--into the hills.
At one side, a mulatto in dirty linen and an old straw hat was
hospitably using a machete to cut open some green cocoanuts for a group
of idle invaders. At the other side, up a bank, a blockhouse was
burning furiously; while near it some railway sheds were smouldering,
with a little Roger's engine standing amid the ruins, grey, almost
white, with ashes until it resembled a ghost. Little Nell dodged the
encrimsoned blockhouse, and proceeded where he saw a little village
street lined with flimsy wooden cottages. Some ragged Cuban cavalrymen
were tranquilly tending their horses in a shed which had not yet grown
cold of the Spanish occupation. Three American soldiers were trying to
explain to a Cuban that they wished to buy drinks. A native rode by,
clubbing his pony, as always. The sky was blue; the sea talked with a
gravelly accent at the feet of some rocks; upon its bosom the ships sat
quiet as gulls. There was no mention, directly, of invasion--invasion
for war--save in the roar of the flames at the blockhouse; but none
even heeded this conflagration, excepting to note that it threw out a
great heat. It was warm, very warm. It was really hard for Little Nell
to keep from thinking of his own affairs: his debts, other misfortunes,
loves, prospects of happiness. Nobody was in a flurry; the Cubans were
not tearfully grateful; the American troops were visibly glad of being
released from those ill transports, and the men often asked, with
interest, "Where's the Spaniards?" And yet it must have been a great
moment! It was a _great_ moment!
It seemed made to prove that the emphatic time of history is not the
emphatic time of the common man, who throughout the change of nations
feels an itch on his shin, a pain in his head, hunger, thirst, a lack
of sleep; the influence of his memory of past firesides, glasses of
beer, girls, theatres, ideals, religions, parents, faces, hurts, joy.
Little Nell was hailed from a comfortable veranda, and, looking up, saw
Walkley of the _Eclipse_, stretched in a yellow and green hammock,
smoking his pipe with an air of having always lived in that house, in
that village. "Oh, dear little Nell, how glad I am to see your angel
face again! There! don't try to hide it; I can see it. Did you bring a
corkscrew too? You're superseded as master of the slaves. Did you know
it? And by Rogers, too! Rogers is a Sadducee, a cadaver and a pelican,
appointed to the post of chief correspondent, no doubt, because of his
rare gift of incapacity. Never mind."
"Where is he now?" asked Little Nell, taking seat on the steps.
"He is down interfering with the landing of the troops," answered
Walkley, swinging a leg. "I hope you have the _Johnson_ well stocked
with food as well as with cigars, cigarettes and tobaccos, ales, wines
and liquors. We shall need them. There is already famine in the house
of Walkley. I have discovered that the system of transportation for our
gallant soldiery does not strike in me the admiration which I have
often felt when viewing the management of an ordinary bun-shop. A
hunger, stifling, jammed together amid odours, and everybody
irritable--ye gods, how irritable! And so I---- Look! look!"
The _Jefferson G. Johnson_, well known to them at an incredible
distance, could be seen striding the broad sea, the smoke belching from
her funnel, headed for Jamaica. "The Army Lands in Cuba!" shrieked
Walkley. "Shafter's Army Lands near Santiago! Special type! Half the
front page! Oh, the Sadducee! The cadaver! The pelican!"
Little Nell was dumb with astonishment and fear. Walkley, however, was
at least not dumb. "That's the pelican! That's Mr. Rogers making his
first impression upon the situation. He has engraved himself upon us.
We are tattooed with him. There will be a fight to-morrow, sure, and we
will cover it even as you found Cervera's fleet. No food, no horses, no
money. I am transport lame; you are sea-weak. We will never see our
salaries again. Whereby Rogers is a fool."
"Anybody else here?" asked Little Nell wearily.
"Only young Point." Point was an artist on the _Eclipse_. "But he has
nothing. Pity there wasn't an almshouse in this God-forsaken country.
Here comes Point now." A sad-faced man came along carrying much
luggage. "Hello, Point! lithographer _and_ genius, have you food? Food.
Well, then, you had better return yourself to Tampa by wire. You are no
good here. Only one more little mouth to feed."
Point seated himself near Little Nell. "I haven't had anything to eat
since daybreak," he said gloomily, "and I don't care much, for I am
simply dog-tired."
