WAR MEMORIES

"But to get the real thing!" cried Vernall, the war-correspondent. "It

seems impossible! It is because war is neither magnificent nor squalid;

it is simply life, and an expression of life can always evade us. We

can never tell life, one to another, although sometimes we think we

can."

When I climbed aboard the despatch-boat at Key West, the mate told me

irritably that as soon as we crossed the bar, we would find ourselves

monkey-climbing over heavy seas. It wasn't my fault, but he seemed to

insinuate that it was all a result of my incapacity. There were four

correspondents in the party. The leader of us came aboard with a huge

bunch of bananas, which he hung like a chandelier in the centre of the

tiny cabin. We made acquaintance over, around, and under this bunch of

bananas, which really occupied the cabin as a soldier occupies a sentry

box. But the bunch did not become really aggressive until we were well

at sea. Then it began to spar. With the first roll of the ship, it

launched its honest pounds at McCurdy and knocked him wildly through

the door to the deck-rail, where he hung cursing hysterically. Without

a moment's pause, it made for me. I flung myself head-first into my

bunk and watched the demon sweep Brownlow into a corner and wedge his

knee behind a sea-chest. Kary gave a shrill cry and fled. The bunch of

bananas swung to and fro, silent, determined, ferocious, looking for

more men. It had cleared a space for itself. My comrades looked in at

the door, calling upon me to grab the thing and hold it. I pointed out

to them the security and comfort of my position. They were angry.

Finally the mate came and lashed the thing so that it could not prowl

about the cabin and assault innocent war-correspondents. You see? War!

A bunch of bananas rampant because the ship rolled.

In that early period of the war we were forced to continue our dreams.

And we were all dreamers, envisioning the seas with death grapples,

ship and ship. Even the navy grew cynical. Officers on the bridge

lifted their megaphones and told you in resigned voices that they were

out of ice, onions, and eggs. At other times, they would shoot quite

casually at us with six-pounders. This industry usually progressed in

the night, but it sometimes happened in the day. There was never any

resentment on our side, although at moments there was some nervousness.

They were impressively quick with their lanyards; our means of replying

to signals were correspondingly slow. They gave you opportunity to say,

"Heaven guard me!" Then they shot. But we recognised the propriety of

it. Everything was correct save the war, which lagged and lagged and

lagged. It did not play; it was not a gory giant; it was a bunch of

bananas swung in the middle of the cabin.

Once we had the honour of being rammed at midnight by the U.S.S.

_Machias_. In fact the exceeding industry of the naval commanders of

the Cuban blockading fleet caused a certain liveliness to at times

penetrate our mediocre existence. We were all greatly entertained over

an immediate prospect of being either killed by rapid fire guns, cut in

half by the ram or merely drowned, but even our great longing for

diversion could not cause us to ever again go near the _Machias_ on a

dark night. We had sailed from Key West on a mission that had nothing

to do with the coast of Cuba, and steaming due east and some

thirty-five miles from the Cuban land, we did not think we were liable

to an affair with any of the fierce American cruisers. Suddenly a

familiar signal of red and white lights flashed like a brooch of jewels

on the pall that covered the sea. It was far away and tiny, but we knew

all about it. It was the electric question of an American war-ship and

it demanded a swift answer in kind. The man behind the gun! What about

the man in front of the gun? The war-ship signals vanished and the sea

presented nothing but a smoky black stretch lit with the hissing white

tops of the flying waves. A thin line of flame swept from a gun.

Thereafter followed one of those silences which had become so

peculiarly instructive to the blockade-runner. Somewhere in the

darkness we knew that a slate-coloured cruiser, red below the

water-line and with a gold scroll on her bows, was flying over the

waves toward us, while upon the dark decks the men stood at general

quarters in silence about the long thin guns, and it was the law of

life and death that we should make true answer in about the twelfth

part of a second. Now I shall with regret disclose a certain dreadful

secret of the despatch-boat service. Our signals, far from being

electric, were two lanterns which we kept in a tub and covered with a

tarpaulin. The tub was placed just forward of the pilot-house, and when

we were accosted at night it was everybody's duty to scramble wildly

for the tub and grab out the lanterns and wave them. It amounted to a

slowness of speech. I remember a story of an army sentry who upon

hearing a noise in his front one dark night called his usual sharp

query. "Halt--who's there? Halt or I'll fire!" And getting no immediate

response he fired even as he had said, killing a man with a hair-lip

who unfortunately could not arrange his vocal machinery to reply in

season. We were something like a boat with a hair-lip. And sometimes it

was very trying to the nerves.... The pause was long. Then a voice

spoke from the sea through a megaphone. It was faint but clear. "What

ship is that?" No one hesitated over his answer in cases of this kind.

Everybody was desirous of imparting fullest information. There was

another pause. Then out of the darkness flew an American cruiser,

silent as death, handled as ferociously as if the devil commanded her.

Again the little voice hailed from the bridge. "What ship is that?"

Evidently the reply to the first hail had been misunderstood or not

heard. This time the voice rang with menace, menace of immediate and

certain destruction, and the last word was intoned savagely and

strangely across the windy darkness as if the officer would explain

that the cruiser was after either fools or the common enemy. The yells

in return did not stop her. She was hurling herself forward to ram us

amidships, and the people on the little _Three Friends_ looked at a

tall swooping bow, and it was keener than any knife that has ever been

made. As the cruiser lunged every man imagined the gallant and famous

but frail _Three Friends_ cut into two parts as neatly as if she had

been cheese. But there was a sheer and a hard sheer to starboard, and

down upon our quarter swung a monstrous thing larger than any ship in

the world--the U.S.S. _Machias_. She had a freeboard of about three

hundred feet and the top of her funnel was out of sight in the clouds

like an Alp. I shouldn't wonder that at the top of that funnel there

was a region of perpetual snow. And at a range which swiftly narrowed

to nothing every gun in her port-battery swung deliberately into aim.

It was closer, more deliciously intimate than a duel across a

handkerchief. We all had an opportunity of looking miles down the

muzzles of this festive artillery before came the collision. Then the

_Machias_ reeled her steel shoulder against the wooden side of the

_Three Friends_ and up went a roar as if a vast shingle roof had

fallen. The poor little tug dipped as if she meant to pass under the

war-ship, staggered and finally righted, trembling from head to foot.

The cries of the splintered timbers ceased. The men on the tug gazed at

each other with white faces shining faintly in the darkness. The

_Machias_ backed away even as the _Three Friends_ drew slowly ahead,

and again we were alone with the piping of the wind and the slash of

the gale-driven water. Later, from some hidden part of the sea, the

bullish eye of a searchlight looked at us and the widening white rays

bathed us in the glare. There was another hail. "Hello there, _Three

Friends_!" "Ay, ay, sir!" "Are you injured?" Our first mate had taken a

lantern and was studying the side of the tug, and we held our breath

for his answer. I was sure that he was going to say that we were

sinking. Surely there could be no other ending to this terrific

bloodthirsty assault. But the first mate said, "No, sir." Instantly the

glare of the search-light was gone; the _Machias_ was gone; the

incident was closed.

I was dining once on board the flag-ship, the _New York_, armoured

cruiser. It was the junior officers' mess, and when the coffee came, a

young ensign went to the piano and began to bang out a popular tune. It

was a cheerful scene, and it resembled only a cheerful scene. Suddenly

we heard the whistle of the bos'n's mate, and directly above us, it

seemed, a voice, hoarse as that of a sea-lion, bellowed a command: "Man

the port battery." In a moment the table was vacant; the popular tune

ceased in a jangle. On the quarter-deck assembled a group of

officers--spectators. The quiet evening sea, lit with faint red lights,

went peacefully to the feet of a verdant shore. One could hear the

far-away measured tumbling of surf upon a reef. Only this sound pulsed

in the air. The great grey cruiser was as still as the earth, the sea,

and the sky. Then they let off a four-inch gun directly under my feet.

