Johnnie's subsequent activity in Havana could truthfully be related in
part to a certain temporary price of eggs. It is interesting to note
how close that famous event got to his eye so that, according to the
law of perspective, it was as big as the Capitol of Washington, where
centres the spirit of his nation. Around him, he felt a similar and
ferocious expression of life which informed him too plainly that if he
was caught, he was doomed. Neither the garrison nor the citizens of
Havana would tolerate any nonsense in regard to him if he was caught.
He would have the steel screw against his neck in short order. And what
was the main thing to bear him up against the desire to run away before
his work was done? A certain temporary price of eggs! It not only hid
the Capitol at Washington; it obscured the dangers in Havana.
Something was learned of the Santa Clara battery, because one morning
an old lady in black accompanied by a young man--evidently her
son--visited a house which was to rent on the height, in rear of the
battery. The portero was too lazy and sleepy to show them over the
premises, but he granted them permission to investigate for themselves.
They spent most of their time on the flat parapeted roof of the house.
At length they came down and said that the place did not suit them. The
portero went to sleep again.
Johnnie was never discouraged by the thought that his operations would
be of small benefit to the admiral commanding the fleet in adjacent
waters, and to the general commanding the army which was not going to
attack Havana from the land side. At that time it was all the world's
opinion that the army from Tampa would presently appear on the Cuban
beach at some convenient point to the east or west of Havana. It turned
out, of course, that the condition of the defences of Havana was of not
the slightest military importance to the United States since the city
was never attacked either by land or sea. But Johnnie could not foresee
this. He continued to take his fancy risk, continued his majestic lie,
with satisfaction, sometimes with delight, and with pride. And in the
psychologic distance was old Martha dancing with fear and shouting:
"Oh, Johnnie, me son, what a born fool ye are!"
Sometimes she would address him thus: "And when ye learn all this, how
are ye goin' to get out with it?" She was contemptuous.
He would reply, as serious as a Cossack in his fatalism. "Oh, I'll get
out some way."
His manoeuvres in the vicinity of Regla and Guanabacoa were of a
brilliant character. He haunted the sunny long grass in the manner of a
jack-rabbit. Sometimes he slept under a palm, dreaming of the American
advance fighting its way along the military road to the foot of Spanish
defences. Even when awake, he often dreamed it and thought of the
all-day crash and hot roar of an assault. Without consulting
Washington, he had decided that Havana should be attacked from the
south-east. An advance from the west could be contested right up to the
bar of the Hotel Inglaterra, but when the first ridge in the south-east
would be taken, the whole city with most of its defences would lie
under the American siege guns. And the approach to this position was as
reasonable as is any approach toward the muzzles of magazine rifles.
Johnnie viewed the grassy fields always as a prospective battle-ground,
and one can see him lying there, filling the landscape with visions of
slow-crawling black infantry columns, galloping batteries of artillery,
streaks of faint blue smoke marking the modern firing lines, clouds of
dust, a vision of ten thousand tragedies. And his ears heard the
noises.
But he was no idle shepherd boy with a head haunted by sombre and
glorious fancies. On the contrary, he was much occupied with practical
matters. Some months after the close of the war, he asked me: "Were you
ever fired at from very near?" I explained some experiences which I had
stupidly esteemed as having been rather near. "But did you ever have'm
fire a volley on you from close--very close--say, thirty feet?"
Highly scandalised I answered, "No; in that case, I would not be the
crowning feature of the Smithsonian Institute."
"Well," he said, "it's a funny effect. You feel as every hair on your
head had been snatched out by the roots." Questioned further he said,
"I walked right up on a Spanish outpost at daybreak once, and about
twenty men let go at me. Thought I was a Cuban army, I suppose."
"What did you do?"
"I run."
"Did they hit you, at all?"
"Naw."
It had been arranged that some light ship of the squadron should
rendezvous with him at a certain lonely spot on the coast on a certain
day and hour and pick him up. He was to wave something white. His shirt
was not white, but he waved it whenever he could see the signal-tops of
a war-ship. It was a very tattered banner. After a ten-mile scramble
through almost pathless thickets, he had very little on him which
respectable men would call a shirt, and the less one says about his
trousers the better. This naked savage, then, walked all day up and
down a small bit of beach waving a brown rag. At night, he slept in the
sand. At full daybreak he began to wave his rag; at noon he was waving
his rag; at night-fall he donned his rag and strove to think of it as a
shirt. Thus passed two days, and nothing had happened. Then he retraced
a twenty-five mile way to the house of old Martha. At first she took
him to be one of Havana's terrible beggars and cried, "And do you come
here for alms? Look out, that I do not beg of you." The one unchanged
thing was his laugh of pure mockery. When she heard it, she dragged him
through the door. He paid no heed to her ejaculations but went straight
to where he had hidden some gold. As he was untying a bit of string
from the neck of a small bag, he said, "How is little Alfred?"
"Recovered, thank Heaven." He handed Martha a piece of gold. "Take this
and buy what you can on the corner. I'm hungry." Martha departed with
expedition. Upon her return, she was beaming. She had foraged a thin
chicken, a bunch of radishes and two bottles of wine. Johnnie had
finished the radishes and one bottle of wine when the chicken was still
a long way from the table. He called stoutly for more, and so Martha
passed again into the street with another gold piece. She bought more
radishes, more wine and some cheese. They had a grand feast, with
Johnnie audibly wondering until a late hour why he had waved his rag in
vain.
There was no end to his suspense, no end to his work. He knew
everything. He was an animate guide-book. After he knew a thing once,
he verified it in several different ways in order to make sure. He
fitted himself for a useful career, like a young man in a college--with
the difference that the shadow of the garote fell ever upon his way,
and that he was occasionally shot at, and that he could not get enough
to eat, and that his existence was apparently forgotten, and that he
contracted the fever. But----
One cannot think of the terms in which to describe a futility so vast,
so colossal. He had builded a little boat, and the sea had receded and
left him and his boat a thousand miles inland on the top of a mountain.
The war-fate had left Havana out of its plan and thus isolated Johnnie
and his several pounds of useful information. The war-fate left Havana
to become the somewhat indignant victim of a peaceful occupation at the
close of the conflict, and Johnnie's data were worth as much as a
carpenter's lien on the north pole. He had suffered and laboured for
about as complete a bit of absolute nothing as one could invent. If the
company which owned the sugar plantation had not generously continued
his salary during the war, he would not have been able to pay his
expenses on the amount allowed him by the government, which, by the
way, was a more complete bit of absolute nothing than one could
possibly invent.