"Don' tell _me_ you are dog-tired, my talented friend," cried Walkley
from his hammock. "Think of me. And now what's to be done?"
They stared for a time disconsolately at where, over the rim of the
sea, trailed black smoke from the _Johnson_. From the landing-place
below and to the right came the howls of a man who was superintending
the disembarkation of some mules. The burning blockhouse still rendered
its hollow roar. Suddenly the men-crowded landing set up its cheer, and
the steamers all whistled long and raucously. Tiny black figures were
raising an American flag over a blockhouse on the top of a great hill.
"That's mighty fine Sunday stuff," said Little Nell. "Well, I'll go and
get the order in which the regiments landed, and who was first ashore,
and all that. Then I'll go and try to find General Lawton's
headquarters. His division has got the advance, I think."
"And, lo! I will write a burning description of the raising of the
flag," said Walkley. "While the brilliant Point buskies for food--and
makes damn sure he gets it," he added fiercely.
Little Nell thereupon wandered over the face of the earth, threading
out the story of the landing of the regiments. He only found about
fifty men who had been the first American soldier to set foot on Cuba,
and of these he took the most probable. The army was going forward in
detail, as soon as the pieces were landed. There was a house something
like a crude country tavern--the soldiers in it were looking over their
rifles and talking. There was a well of water quite hot--more palm
trees--an inscrutable background.
When he arrived again at Walkley's mansion he found the verandah
crowded with correspondents in khaki, duck, dungaree and flannel. They
wore riding-breeches, but that was mainly forethought. They could see
now that fate intended them to walk. Some were writing copy, while
Walkley discoursed from his hammock. Rhodes--doomed to be shot in
action some days later--was trying to borrow a canteen from men who had
one, and from men who had none. Young Point, wan, utterly worn out, was
asleep on the floor. Walkley pointed to him. "That is how he appears
after his foraging journey, during which he ran all Cuba through a
sieve. Oh, yes; a can of corn and a half-bottle of lime juice."
"Say, does anybody know, the name of the commander of the 26th
Infantry?"
"Who commands the first brigade of Kent's Division?"
"What was the name of the chap that raised the flag?"
"What time is it?"
And a woeful man was wandering here and there with a cold pipe, saying
plaintively, "Who's got a match? Anybody here got a match?"
Little Nell's left boot hurt him at the heel, and so he removed it,
taking great care and whistling through his teeth. The heated dust was
upon them all, making everybody feel that bathing was unknown and
shattering their tempers. Young Point developed a snore which brought
grim sarcasm from all quarters. Always below, hummed the traffic of the
landing-place.
When night came Little Nell thought best not to go to bed until late,
because he recognised the mackintosh as but a feeble comfort. The
evening was a glory. A breeze came from the sea, fanning spurts of
flame out of the ashes and charred remains of the sheds, while overhead
lay a splendid summer-night sky, aflash with great tranquil stars. In
the streets of the village were two or three fires, frequently and
suddenly reddening with their glare the figures of low-voiced men who
moved here and there. The lights of the transports blinked on the
murmuring plain in front of the village; and far to the westward Little
Nell could sometimes note a subtle indication of a playing
search-light, which alone marked the presence of the invisible
battleships, half-mooned about the entrance of Santiago Harbour,
waiting--waiting--waiting.
When Little Nell returned to the veranda he stumbled along a man-strewn
place, until he came to the spot where he left his mackintosh; but he
found it gone. His curses mingled then with those of the men upon whose
bodies he had trodden. Two English correspondents, lying awake to smoke
a last pipe, reared and looked at him lazily. "What's wrong, old chap?"
murmured one. "Eh? Lost it, eh? Well, look here; come here and take a
bit of my blanket. It's a jolly big one. Oh, no trouble at all, man.
There you are. Got enough? Comfy? Good-night."
A sleepy voice arose in the darkness. "If this hammock breaks, I shall
hit at least ten of those Indians down there. Never mind. This is war."