I thought it turned me a back-somersault. That was the effect upon my

mind. But it appears I did not move. The shell went carousing off to

the Cuban shore, and from the vegetation there spirted a cloud of dust.

Some of the officers on the quarter-deck laughed. Through their glasses

they had seen a Spanish column of cavalry much agitated by the

appearance of this shell among them. As far as I was concerned, there

was nothing but the spirt of dust from the side of a long-suffering

island. When I returned to my coffee I found that most of the young

officers had also returned. Japanese boys were bringing liquors. The

piano's clattering of the popular air was often interrupted by the boom

of a four-inch gun. A bunch of bananas!

One day, our despatch-boat found the shores of Guantanamo Bay flowing

past on either side. It was at nightfall and on the eastward point a

small village was burning, and it happened that a fiery light was

thrown upon some palm-trees so that it made them into enormous crimson

feathers. The water was the colour of blue steel; the Cuban woods were

sombre; high shivered the gory feathers. The last boatloads of the

marine battalion were pulling for the beach. The marine officers gave

me generous hospitality to the camp on the hill. That night there was

an alarm and amid a stern calling of orders and a rushing of men, I

wandered in search of some other man who had no occupation. It turned

out to be the young assistant surgeon, Gibbs. We foregathered in the

centre of a square of six companies of marines. There was no firing. We

thought it rather comic. The next night there was an alarm; there was

some firing; we lay on our bellies; it was no longer comic. On the

third night the alarm came early; I went in search of Gibbs, but I soon

gave over an active search for the more congenial occupation of lying

flat and feeling the hot hiss of the bullets trying to cut my hair. For

the moment I was no longer a cynic. I was a child who, in a fit of

ignorance, had jumped into the vat of war. I heard somebody dying near

me. He was dying hard. Hard. It took him a long time to die. He

breathed as all noble machinery breathes when it is making its gallant

strife against breaking, breaking. But he was going to break. He was

going to break. It seemed to me, this breathing, the noise of a heroic

pump which strives to subdue a mud which comes upon it in tons. The

darkness was impenetrable. The man was lying in some depression within

seven feet of me. Every wave, vibration, of his anguish beat upon my

senses. He was long past groaning. There was only the bitter strife for

air which pulsed out into the night in a clear penetrating whistle with

intervals of terrible silence in which I held my own breath in the

common unconscious aspiration to help. I thought this man would never

die. I wanted him to die. Ultimately he died. At the moment the

adjutant came bustling along erect amid the spitting bullets. I knew

him by his voice. "Where's the doctor? There's some wounded men over

there. Where's the doctor?" A man answered briskly: "Just died this

minute, sir." It was as if he had said: "Just gone around the corner

this minute, sir." Despite the horror of this night's business, the

man's mind was somehow influenced by the coincidence of the adjutant's

calling aloud for the doctor within a few seconds of the doctor's

death. It--what shall I say? It interested him, this coincidence.

The day broke by inches, with an obvious and maddening reluctance. From

some unfathomable source I procured an opinion that my friend was not

dead at all--the wild and quivering darkness had caused me to

misinterpret a few shouted words. At length the land brightened in a

violent atmosphere, the perfect dawning of a tropic day, and in this

light I saw a clump of men near me. At first I thought they were all

dead. Then I thought they were all asleep. The truth was that a group

of wan-faced, exhausted men had gone to sleep about Gibbs' body so

closely and in such abandoned attitudes that one's eye could not pick

the living from the dead until one saw that a certain head had beneath

it a great dark pool.

In the afternoon a lot of men went bathing, and in the midst of this

festivity firing was resumed. It was funny to see the men come

scampering out of the water, grab at their rifles and go into action

attired in nought but their cartridge-belts. The attack of the

Spaniards had interrupted in some degree the services over the graves

of Gibbs and some others. I remember Paine came ashore with a bottle of

whisky which I took from him violently. My faithful shooting boots

began to hurt me, and I went to the beach and poulticed my feet in wet

clay, sitting on the little rickety pier near where the corrugated iron

cable-station showed how the shells slivered through it. Some marines,

desirous of mementoes, were poking with sticks in the smoking ruins of

the hamlet. Down in the shallow water crabs were meandering among the

weeds, and little fishes moved slowly in schools.

The next day we went shooting. It was exactly like quail shooting. I'll

tell you. These guerillas who so cursed our lives had a well some five

miles away, and it was the only water supply within about twelve miles

of the marine camp. It was decided that it would be correct to go forth

and destroy the well. Captain Elliott, of C company, was to take his

men with Captain Spicer's company, D, out to the well, beat the enemy

away and destroy everything. He was to start at the next daybreak. He

asked me if I cared to go, and, of course, I accepted with glee; but

all that night I was afraid. Bitterly afraid. The moon was very bright,

shedding a magnificent radiance upon the trenches. I watched the men of

C and D companies lying so tranquilly--some snoring, confound

them--whereas I was certain that I could never sleep with the weight of

a coming battle upon my mind, a battle in which the poor life of a

war-correspondent might easily be taken by a careless enemy. But if I

was frightened I was also very cold. It was a chill night and I wanted

a heavy top-coat almost as much as I wanted a certificate of immunity

from rifle bullets. These two feelings were of equal importance to my

mind. They were twins. Elliott came and flung a tent-fly over

Lieutenant Bannon and me as we lay on the ground back of the men. Then

I was no longer cold, but I was still afraid, for tent-flies cannot

mend a fear. In the morning I wished for some mild attack of disease,

something that would incapacitate me for the business of going out

gratuitously to be bombarded. But I was in an awkwardly healthy state,

and so I must needs smile and look pleased with my prospects. We were

to be guided by fifty Cubans, and I gave up all dreams of a

postponement when I saw them shambling off in single file through the

cactus. We followed presently. "Where you people goin' to?" "Don't

know, Jim." "Well, good luck to you, boys." This was the world's lazy

inquiry and conventional God-speed. Then the mysterious wilderness

swallowed us.

The men were silent because they were ordered to be silent, but

whatever faces I could observe were marked with a look of serious

meditation. As they trudged slowly in single file they were reflecting

upon--what? I don't know. But at length we came to ground more open.

The sea appeared on our right, and we saw the gunboat _Dolphin_

steaming along in a line parallel to ours. I was as glad to see her as

if she had called out my name. The trail wound about the bases of some

high bare spurs. If the Spaniards had occupied them I don't see how we

could have gone further. But upon them were only the dove-voiced

guerilla scouts calling back into the hills the news of our approach.

The effect of sound is of course relative. I am sure I have never heard

such a horrible sound as the beautiful cooing of the wood-dove when I

was certain that it came from the yellow throat of a guerilla. Elliott

sent Lieutenant Lucas with his platoon to ascend the hills and cover

our advance by the trail. We halted and watched them climb, a long

black streak of men in the vivid sunshine of the hillside. We did not

know how tall were these hills until we saw Lucas and his men on top,

and they were no larger than specks. We marched on until, at last, we

heard--it seemed in the sky--the sputter of firing. This devil's dance

was begun. The proper strategic movement to cover the crisis seemed to

me to be to run away home and swear I had never started on this

expedition. But Elliott yelled: "Now, men; straight up this hill." The

men charged up against the cactus, and, because I cared for the opinion

of others, I found myself tagging along close at Elliott's heels. I

don't know how I got up that hill, but I think it was because I was

afraid to be left behind. The immediate rear did not look safe. The

crowd of strong young marines afforded the only spectacle of

provisional security. So I tagged along at Elliott's heels. The hill

was as steep as a Swiss roof. From it sprang out great pillars of

cactus, and the human instinct was to assist one's self in the ascent

by grasping cactus with one's hands. I remember the watch I had to keep

upon this human instinct even when the sound of the bullets was

attracting my nervous attention. However, the attractive thing to my

sense at the time was the fact that every man of the marines was also

climbing away like mad. It was one thing for Elliott, Spicer, Neville,

Shaw and Bannon; it was another thing for me; but--what in the devil

was it to the men? Not the same thing surely. It was perfectly easy for

any marine to get overcome by the burning heat and, lying down,

bequeath the work and the danger to his comrades. The fine thing about

"the men" is that you can't explain them. I mean when you take them

collectively. They do a thing, and afterward you find that they have

done it because they have done it. However, when Elliott arrived at the

top of the ridge, myself and many other men were with him. But there

was no battle scene. Off on another ridge we could see Lucas' men and

the Cubans peppering away into a valley. The bullets about our ears

were really intended to lodge in them. We went over there.

I walked along the firing line and looked at the men. I kept somewhat

on what I shall call the _lee_ side of the ridge. Why? Because I was

afraid of being shot. No other reason. Most of the men as they lay

flat, shooting, looked contented, almost happy. They were pleased,

these men, at the situation. I don't know. I cannot imagine. But they

were pleased, at any rate. I wasn't pleased. I was picturing defeat. I

was saying to myself:--"Now if the enemy should suddenly do so-and-so,

or so-and-so, why--what would become of me?" During these first few

moments I did not see the Spanish position because--I was afraid to

look at it. Bullets were hissing and spitting over the crest of the

ridge in such showers as to make observation to be a task for a brave

man. No, now, look here, why the deuce should I have stuck my head up,

eh? Why? Well, at any rate, I didn't until it seemed to be a far less

thing than most of the men were doing as if they liked it. Then I saw

nothing. At least it was only the bottom of a small valley. In this

valley there was a thicket--a big thicket--and this thicket seemed to

be crowded with a mysterious class of persons who were evidently trying

to kill us. Our enemies? Yes--perhaps--I suppose so. Leave that to the

people in the streets at home. They know and cry against the public

enemy, but when men go into actual battle not one in a thousand

concerns himself with an animus against the men who face him. The great

desire is to beat them--beat them whoever they are as a matter, first,

of personal safety, second, of personal glory. It is always safest to

make the other chap quickly run away. And as he runs away, one feels,

as one tries to hit him in the back and knock him sprawling, that he

must be a very good and sensible fellow. But these people apparently

did not mean to run away. They clung to their thicket and, amid the

roar of the firing, one could sometimes hear their wild yells of insult

and defiance. They were actually the most obstinate, headstrong, mulish

people that you could ever imagine. The _Dolphin_ was throwing shells

into their immediate vicinity and the fire from the marines and Cubans

was very rapid and heavy, but still those incomprehensible mortals

remained in their thicket. The scene on the top of the ridge was very

wild, but there was only one truly romantic figure. This was a Cuban

officer who held in one hand a great glittering machete and in the

other a cocked revolver. He posed like a statue of victory. Afterwards

he confessed to me that he alone had been responsible for the winning

of the fight. But outside of this splendid person it was simply a

picture of men at work, men terribly hard at work, red-faced, sweating,

gasping toilers. A Cuban negro soldier was shot though the heart and

one man took the body on his back and another took it by its feet and

trundled away toward the rear looking precisely like a wheelbarrow. A

man in C company was shot through the ankle and he sat behind the line

nursing his wound. Apparently he was pleased with it. It seemed to suit

him. I don't know why. But beside him sat a comrade with a face drawn,

solemn and responsible like that of a New England spinster at the

bedside of a sick child.

The fight banged away with a roar like a forest fire. Suddenly a marine

wriggled out of the firing line and came frantically to me. "Say, young

feller, I'll give you five dollars for a drink of whisky." He tried to

force into my hand a gold piece. "Go to the devil," said I, deeply

scandalised. "Besides, I haven't got any whisky," "No, but look here,"

he beseeched me. "If I don't get a drink I'll die. And I'll give you

five dollars for it. Honest, I will." I finally tried to escape from

him by walking away, but he followed at my heels, importuning me with

all the exasperating persistence of a professional beggar and trying to

force this ghastly gold piece into my hand. I could not shake him off,

and amid that clatter of furious fighting I found myself intensely

embarrassed, and glancing fearfully this way and that way to make sure

that people did not see me, the villain and his gold. In vain I assured

him that if I had any whisky I should place it at his disposal. He

could not be turned away. I thought of the European expedient in such a

crisis--to jump in a cab. But unfortunately---- In the meantime I had

given up my occupation of tagging at Captain Elliott's heels, because

his business required that he should go into places of great danger.

But from time to time I was under his attention. Once he turned to me

and said: "Mr. Vernall, will you go and satisfy yourself who those

people are?" Some men had appeared on a hill about six hundred yards

from our left flank. "Yes, sir," cried I with, I assure you, the finest

alacrity and cheerfulness, and my tone proved to me that I had

inherited histrionic abilities. This tone was of course a black lie,

but I went off briskly and was as jaunty as a real soldier while all

the time my heart was in my boots and I was cursing the day that saw me

landed on the shores of the tragic isle. If the men on the distant hill

had been guerillas, my future might have been seriously jeopardised,

but I had not gone far toward them when I was able to recognise the

uniforms of the marine corps. Whereupon I scampered back to the firing

line and with the same alacrity and cheerfulness reported my

information. I mention to you that I was afraid, because there were

about me that day many men who did not seem to be afraid at all, men

with quiet, composed faces who went about this business as if they

proceeded from a sense of habit. They were not old soldiers; they were

mainly recruits, but many of them betrayed all the emotion and merely

the emotion that one sees in the face of a man earnestly at work.

I don't know how long the action lasted. I remember deciding in my own

mind that the Spaniards stood forty minutes. This was a mere arbitrary

decision based on nothing. But at any rate we finally arrived at the

satisfactory moment when the enemy began to run away. I shall never

forget how my courage increased. And then began the great bird

shooting. From the far side of the thicket arose an easy slope covered

with plum-coloured bush. The Spaniards broke in coveys of from six to

fifteen men--or birds--and swarmed up this slope. The marines on our

ridge then had some fine, open field shooting. No charge could be made

because the shells from the _Dolphin_ were helping the Spaniards to

evacuate the thicket, so the marines had to be content with this

extraordinary paraphrase of a kind of sport. It was strangely like the

original. The shells from the _Dolphin_ were the dogs; dogs who went in

and stirred out the game. The marines were suddenly gentlemen in

leggings, alive with the sharp instinct which marks the hunter. The

Spaniards were the birds. Yes, they were the birds, but I doubt if they

would sympathise with my metaphors.

We destroyed their camp, and when the tiled roof of a burning house

fell with a crash it was so like the crash of a strong volley of

musketry that we all turned with a start, fearing that we would have to

fight again on that same day. And this struck me at least as being an

impossible thing. They gave us water from the _Dolphin_ and we filled

our canteens. None of the men were particularly jubilant. They did not

altogether appreciate their victory. They were occupied in being glad

that the fight was over. I discovered to my amazement that we were on

the summit of a hill so high that our released eyes seemed to sweep

over half the world. The vast stretch of sea shimmering like fragile

blue silk in the breeze, lost itself ultimately in an indefinite pink

haze, while in the other direction, ridge after ridge, ridge after

ridge, rolled brown and arid into the north. The battle had been fought

high in the air--where the rain clouds might have been. That is why

everybody's face was the colour of beetroot and men lay on the ground

and only swore feebly when the cactus spurs sank into them.

Finally we started for camp. Leaving our wounded, our cactus

pincushions, and our heat-prostrated men on board the _Dolphin_. I did

not see that the men were elate or even grinning with satisfaction.