The men slept. Once the sound of three or four shots rang across the
windy night, and one head uprose swiftly from the verandah, two eyes
looked dazedly at nothing, and the head as swiftly sank. Again a sleepy
voice was heard. "Usual thing! Nervous sentries!" The men slept. Before
dawn a pulseless, penetrating chill came into the air, and the
correspondents awakened, shivering, into a blue world. Some of the
fires still smouldered. Walkley and Little Nell kicked vigorously into
Point's framework. "Come on, brilliance! Wake up, talent! Don't be
sodgering. It's too cold to sleep, but it's not too cold to hustle."
Point sat up dolefully. Upon his face was a childish expression. "Where
are we going to get breakfast?" he asked, sulking.
"There's no breakfast for you, you hound! Get up and hustle."
Accordingly they hustled. With exceeding difficulty they learned that
nothing emotional had happened during the night, save the killing
of two Cubans who were so secure in ignorance that they could not
understand the challenge of two American sentries. Then Walkley ran a
gamut of commanding officers, and Little Nell pumped privates for their
impressions of Cuba. When his indignation at the absence of breakfast
allowed him, Point made sketches. At the full break of day the
_Adolphus_, and _Eclipse_ despatch boat, sent a boat ashore with Tailor
and Shackles in it, and Walkley departed tearlessly for Jamaica, soon
after he had bestowed upon his friends much tinned goods and blankets.
"Well, we've got our stuff off," said Little Nell. "Now Point and I
must breakfast."
Shackles, for some reason, carried a great hunting-knife, and with it
Little Nell opened a tin of beans.
"Fall to," he said amiably to Point.
There were some hard biscuits. Afterwards they--the four of
them--marched off on the route of the troops. They were well loaded
with luggage, particularly young Point, who had somehow made a great
gathering of unnecessary things. Hills covered with verdure soon
enclosed them. They heard that the army had advanced some nine miles
with no fighting. Evidences of the rapid advance were here and
there--coats, gauntlets, blanket rolls on the ground. Mule-trains came
herding back along the narrow trail to the sound of a little tinkling
bell. Cubans were appropriating the coats and blanket-rolls.
The four correspondents hurried onward. The surety of impending battle
weighed upon them always, but there was a score of minor things more
intimate. Little Nell's left heel had chafed until it must have been
quite raw, and every moment he wished to take seat by the roadside and
console himself from pain. Shackles and Point disliked each other
extremely, and often they foolishly quarrelled over something, or
nothing. The blanket-rolls and packages for the hand oppressed
everybody. It was like being burned out of a boarding-house, and having
to carry one's trunk eight miles to the nearest neighbour. Moreover,
Point, since he had stupidly overloaded, with great wisdom placed
various cameras and other trifles in the hands of his three
less-burdened and more sensible friends. This made them fume and gnash,
but in complete silence, since he was hideously youthful and innocent
and unaware. They all wished to rebel, but none of them saw their way
clear, because--they did not understand. But somehow it seemed a
barbarous project--no one wanted to say anything--cursed him privately
for a little ass, but--said nothing. For instance, Little Nell wished
to remark, "Point, you are not a thoroughbred in a half of a way. You
are an inconsiderate, thoughtless little swine." But, in truth, he
said, "Point, when you started out you looked like a Christmas-tree. If
we keep on robbing you of your bundles there soon won't be anything
left for the children." Point asked dubiously, "What do you mean?"
Little Nell merely laughed with deceptive good-nature.
They were always very thirsty. There was always a howl for the
half-bottle of lime juice. Five or six drops from it were simply
heavenly in the warm water from the canteens. Point seemed to try to
keep the lime juice in his possession, in order that he might get more
benefit of it. Before the war was ended the others found themselves
declaring vehemently that they loathed Point, and yet when men asked
them the reason they grew quite inarticulate. The reasons seemed then
so small, so childish, as the reasons of a lot of women. And yet at the
time his offences loomed enormous.
The surety of impending battle still weighed upon them. Then it came
that Shackles turned seriously ill. Suddenly he dropped his own and
much of Point's traps upon the trail, wriggled out of his blanket-roll,
flung it away, and took seat heavily at the roadside. They saw with
surprise that his face was pale as death, and yet streaming with sweat.
"Boys," he said in his ordinary voice, "I'm clean played out. I can't
go another step. You fellows go on, and leave me to come as soon as I
am able."
"Oh, no, that wouldn't do at all," said Little Nell and Tailor
together.
Point moved over to a soft place, and dropped amid whatever traps he
was himself carrying.
"Don't know whether it's ancestral or merely from the--sun--but I've
got a stroke," said Shackles, and gently slumped over to a prostrate
position before either Little Nell or Tailor could reach him.
Thereafter Shackles was parental; it was Little Nell and Tailor who
were really suffering from a stroke, either ancestral or from the sun.
"Put my blanket-roll under my head, Nell, me son," he said gently.
"There now! That is very nice. It is delicious. Why, I'm all right,
only--only tired." He closed his eyes, and something like an easy
slumber came over him. Once he opened his eyes. "Don't trouble about
me," he remarked.
But the two fussed about him, nervous, worried, discussing this plan
and that plan. It was Point who first made a business-like statement.
Seated carelessly and indifferently upon his soft place, he finally
blurted out:
"Say! Look here! Some of us have got to go on. We can't all stay here.
Some of us have got to go on."
It was quite true; the _Eclipse_ could take no account of strokes.
In the end Point and Tailor went on, leaving Little Nell to bring on
Shackles as soon as possible. The latter two spent many hours in the
grass by the roadside. They made numerous abrupt acquaintances with
passing staff officers, privates, muleteers, many stopping to inquire
the wherefore of the death-faced figure on the ground. Favours were
done often and often, by peer and peasant--small things, of no
consequence, and yet warming.
It was dark when Shackles and Little Nell had come slowly to where they
could hear the murmur of the army's bivouac.
"Shack," gasped Little Nell to the man leaning forlornly upon him, "I
guess we'd better bunk down here where we stand."
"All right, old boy. Anything you say," replied Shackles, in the bass
and hollow voice which arrives with such condition.
They crawled into some bushes, and distributed their belongings upon
the ground. Little Nell spread out the blankets, and generally played
housemaid. Then they lay down, supperless, being too weary to eat. The
men slept.
At dawn Little Nell awakened and looked wildly for Shackles, whose
empty blanket was pressed flat like a wet newspaper on the ground. But
at nearly the same moment Shackles appeared, elate.
"Come on," he cried; "I've rustled an invitation for breakfast."
Little Nell came on with celerity.
"Where? Who?" he said.
"Oh! some officers," replied Shackles airily. If he had been ill the
previous day, he showed it now only in some curious kind of deference
he paid to Little Nell.
Shackles conducted his comrade, and soon they arrived at where a
captain and his one subaltern arose courteously from where they were
squatting near a fire of little sticks. They wore the wide white
trouser-stripes of infantry officers, and upon the shoulders of their
blue campaign shirts were the little marks of their rank; but otherwise
there was little beyond their manners to render them different from the
men who were busy with breakfast near them. The captain was old,
grizzled--a common type of captain in the tiny American army--overjoyed
at the active service, confident of his business, and yet breathing out
in some way a note of pathos. The war was come too late. Age was
grappling him, and honours were only for his widow and his
children--merely a better life insurance policy. He had spent his life
policing Indians with much labour, cold and heat, but with no glory for
him nor his fellows. All he now could do was to die at the head of his
men. If he had youthfully dreamed of a general's stars, they were now
impossible to him, and he knew it. He was too old to leap so far; his
sole honour was a new invitation to face death. And yet, with his
ambitions lying half-strangled, he was going to take his men into any
sort of holocaust, because his traditions were of gentlemen and
soldiers, and because--he loved it for itself--the thing itself--the
whirl, the unknown. If he had been degraded at that moment to be a
pot-wrestler, no power could have starved him from going through the
campaign as a spectator. Why, the army! It was in each drop of his
blood.
The lieutenant was very young. Perhaps he had been hurried out of West
Point at the last moment, upon a shortage of officers appearing. To
him, all was opportunity. He was, in fact, in great luck. Instead of
going off in 1898 to grill for an indefinite period on some
God-forgotten heap of red-hot sand in New Mexico, he was here in Cuba,
on real business, with his regiment. When the big engagement came he
was sure to emerge from it either horizontally or at the head of a
company, and what more could a boy ask? He was a very modest lad, and
talked nothing of his frame of mind, but an expression of blissful
contentment was ever upon his face. He really accounted himself the
most fortunate boy of his time; and he felt almost certain that he
would do well. It was necessary to do well. He would do well.