They seemed only anxious to get to food and rest. And yet it was plain

that Elliott and his men had performed a service that would prove

invaluable to the security and comfort of the entire battalion. They

had driven the guerillas to take a road along which they would have to

proceed for fifteen miles before they could get as much water as would

wet the point of a pin. And by the destruction of a well at the scene

of the fight, Elliott made an arid zone almost twenty miles wide

between the enemy and the base camp. In Cuba this is the best of

protections. However, a cup of coffee! Time enough to think of a

brilliant success after one had had a cup of coffee. The long line

plodded wearily through the dusky jungle which was never again to be

alive with ambushes.

It was dark when we stumbled into camp, and I was sad with an

ungovernable sadness, because I was too tired to remember where I had

left my kit. But some of my colleagues were waiting on the beach, and

they put me on a despatch-boat to take my news to a Jamaica

cable-station. The appearance of this despatch-boat struck me with

wonder. It was reminiscent of something with which I had been familiar

in early years. I looked with dull surprise at three men of the

engine-room force, who sat aft on some bags of coal smoking their pipes

and talking as if there had never been any battles fought anywhere. The

sudden clang of the gong made me start and listen eagerly, as if I

would be asking: "What was that?" The chunking of the screw affected me

also, but I seemed to relate it to a former and pleasing experience.

One of the correspondents on board immediately began to tell me of the

chief engineer, who, he said, was a comic old character. I was taken to

see this marvel, which presented itself as a gray-bearded man with an

oil can, who had the cynical, malicious, egotistic eye of proclaimed

and admired ignorance. I looked dazedly at the venerable impostor. What

had he to do with battles--the humming click of the locks, the odour of

burnt cotton, the bullets, the firing? My friend told the scoundrel

that I was just returned from the afternoon's action. He said: "That

so?" And looked at me with a smile, faintly, faintly derisive. You see?

I had just come out of my life's most fiery time, and that old devil

looked at me with that smile. What colossal conceit. The

four-times-damned doddering old head-mechanic of a derelict junk shop.

The whole trouble lay in the fact that I had not shouted out with

mingled awe and joy as he stood there in his wisdom and experience,

with all his ancient saws and home-made epigrams ready to fire.

My friend took me to the cabin. What a squalid hole! My heart sank. The

reward after the labour should have been a great airy chamber, a

gigantic four-poster, iced melons, grilled birds, wine, and the

delighted attendance of my friends. When I had finished my cablegram, I

retired to a little shelf of a berth, which reeked of oil, while the

blankets had soaked recently with sea-water. The vessel heeled to

leaward in spasmodic attempts to hurl me out, and I resisted with the

last of my strength. The infamous pettiness of it all! I thought the

night would never end. "But never mind," I said to myself at last,

"to-morrow in Fort Antonio I shall have a great bath and fine raiment,

and I shall dine grandly and there will be lager beer on ice. And there

will be attendants to run when I touch a bell, and I shall catch every

interested romantist in the town, and spin him the story of the fight

at Cusco." We reached Fort Antonio and I fled from the cable office to

the hotel. I procured the bath and, as I donned whatever fine raiment I

had foraged, I called the boy and pompously told him of a dinner--a

real dinner, with furbelows and complications, and yet with a basis of

sincerity. He looked at me calf-like for a moment, and then he went

away. After a long interval, the manager himself appeared and asked me

some questions which led me to see that he thought I had attempted to

undermine and disintegrate the intellect of the boy, by the elocution

of Arabic incantations. Well, never mind. In the end, the manager of

the hotel elicited from me that great cry, that cry which during the

war, rang piteously from thousands of throats, that last grand cry of

anguish and despair: "_Well, then, in the name of God, can I have a

cold bottle of beer?_"

Well, you see to what war brings men? War is death, and a plague of the

lack of small things, and toil. Nor did I catch my sentimentalists and

pour forth my tale to them, and thrill, appal, and fascinate them.

However, they did feel an interest in me, for I heard a lady at the

hotel ask: "Who _is_ that chap in the very dirty jack-boots?" So you

see, that whereas you can be very much frightened upon going into

action, you can also be greatly annoyed after you have come out.

Later, I fell into the hands of one of my closest friends, and he

mercilessly outlined a scheme for landing to the west of Santiago and

getting through the Spanish lines to some place from which we could

view the Spanish squadron lying in the harbour. There was rumour that

the _Viscaya_ had escaped, he said, and it would be very nice to make

sure of the truth. So we steamed to a point opposite a Cuban camp which

my friend knew, and flung two crop-tailed Jamaica polo ponies into the

sea. We followed in a small boat and were met on the beach by a small

Cuban detachment who immediately caught our ponies and saddled them for

us. I suppose we felt rather god-like. We were almost the first

Americans they had seen and they looked at us with eyes of grateful

affection. I don't suppose many men have the experience of being looked

at with eyes of grateful affection. They guide us to a Cuban camp

where, in a little palm-bark hut, a black-faced lieutenant-colonel was

lolling in a hammock. I couldn't understand what was said, but at any

rate he must have ordered his half-naked orderly to make coffee, for it

was done. It was a dark syrup in smoky tin-cups, but it was better than

the cold bottle of beer which I did not drink in Jamaica.

The Cuban camp was an expeditious affair of saplings and palm-bark tied

with creepers. It could be burned to the ground in fifteen minutes and

in ten reduplicated. The soldiers were in appearance an absolutely

good-natured set of half-starved ragamuffins. Their breeches hung in

threads about their black legs and their shirts were as nothing. They

looked like a collection of real tropic savages at whom some

philanthropist had flung a bundle of rags and some of the rags had

stuck here and there. But their condition was now a habit. I doubt if

they knew they were half-naked. Anyhow they didn't care. No more they

should; the weather was warm. This lieutenant-colonel gave us an escort

of five or six men and we went up into the mountains, lying flat on our

Jamaica ponies while they went like rats up and down extraordinary

trails. In the evening we reached the camp of a major who commanded the

outposts. It was high, high in the hills. The stars were as big as

cocoanuts. We lay in borrowed hammocks and watched the firelight gleam

blood-red on the trees. I remember an utterly naked negro squatting,

crimson, by the fire and cleaning an iron-pot. Some voices were singing

an Afric wail of forsaken love and death. And at dawn we were to try to

steal through the Spanish lines. I was very, very sorry.

In the cold dawn the situation was the same, but somehow courage seemed

to be in the breaking day. I went off with the others quite cheerfully.