And yet in many ways these two were alike; the grizzled captain with
his gently mournful countenance--"Too late"--and the elate young second
lieutenant, his commission hardly dry. Here again it was the influence
of the army. After all they were both children of the army.
It is possible to spring into the future here and chronicle what
happened later. The captain, after thirty-five years of waiting for his
chance, took his Mauser bullet through the brain at the foot of San
Juan Hill in the very beginning of the battle, and the boy arrived on
the crest panting, sweating, but unscratched, and not sure whether he
commanded one company or a whole battalion. Thus fate dealt to the
hosts of Shackles and Little Nell.
The breakfast was of canned tomatoes stewed with hard bread, more hard
bread, and coffee. It was very good fare, almost royal. Shackles and
Little Nell were absurdly grateful as they felt the hot bitter coffee
tingle in them. But they departed joyfully before the sun was fairly
up, and passed into Siboney. They never saw the captain again.
The beach at Siboney was furious with traffic, even as had been the
beach at Daqueri. Launches shouted, jack-tars prodded with their
boathooks, and load of men followed load of men. Straight, parade-like,
on the shore stood a trumpeter playing familiar calls to the
troop-horses who swam towards him eagerly through the salt seas.
Crowding closely into the cove were transports of all sizes and ages.
To the left and to the right of the little landing-beach green hills
shot upward like the wings in a theatre. They were scarred here and
there with blockhouses and rifle-pits. Up one hill a regiment was
crawling, seemingly inch by inch. Shackles and Little Nell walked among
palms and scrubby bushes, near pools, over spaces of sand holding
little monuments of biscuit-boxes, ammunition-boxes, and supplies of
all kinds. Some regiment was just collecting itself from the ships, and
the men made great patches of blue on the brown sand.
Shackles asked a question of a man accidentally: "Where's that regiment
going to?" He pointed to the force that was crawling up the hill. The
man grinned, and said, "They're going to look for a fight!"
"Looking for a fight!" said Shackles and Little Nell together. They
stared into each other's eyes. Then they set off for the foot of the
hill. The hill was long and toilsome. Below them spread wider and wider
a vista of ships quiet on a grey sea; a busy, black disembarkation-place;
tall, still, green hills; a village of well separated cottages; palms;
a bit of road; soldiers marching. They passed vacant Spanish trenches;
little twelve-foot blockhouses. Soon they were on a fine upland near
the sea. The path, under ordinary conditions, must have been a
beautiful wooded way. It wound in the shade of thickets of fine trees,
then through rank growths of bushes with revealed and fantastic roots,
then through a grassy space which had all the beauty of a neglected
orchard. But always from under their feet scuttled noisy land-crabs,
demons to the nerves, which in some way possessed a semblance of
moon-like faces upon their blue or red bodies, and these faces were
turned with expressions of deepest horror upon Shackles and Little
Nell as they sped to overtake the pugnacious regiment. The route
was paved with coats, hats, tent and blanket rolls, ration-tins,
haversacks--everything but ammunition belts, rifles and canteens.
They heard a dull noise of voices in front of them--men talking too
loud for the etiquette of the forest--and presently they came upon two
or three soldiers lying by the roadside, flame-faced, utterly spent
from the hurried march in the heat. One man came limping back along the
path. He looked to them anxiously for sympathy and comprehension. "Hurt
m' knee. I swear I couldn't keep up with th' boys. I had to leave 'm.
Wasn't that tough luck?" His collar rolled away from a red, muscular
neck, and his bare forearms were better than stanchions. Yet he was
almost babyishly tearful in his attempt to make the two correspondents
feel that he had not turned back because he was afraid. They gave him
scant courtesy, tinctured with one drop of sympathetic yet cynical
understanding. Soon they overtook the hospital squad; men addressing
chaste language to some pack-mules; a talkative sergeant; two amiable,
cool-eyed young surgeons. Soon they were amid the rear troops of the
dismounted volunteer cavalry regiment which was moving to attack. The
men strode easily along, arguing one to another on ulterior matters. If
they were going into battle, they either did not know it or they
concealed it well. They were more like men going into a bar at one
o'clock in the morning. Their laughter rang through the Cuban woods.