We came to where the pickets stood behind bulwarks of stone in

frameworks of saplings. They were peering across a narrow cloud-steeped

gulch at a dull fire marking a Spanish post. There was some palaver and

then, with fifteen men, we descended the side of this mountain, going

down into the chill blue-and-grey clouds. We had left our horses with

the Cuban pickets. We proceeded stealthily, for we were already within

range of the Spanish pickets. At the bottom of the cañon it was still

night. A brook, a regular salmon-stream, brawled over the rocks. There

were grassy banks and most delightful trees. The whole valley was a

sylvan fragrance. But--the guide waved his arm and scowled warningly,

and in a moment we were off, threading thickets, climbing hills,

crawling through fields on our hands and knees, sometimes sweeping like

seventeen phantoms across a Spanish road. I was in a dream, but I kept

my eye on the guide and halted to listen when he halted to listen and

ambled onward when he ambled onward. Sometimes he turned and pantomimed

as ably and fiercely as a man being stung by a thousand hornets. Then

we knew that the situation was extremely delicate. We were now of

course well inside the Spanish lines and we ascended a great hill which

overlooked the harbour of Santiago. There, tranquilly at anchor, lay

the _Oquendo_, the _Maria Theresa_, the _Christobal Colon_, the

_Viscaya_, the _Pluton_, the _Furor_. The bay was white in the sun and

the great blacked-hull armoured cruisers were impressive in a dignity

massive yet graceful. We did not know that they were all doomed ships,

soon to go out to a swift death. My friend drew maps and things while I

devoted myself to complete rest, blinking lazily at the Spanish

squadron. We did not know that we were the last Americans to view them

alive and unhurt and at peace. Then we retraced our way, at the same

noiseless canter. I did not understand my condition until I considered

that we were well through the Spanish lines and practically out of

danger. Then I discovered that I was a dead man. The nervous force

having evaporated I was a mere corpse. My limbs were of dough and my

spinal cord burned within me as if it were red-hot wire. But just at

this time we were discovered by a Spanish patrol, and I ascertained

that I was not dead at all. We ultimately reached the foot of the

mother-mountain on whose shoulders were the Cuban pickets, and here I

was so sure of safety that I could not resist the temptation to die

again. I think I passed into eleven distinct stupors during the ascent

of that mountain while the escort stood leaning on their Remingtons. We

had done twenty-five miles at a sort of a man-gallop, never once using

a beaten track, but always going promiscuously through the jungle and

over the rocks. And many of the miles stood straight on end so that it

was as hard to come down as it was to go up. But during my stupors, the

escort _stood_, mind you, and chatted in low voices. For all the signs

they showed, we might have been starting. And they had had nothing to

eat but mangoes for over eight days. Previous to the eight days they

had been living on mangoes and the carcase of a small lean pony. They

were, in fact, of the stuff of Fenimore Cooper's Indians, only they

made no preposterous orations. At the major's camp, my friend and I

agreed that if our worthy escort would send down a representative with

us to the coast, we would send back to them whatever we could spare

from the stores of our despatch-boat. With one voice the escort

answered that they themselves would go the additional four leagues, as

in these starving times they did not care to trust a representative,

thank you. "They can't do it; they'll peg out; there must be a limit,"

I said. "No," answered my friend. "They're all right; they'd run three

times around the whole island for a mouthful of beer." So we saddled up

and put off with our fifteen Cuban infantrymen wagging along tirelessly

behind us. Sometimes, at the foot of a precipitous hill, a man asked

permission to cling to my horse's tail, and then the Jamaica pony would

snake him to the summit so swiftly that only his toes seemed to touch

the rocks. And for this assistance the man was grateful. When we

crowned the last great ridge we saw our squadron to the eastward spread

in its patient semicircular about the mouth of the harbour. But as we

wound towards the beach we saw a more dramatic thing--our own

despatch-boat leaving the rendezvous and putting off to sea. Evidently

we were late. Behind me were fifteen stomachs, empty. It was a

frightful situation. My friend and I charged for the beach and those

fifteen fools began to _run_.

It was no use. The despatch-boat went gaily away trailing black smoke

behind her. We turned in distress wondering what we could say to that

abused escort. If they massacred us, I felt that it would be merely a

virtuous reply to fate and they should in no ways be blamed. There are

some things which a man's feelings will not allow him to endure after a

diet of mangoes and pony. However, we perceived to our amazement that

they were not indignant at all. They simply smiled and made a gesture

which expressed an habitual pessimism. It was a philosophy which denied

the existence of everything but mangoes and pony. It was the Americans

who refused to be comforted. I made a deep vow with myself that I would

come as soon as possible and play a regular Santa Claus to that

splendid escort. But--we put to sea in a dug-out with two black boys.

The escort waved us a hearty good-bye from the shore and I never saw

them again. I hope they are all on the police-force in the new

Santiago.

In time we were rescued from the dug-out by our despatch-boat, and we

relieved our feelings by over-rewarding the two black boys. In fact

they reaped a harvest because of our emotion over our failure to fill

the gallant stomachs of the escort. They were two rascals. We steamed

to the flagship and were given permission to board her. Admiral Sampson

is to me the most interesting personality of the war. I would not know

how to sketch him for you even if I could pretend to sufficient

material. Anyhow, imagine, first of all, a marble block of impassivity

out of which is carved the figure of an old man. Endow this with life,

and you've just begun. Then you must discard all your pictures of

bluff, red-faced old gentlemen who roar against the gale, and

understand that the quiet old man is a sailor and an admiral. This will

be difficult; if I told you he was anything else it would be easy. He

resembles other types; it is his distinction not to resemble the

preconceived type of his standing. When first I met him I was impressed

that he was immensely bored by the war and with the command of the

North Atlantic Squadron. I perceived a manner where I thought I

perceived a mood, a point of view. Later, he seemed so indifferent to

small things which bore upon large things that I bowed to his apathy as

a thing unprecedented, marvellous. Still I mistook a manner for a mood.

Still I could not understand that this was the way of the man. I am not

to blame, for my communication was slight and depended upon

sufferance--upon, in fact, the traditional courtesy of the navy. But

finally I saw that it was all manner, that hidden in his indifferent,

even apathetic, manner, there was the alert, sure, fine mind of the

best sea-captain that America has produced since--since Farragut? I

don't know. I think--since Hull.

Men follow heartily when they are well led. They balk at trifles when a

blockhead cries go on. For my part, an impressive thing of the war is

the absolute devotion to Admiral Sampson's person--no, to his judgment

and wisdom--which was paid by his ship-commanders--Evans of the _Iowa_,

Taylor of the _Oregon_, Higginson of the _Massachusetts_, Phillips of

the _Texas_, and all the other captains--barring one. Once, afterward,

they called upon him to avenge himself upon a rival--they were there

and they would have to say--but he said no-o-o, he guessed it--wouldn't

do--any--g-o-oo-o-d--to the--service.

Men feared him, but he never made threats; men tumbled heels over head

to obey him, but he never gave a sharp order; men loved him, but he

said no word, kindly or unkindly; men cheered for him and he said: "Who

are they yelling for?" Men behaved badly to him and he said nothing.

Men thought of glory and he considered the management of ships. All

without a sound. A noiseless campaign--on his part. No bunting, no

arches, no fireworks; nothing but the perfect management of a big

fleet. That is a record for you. No trumpets, no cheers of the

populace. Just plain, pure, unsauced accomplishment. But ultimately he

will reap his reward in--in what? In text-books on sea-campaigns. No

more. The people choose their own and they choose the kind they like.

Who has a better right? Anyhow he is a great man. And when you are once

started you can continue to be a great man without the help of bouquets

and banquets. He don't need them--bless your heart.

The flag-ship's battle-hatches were down, and between decks it was

insufferable despite the electric fans. I made my way somewhat

forwards, past the smart orderly, past the companion, on to the den of

the junior mess. Even there they were playing cards in somebody's

cabin. "Hello, old man. Been ashore? How'd it look? It's your deal,

Chick." There was nothing but steamy wet heat and the decent

suppression of the consequent ill-tempers. The junior officers'

quarters were no more comfortable than the admiral's cabin. I had

expected it to be so because of my remembrance of their gay spirits.

But they were not gay. They were sweltering. Hello, old man, had I been

ashore? I fled to the deck, where other officers not on duty were

smoking quiet cigars. The hospitality of the officers of the flag-ship

is another charming memory of the war.

I rolled into my berth on the despatch-boat that night feeling a

perfect wonder of the day. Was the figure that leaned over the

card-game on the flag-ship, the figure with a whisky and soda in its

hand and a cigar in its teeth--was it identical with the figure

scrambling, afraid of its life, through Cuban jungle? Was it the figure

of the situation of the fifteen pathetic hungry men? It was the same

and it went to sleep, hard sleep. I don't know where we voyaged. I

think it was Jamaica. But, at any rate, upon the morning of our return

to the Cuban coast, we found the sea alive with transports--United

States transports from Tampa, containing the Fifth Army Corps under

Major-General Shafter. The rigging and the decks of these ships were

black with men and everybody wanted to land first. I landed,

ultimately, and immediately began to look for an acquaintance. The

boats were banged by the waves against a little flimsy dock. I fell

ashore somehow, but I did not at once find an acquaintance. I talked to

a private in the 2d Massachusetts Volunteers who told me that he was

going to write war correspondence for a Boston newspaper. This

statement did not surprise me.