And in the meantime, soft, mellow, sweet, sang the voice of the Cuban
wood-dove, the Spanish guerilla calling to his mate--forest music; on
the flanks, deep back on both flanks, the adorable wood-dove, singing
only of love. Some of the advancing Americans said it was beautiful. It
_was_ beautiful. The Spanish guerilla calling to his mate. What could
be more beautiful?
Shackles and Little Nell rushed precariously through waist-high bushes
until they reached the centre of the single-filed regiment. The firing
then broke out in front. All the woods set up a hot sputtering; the
bullets sped along the path and across it from both sides. The thickets
presented nothing but dense masses of light green foliage, out of which
these swift steel things were born supernaturally.
It was a volunteer regiment going into its first action, against an
enemy of unknown force, in a country where the vegetation was thicker
than fur on a cat. There might have been a dreadful mess; but in
military matters the only way to deal with a situation of this kind is
to take it frankly by the throat and squeeze it to death. Shackles and
Little Nell felt the thrill of the orders. "Come ahead, men! Keep right
ahead, men! Come on!" The volunteer cavalry regiment, with all the
willingness in the world, went ahead into the angle of V-shaped Spanish
formation.
It seemed that every leaf had turned into a soda-bottle and was popping
its cork. Some of the explosions seemed to be against the men's very
faces, others against the backs of their necks. "Now, men! Keep goin'
ahead. Keep on goin'." The forward troops were already engaged. They,
at least, had something at which to shoot. "Now, captain, if you're
ready." "Stop that swearing there." "Got a match?" "Steady, now, men."
A gate appeared in a barbed-wire fence. Within were billowy fields of
long grass, dotted with palms and luxuriant mango trees. It was
Elysian--a place for lovers, fair as Eden in its radiance of sun, under
its blue sky. One might have expected to see white-robed figures
walking slowly in the shadows. A dead man, with a bloody face, lay
twisted in a curious contortion at the waist. Someone was shot in the
leg, his pins knocked cleanly from under him.
"Keep goin', men." The air roared, and the ground fled reelingly under
their feet. Light, shadow, trees, grass. Bullets spat from every side.
Once they were in a thicket, and the men, blanched and bewildered,
turned one way, and then another, not knowing which way to turn. "Keep
goin', men." Soon they were in the sunlight again. They could see the
long scant line, which was being drained man by man--one might say drop
by drop. The musketry rolled forth in great full measure from the
magazine carbines. "Keep goin', men." "Christ, I'm shot!" "They're
flankin' us, sir." "We're bein' fired into by our own crowd, sir."
"Keep goin', men." A low ridge before them was a bottling establishment
blowing up in detail. From the right--it seemed at that time to be the
far right--they could hear steady, crashing volleys--the United States
regulars in action.
Then suddenly--to use a phrase of the street--the whole bottom of the
thing fell out. It was suddenly and mysteriously ended. The Spaniards
had run away, and some of the regulars were chasing them. It was a
victory.
When the wounded men dropped in the tall grass they quite disappeared,
as if they had sunk in water. Little Nell and Shackles were walking
along through the fields, disputing.
"Well, damn it, man!" cried Shackles, "we _must_ get a list of the
killed and wounded."
"That is not nearly so important," quoth little Nell, academically, "as
to get the first account to New York of the first action of the army in
Cuba."
They came upon Tailor, lying with a bared torso and a small red hole
through his left lung. He was calm, but evidently out of temper. "Good
God, Tailor!" they cried, dropping to their knees like two pagans; "are
you hurt, old boy?"
"Hurt?" he said gently. "No, 'tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as
a church-door, but 'tis enough, d'you see? You understand, do you?
Idiots!"
Then he became very official. "Shackles, feel and see what's under my
leg. It's a small stone, or a burr, or something. Don't be clumsy now!
Be careful! Be careful!" Then he said, angrily, "Oh, you didn't find it
at all. Damn it!"
In reality there was nothing there, and so Shackles could not have
removed it. "Sorry, old boy," he said, meekly.
"Well, you may observe that I can't stay here more than a year," said
Tailor, with some oratory, "and the hospital people have their own work
in hand. It behoves you, Nell, to fly to Siboney, arrest a despatch
boat, get a cot and some other things, and some minions to carry me. If
I get once down to the base I'm all right, but if I stay here I'm dead.