There was a straggly village, but I followed the troops who at this

time seemed to be moving out by companies. I found three other

correspondents and it was luncheon time. Somebody had two bottles of

Bass, but it was so warm that it squirted out in foam. There was no

firing; no noise of any kind. An old shed was full of soldiers loafing

pleasantly in the shade. It was a hot, dusty, sleepy afternoon; bees

hummed. We saw Major-General Lawton standing with his staff under a

tree. He was smiling as if he would say: "Well, this will be better

than chasing Apaches." His division had the advance, and so he had the

right to be happy. A tall man with a grey moustache, light but very

strong, an ideal cavalryman. He appealed to one all the more because of

the vague rumours that his superiors--some of them--were going to take

mighty good care that he shouldn't get much to do. It was rather

sickening to hear such talk, but later we knew that most of it must

have been mere lies.

Down by the landing-place a band of correspondents were making a sort

of permanent camp. They worked like Trojans, carrying wall-tents, cots,

and boxes of provisions. They asked me to join them, but I looked

shrewdly at the sweat on their faces and backed away. The next day the

army left this permanent camp eight miles to the rear. The day became

tedious. I was glad when evening came. I sat by a camp-fire and

listened to a soldier of the 8th Infantry who told me that he was the

first enlisted man to land. I lay pretending to appreciate him, but in

fact I considered him a great shameless liar. Less than a month ago, I

learned that every word he said was gospel truth. I was much surprised.

We went for breakfast to the camp of the 20th Infantry, where Captain

Greene and his subaltern, Exton, gave us tomatoes stewed with hard

bread and coffee. Later, I discovered Greene and Exton down at the

beach good-naturedly dodging the waves which seemed to be trying to

prevent them from washing the breakfast dishes. I felt tremendously

ashamed because my cup and my plate were there, you know, and---- Fate

provides some men greased opportunities for making dizzy jackasses of

themselves and I fell a victim to my flurry on this occasion. I was a

blockhead. I walked away blushing. What? The battles? Yes, I saw

something of all of them. I made up my mind that the next time I met

Greene and Exton I'd say: "Look here; why didn't you tell me you had to

wash your own dishes that morning so that I could have helped? I felt

beastly when I saw you scrubbing there. And me walking around idly."

But I never saw Captain Greene again. I think he is in the Philippines

now fighting the Tagals. The next time I saw Exton--what? Yes, La

Guasimas. That was the "rough rider fight." However, the next time I

saw Exton I--what do you think? I forgot to speak about it. But if ever

I meet Greene or Exton again--even if it should be twenty years--I am

going to say, first thing: "Why----" What? Yes. Roosevelt's regiment

and the First and Tenth Regular Cavalry. I'll say, first thing: "Say,

why didn't you tell me you had to wash your own dishes, that morning,

so that I could have helped?" My stupidity will be on my conscience

until I die, if, before that, I do not meet either Greene or Exton. Oh,

yes, you are howling for blood, but I tell you it is more emphatic that

I lost my tooth-brush. Did I tell you that? Well, I lost it, you see,

and I thought of it for ten hours at a stretch. Oh, yes--he? He was

shot through the heart. But, look here, I contend that the French cable

company buncoed us throughout the war. What? Him? My tooth-brush I

never found, but he died of his wound in time. Most of the regular

soldiers carried their tooth-brushes stuck in the bands of their hats.

It made a quaint military decoration. I have had a line of a thousand

men pass me in the jungle and not a hat lacking the simple emblem.

The first of July? All right. My Jamaica polo-pony was not present. He

was still in the hills to the westward of Santiago, but the Cubans had

promised to fetch him to me. But my kit was easy to carry. It had

nothing superfluous in it but a pair of spurs which made me indignant

every time I looked at them. Oh, but I must tell you about a man I met

directly after the La Guasimas fight. Edward Marshall, a correspondent

whom I had known with a degree of intimacy for seven years, was

terribly hit in that fight and asked me if I would not go to

Siboney--the base--and convey the news to his colleagues of the _New

York Journal_ and round up some assistance. I went to Siboney, and

there was not a _Journal_ man to be seen, although usually you judged

from appearances that the _Journal_ staff was about as large as the

army. Presently I met two correspondents, strangers to me, but I

questioned them, saying that Marshall was badly shot and wished for

such succour as _Journal_ men could bring from their despatch-boat. And

one of these correspondents replied. He is the man I wanted to

describe. I love him as a brother. He said: "Marshall? Marshall? Why,

Marshall isn't in Cuba at all. He left for New York just before the

expedition sailed from Tampa." I said: "Beg pardon, but I remarked that

Marshall was shot in the fight this morning, and have you seen any

_Journal_ people?" After a pause, he said: "I am sure Marshall is not

down here at all. He's in New York." I said: "Pardon me, but I remarked

that Marshall was shot in the fight this morning, and have you seen any

_Journal_ people?" He said: "No; now look here, you must have gotten

two chaps mixed somehow. Marshall isn't in Cuba at all. How could he be

shot?" I said: "Pardon me, but I remarked that Marshall was shot in the

fight this morning, and have you seen any _Journal_ people?" He said:

"But it can't really be Marshall, you know, for the simple reason that

he's not down here." I clasped my hands to my temples, gave one

piercing cry to heaven and fled from his presence. I couldn't go on

with him. He excelled me at all points. I have faced death by bullets,

fire, water, and disease, but to die thus--to wilfully batter myself

against the ironclad opinion of this mummy--no, no, not that. In the

meantime, it was admitted that a correspondent was shot, be his name

Marshall, Bismarck, or Louis XIV. Now, supposing the name of this

wounded correspondent had been Bishop Potter? Or Jane Austen? Or

Bernhardt? Or Henri Georges Stephane Adolphe Opper de Blowitz? What

effect--never mind.

We will proceed to July 1st. On that morning I marched with my

kit--having everything essential save a tooth-brush--the entire army

put me to shame, since there must have been at least fifteen thousand

tooth-brushes in the invading force--I marched with my kit on the road

to Santiago. It was a fine morning and everybody--the doomed and the

immunes--how could we tell one from the other--everybody was in the

highest spirits. We were enveloped in forest, but we could hear, from

ahead, everybody peppering away at everybody. It was like the roll of

many drums. This was Lawton over at El Caney. I reflected with

complacency that Lawton's division did not concern me in a professional

way. That was the affair of another man. My business was with Kent's

division and Wheeler's division. We came to El Poso--a hill at nice

artillery range from the Spanish defences. Here Grimes's battery was

shooting a duel with one of the enemy's batteries. Scovel had

established a little camp in the rear of the guns and a servant had

made coffee. I invited Whigham to have coffee, and the servant added

some hard biscuit and tinned tongue. I noted that Whigham was staring

fixedly over my shoulder, and that he waved away the tinned tongue with

some bitterness. It was a horse, a dead horse. Then a mule, which had

been shot through the nose, wandered up and looked at Whigham. We ran

away.

On top of the hill one had a fine view of the Spanish lines. We stared

across almost a mile of jungle to ash-coloured trenches on the military

crest of the ridge. A goodly distance back of this position were white

buildings, all flying great red-cross flags. The jungle beneath us

rattled with firing and the Spanish trenches crackled out regular

volleys, but all this time there was nothing to indicate a tangible

enemy. In truth, there was a man in a Panama hat strolling to and fro

behind one of the Spanish trenches, gesticulating at times with a

walking stick. A man in a Panama hat, walking with a stick! That was

the strangest sight of my life--that symbol, that quaint figure of

Mars. The battle, the thunderous row, was his possession. He was the

master. He mystified us all with his infernal Panama hat and his

wretched walking-stick. From near his feet came volleys and from near

his side came roaring shells, but he stood there alone, visible, the

one tangible thing. He was a Colossus, and he was half as high as a

pin, this being. Always somebody would be saying: "Who _can_ that

fellow be?"

Later, the American guns shelled the trenches and a blockhouse near

them, and Mars had vanished. It could not have been death. One cannot

kill Mars. But there was one other figure, which arose to symbolic

dignity. The balloon of our signal corps had swung over the tops of the

jungle's trees toward the Spanish trenches. Whereat the balloon and the

man in the Panama hat and with a walking stick--whereat these two waged

tremendous battle.

Suddenly the conflict became a human thing. A little group of blue

figures appeared on the green of the terrible hillside. It was some of

our infantry. The attaché of a great empire was at my shoulder, and he

turned to me and spoke with incredulity and scorn. "Why, they're trying

to take the position," he cried, and I admitted meekly that I thought

they were. "But they can't do it, you know," he protested vehemently.

"It's impossible." And--good fellow that he was--he began to grieve and

wail over a useless sacrifice of gallant men. "It's plucky, you know!

By Gawd, it's plucky! But _they can't do it_!" He was profoundly

moved; his voice was quite broken. "It will simply be a hell of a

slaughter with no good coming out of it."

The trail was already crowded with stretcher-bearers and with wounded

men who could walk. One had to stem a tide of mute agony. But I don't

know that it was mute agony. I only know that it was mute. It was

something in which the silence or, more likely, the reticence was an

appalling and inexplicable fact. One's senses seemed to demand that

these men should cry out. But you could really find wounded men who

exhibited all the signs of a pleased and contented mood. When thinking

of it now it seems strange beyond words. But at the time--I don't

know--it did not attract one's wonder. A man with a hole in his arm or

his shoulder, or even in the leg below the knee, was often whimsical,

comic. "Well, this ain't exactly what I enlisted for, boys. If I'd been

told about this in Tampa, I'd have resigned from th' army. Oh, yes, you

can get the same thing if you keep on going. But I think the Spaniards

may run out of ammunition in the course of a week or ten days." Then

suddenly one would be confronted by the awful majesty of a man shot in

the face. Particularly I remember one. He had a great dragoon

moustache, and the blood streamed down his face to meet this moustache

even as a torrent goes to meet the jammed log, and then swarmed out to

the tips and fell in big slow drops. He looked steadily into my eyes; I

was ashamed to return his glance. You understand? It is very

curious--all that.

The two lines of battle were royally whacking away at each other, and

there was no rest or peace in all that region. The modern bullet is a

far-flying bird. It rakes the air with its hot spitting song at

distances which, as a usual thing, place the whole landscape in the

danger-zone. There was no direction from which they did not come. A

chart of their courses over one's head would have resembled a spider's

web. My friend Jimmie, the photographer, mounted to the firing line

with me and we gallivanted as much as we dared. The "sense of the

meeting" was curious. Most of the men seemed to have no idea of a grand

historic performance, but they were grimly satisfied with themselves.

"Well, begawd, we done it." Then they wanted to know about other parts

of the line. "How are things looking, old man? Everything all right?"

"Yes, everything is all right if you can hold this ridge." "Aw, hell,"

said the men, "we'll hold the ridge. Don't you worry about that, son."

It was Jimmie's first action, and, as we cautiously were making our way

to the right of our lines, the crash of the Spanish fire became

uproarious, and the air simply whistled. I heard a quavering voice near

my shoulder, and, turning, I beheld Jimmie--Jimmie--with a face

bloodless, white as paper. He looked at me with eyes opened extremely

wide. "Say," he said, "this is pretty hot, ain't it?" I was delighted. I

knew exactly what he meant. He wanted to have the situation defined. If

I had told him that this was the occasion of some mere idle desultory

firing and recommended that he wait until the real battle began, I

think he would have gone in a bee-line for the rear. But I told him the

truth. "Yes, Jimmie," I replied earnestly. "You can take it from me

that this is patent, double-extra-what-for." And immediately he nodded.

"All right." If this was a big action, then he was willing to pay in

his fright as a rational price for the privilege of being present. But

if this was only a penny affray, he considered the price exorbitant,

and he would go away. He accepted my assurance with simple faith, and

deported himself with kindly dignity as one moving amid great things.

His face was still as pale as paper, but that counted for nothing. The

main point was his perfect willingness to be frightened for reasons. I

wonder where is Jimmie? I lent him the Jamaica polo-pony one day and it

ran away with him and flung him off in the middle of a ford. He

appeared to me afterward and made bitter speech concerning this horse

which I had assured him was a gentle and pious animal. Then I never saw

Jimmie again.

Then came the night of the first of July. A group of correspondents

limped back to El Poso. It had been a day so long that the morning

seemed as remote as a morning in the previous year. But I have

forgotten to tell you about Reuben McNab. Many years ago, I went to

school at a place called Claverack, in New York State, where there was

a semi-military institution. Contemporaneous with me, as a student, was

Reuben McNab, a long, lank boy, freckled, sandy-haired--an

extraordinary boy in no way, and yet, I wager, a boy clearly marked in

every recollection. Perhaps there is a good deal in that name. Reuben

McNab. You can't fling that name carelessly over your shoulder and lose

it. It follows you like the haunting memory of a sin. At any rate,

Reuben McNab was identified intimately in my thought with the sunny

irresponsible days at Claverack, when all the earth was a green field

and all the sky was a rainless blue. Then I looked down into a

miserable huddle at Bloody Bend, a huddle of hurt men, dying men, dead

men. And there I saw Reuben McNab, a corporal in the 71st New York

Volunteers, and with a hole through his lung. Also, several holes

through his clothing. "Well, they got me," he said in greeting. Usually

they said that. There were no long speeches. "Well, they got me." That

was sufficient. The duty of the upright, unhurt, man is then difficult.

I doubt if many of us learned how to speak to our own wounded. In the

first place, one had to play that the wound was nothing; oh, a mere

nothing; a casual interference with movement, perhaps, but nothing

more; oh, really nothing more. In the second place, one had to show a

comrade's appreciation of this sad plight. As a result I think most of

us bungled and stammered in the presence of our wounded friends. That's

curious, eh? "Well, they got me," said Reuben McNab. I had looked upon

five hundred wounded men with stolidity, or with a conscious

indifference which filled me with amazement. But the apparition of

Reuben McNab, the schoolmate, lying there in the mud, with a hole

through his lung, awed me into stutterings, set me trembling with a

sense of terrible intimacy with this war which theretofore I could have

believed was a dream--almost. Twenty shot men rolled their eyes and

looked at me. Only one man paid no heed. He was dying; he had no time.

The bullets hummed low over them all. Death, having already struck,

still insisted upon raising a venomous crest. "If you're goin' by the

hospital, step in and see me," said Reuben McNab. That was all.

At the correspondents' camp, at El Poso, there was hot coffee. It was

very good. I have a vague sense of being very selfish over my blanket

and rubber coat. I have a vague sense of spasmodic firing during my

sleep; it rained, and then I awoke to hear that steady drumming of an

infantry fire--something which was never to cease, it seemed. They were

at it again. The trail from El Poso to the positions along San Juan

ridge had become an exciting thoroughfare. Shots from large-bore rifles

dropped in from almost every side. At this time the safest place was

the extreme front. I remember in particular the one outcry I heard. A

private in the 71st, without his rifle, had gone to a stream for some

water, and was returning, being but a little in rear of me. Suddenly I

heard this cry--"Oh, my God, come quick"--and I was conscious then to

having heard the hateful zip of a close shot. He lay on the ground,

wriggling. He was hit in the hip. Two men came quickly. Presently

everybody seemed to be getting knocked down. They went over like men of

wet felt, quietly, calmly, with no more complaint than so many

automatons. It was only that lad--"Oh, my God, come quick." Otherwise,

men seemed to consider that their hurts were not worthy of particular

attention. A number of people got killed very courteously, tacitly

absolving the rest of us from any care in the matter. A man fell; he

turned blue; his face took on an expression of deep sorrow; and then

his immediate friends worried about him, if he had friends. This was

July 1. I crave the permission to leap back again to that date.