Meantime Shackles can stay here and try to look as if he liked it."
There was no disobeying the man. Lying there with a little red hole in
his left lung, he dominated them through his helplessness, and through
their fear that if they angered him he would move and--bleed.
"Well?" said Little Nell.
"Yes," said Shackles, nodding.
Little Nell departed.
"That blanket you lent me," Tailor called after him, "is back there
somewhere with Point."
Little Nell noted that many of the men who were wandering among the
wounded seemed so spent with the toil and excitement of their first
action that they could hardly drag one leg after the other. He found
himself suddenly in the same condition, His face, his neck, even his
mouth, felt dry as sun-baked bricks, and his legs were foreign to him.
But he swung desperately into his five-mile task. On the way he passed
many things: bleeding men carried by comrades; others making their way
grimly, with encrimsoned arms; then the little settlement of the
hospital squad; men on the ground everywhere, many in the path; one
young captain dying, with great gasps, his body pale blue, and
glistening, like the inside of a rabbit's skin. But the voice of the
Cuban wood-dove, soft, mellow, sweet, singing only of love, was no
longer heard from the wealth of foliage.
Presently the hurrying correspondent met another regiment coming to
assist--a line of a thousand men in single file through the jungle.
"Well, how is it going, old man?" "How is it coming on?" "Are we doin'
'em?" Then, after an interval, came other regiments, moving out. He
had to take to the bush to let these long lines pass him, and he was
delayed, and had to flounder amid brambles. But at last, like a
successful pilgrim, he arrived at the brow of the great hill
overlooking Siboney. His practised eye scanned the fine broad brow of
the sea with its clustering ships, but he saw thereon no _Eclipse_
despatch boats. He zigzagged heavily down the hill, and arrived
finally amid the dust and outcries of the base. He seemed to ask a
thousand men if they had seen an _Eclipse_ boat on the water, or an
_Eclipse_ correspondent on the shore. They all answered, "No."
He was like a poverty-stricken and unknown suppliant at a foreign
Court. Even his plea got only ill-hearings. He had expected the news of
the serious wounding of Tailor to appal the other correspondents, but
they took it quite calmly. It was as if their sense of an impending
great battle between two large armies had quite got them out of focus
for these minor tragedies. Tailor was hurt--yes? They looked at Little
Nell, dazed. How curious that Tailor should be almost the first--how
_very_ curious--yes. But, as far as arousing them to any enthusiasm of
active pity, it seemed impossible. He was lying up there in the grass,
was he? Too bad, too bad, too bad!
Little Nell went alone and lay down in the sand with his back against a
rock. Tailor was prostrate up there in the grass. Never mind. Nothing
was to be done. The whole situation was too colossal. Then into his
zone came Walkley the invincible.
"Walkley!" yelled Little Nell. Walkley came quickly, and Little Nell
lay weakly against his rock and talked. In thirty seconds Walkley
understood everything, had hurled a drink of whisky into Little Nell,
had admonished him to lie quiet, and had gone to organise and
manipulate. When he returned he was a trifle dubious and backward.
Behind him was a singular squad of volunteers from the _Adolphus_,
carrying among them a wire-woven bed.
"Look here, Nell!" said Walkley, in bashful accents; "I've collected a
battalion here which is willing to go bring Tailor; but--they
say--you--can't you show them where he is?"
"Yes," said Little Nell, arising.
* * * * *
When the party arrived at Siboney, and deposited Tailor in the best
place, Walkley had found a house and stocked it with canned soups.
Therein Shackles and Little Nell revelled for a time, and then rolled
on the floor in their blankets. Little Nell tossed a great deal. "Oh,
I'm so tired. Good God, I'm tired. I'm--tired."
In the morning a voice aroused them. It was a swollen, important,
circus voice saying, "Where is Mr. Nell? I wish to see him
immediately."
"Here I am, Rogers," cried Little Nell.
"Oh, Nell," said Rogers, "here's a despatch to me which I thought you
had better read."
Little Nell took the despatch. It was: "Tell Nell can't understand his
inaction; tell him come home first steamer from Port Antonio, Jamaica."