On the morning of July 2, I sat on San Juan hill and watched Lawton's

division come up. I was absolutely sheltered, but still where I could

look into the faces of men who were trotting up under fire. There

wasn't a high heroic face among them. They were all men intent on

business. That was all. It may seem to you that I am trying to make

everything a squalor. That would be wrong. I feel that things were

often sublime. But they were _differently_ sublime. They were not

of our shallow and preposterous fictions. They stood out in a simple,

majestic commonplace. It was the behaviour of men on the street. It was

the behaviour of men. In one way, each man was just pegging along at

the heels of the man before him, who was pegging along at the heels of

still another man, who was pegging along at the heels of still another

man who---- It was that in the flat and obvious way. In another way it

was pageantry, the pageantry of the accomplishment of naked duty. One

cannot speak of it--the spectacle of the common man serenely doing his

work, his appointed work. It is the one thing in the universe which

makes one fling expression to the winds and be satisfied to simply

feel. Thus they moved at San Juan--the soldiers of the United States

Regular Army. One pays them the tribute of the toast of silence.

Lying near one of the enemy's trenches was a red-headed Spanish corpse.

I wonder how many hundreds were cognisant of this red-headed Spanish

corpse? It arose to the dignity of a landmark. There were many corpses

but only one with a red head. This red-head. He was always there. Each

time I approached that part of the field I prayed that I might find

that he had been buried. But he was always there--red-headed. His

strong simple countenance was a malignant sneer at the system which was

forever killing the credulous peasants in a sort of black night of

politics, where the peasants merely followed whatever somebody had told

them was lofty and good. But, nevertheless, the red-headed Spaniard was

dead. He was irrevocably dead. And to what purpose? The honour of

Spain? Surely the honour of Spain could have existed without the

violent death of this poor red-headed peasant? Ah well, he was buried

when the heavy firing ceased and men had time for such small things as

funerals. The trench was turned over on top of him. It was a fine,

honourable, soldierly fate--to be buried in a trench, the trench of the

fight and the death. Sleep well, red-headed peasant. You came to

another hemisphere to fight because--because you were told to, I

suppose. Well, there you are, buried in your trench on San Juan hill.

That is the end of it, your life has been taken--that is a flat, frank

fact. And foreigners buried you expeditiously while speaking a strange

tongue. Sleep well, red-headed mystery.

On the day before the destruction of Cervera's fleet, I steamed past

our own squadron, doggedly lying in its usual semicircle, every nose

pointing at the mouth of the harbour. I went to Jamaica, and on the

placid evening of the next day I was again steaming past our own

squadron, doggedly lying in its usual semicircle, every nose pointing

at the mouth of the harbour. A megaphone-hail from the bridge of one of

the yacht-gunboats came casually over the water. "Hello! hear the

news?" "No; what was it?" "The Spanish fleet came out this morning."

"Oh, of course, it did." "Honest, I mean." "Yes, I know; well, where

are they now?" "Sunk." Was there ever such a preposterous statement? I

was humiliated that my friend, the lieutenant on the yacht-gunboat,

should have measured me as one likely to swallow this bad joke.

But it was all true; every word. I glanced back at our squadron, lying

in its usual semicircle, every nose pointing at the mouth of the

harbour. It would have been absurd to think that anything had happened.

The squadron hadn't changed a button. There it sat without even a smile

on the face of the tiger. And it had eaten four armoured cruisers and

two torpedo-boat-destroyers while my back was turned for a moment.

Courteously, but clearly, we announced across the waters that until

despatch-boats came to be manned from the ranks of the celebrated

horse-marines, the lieutenant's statement would probably remain

unappreciated. He made a gesture, abandoning us to our scepticism. It

infuriates an honourable and serious man to be taken for a liar or a

joker at a time when he is supremely honourable and serious. However,

when we went ashore, we found Siboney ringing with the news. It was

true, then; that mishandled collection of sick ships had come out and

taken the deadly thrashing which was rightfully the due of--I don't

know--somebody in Spain--or perhaps nobody anywhere. One likes to

wallop incapacity, but one has mingled emotions over the incapacity

which is not so much personal as it is the development of centuries.

This kind of incapacity cannot be centralised. You cannot hit the head

which contains it all. This is the idea, I imagine, which moved the

officers and men of our fleet. Almost immediately they began to speak

of the Spanish Admiral as "poor old boy" with a lucid suggestion in

their tones that his fate appealed to them as being undue hard, undue

cruel. And yet the Spanish guns hit nothing. If a man shoots, he should

hit something occasionally, and men say that from the time the Spanish

ships broke clear of the harbour entrance until they were one by one

overpowered, they were each a band of flame. Well, one can only mumble

out that when a man shoots he should be required to hit something

occasionally.

In truth, the greatest fact of the whole campaign on land and sea seems

to be the fact that the Spaniards could only hit by chance, by a fluke.

If he had been an able marksman, no man of our two unsupported

divisions would have set foot on San Juan hill on July 1. They should

have been blown to smithereens. The Spaniards had no immediate lack of

ammunition, for they fired enough to kill the population of four big

cities. I admit neither Velasquez nor Cervantes into this discussion,

although they have appeared by authority as reasons for something which

I do not clearly understand. Well, anyhow they couldn't hit anything.

Velasquez? Yes. Cervantes? Yes. But the Spanish troops seemed only to

try to make a very rapid fire. Thus we lost many men. We lost them

because of the simple fury of the fire; never because the fire was

well-directed, intelligent. But the Americans were called upon to be

whipped because of Cervantes and Velasquez. It was impossible.

Out on the slopes of San Juan the dog-tents shone white. Some kind of

negotiations were going forward, and men sat on their trousers and

waited. It was all rather a blur of talks with officers, and a craving

for good food and good water. Once Leighton and I decided to ride over

to El Caney, into which town the civilian refugees from Santiago were

pouring. The road from the beleaguered city to the out-lying village

was a spectacle to make one moan. There were delicate gentle families

on foot, the silly French boots of the girls twisting and turning in a

sort of absolute paper futility; there were sons and grandsons carrying

the venerable patriarch in his own armchair; there were exhausted

mothers with babes who wailed; there were young dandies with their

toilettes in decay; there were puzzled, guideless women who didn't know

what had happened. The first sentence one heard was the murmurous "What

a damn shame." We saw a godless young trooper of the Second Cavalry

sharply halt a waggon. "Hold on a minute. You must carry this woman.

She's fainted twice already." The virtuous driver of the U.S. Army

waggon mildly answered: "But I'm full-up now." "You can make room for

her," said the private of the Second Cavalry. A young, young man with a

straight mouth. It was merely a plain bit of nothing--at--all but,

thank God, thank God, he seemed to have not the slightest sense of

excellence. He said: "If you've got any man in there who can walk at

all, you put him out and let this woman get in." "But," answered the

teamster, "I'm filled up with a lot of cripples and grandmothers."

Thereupon they discussed the point fairly, and ultimately the woman was

lifted into the waggon.

The vivid thing was the fact that these people did not visibly suffer.

Somehow they were numb. There was not a tear. There was rarely a

countenance which was not wondrously casual. There was no sign of

fatalistic theory. It was simply that what was happening to-day had

happened yesterday, as near as one could judge. I could fancy that

these people had been thrown out of their homes every day. It was

utterly, utterly casual. And they accepted the ministrations of our men

in the same fashion. Everything was a matter of course. I had a filled

canteen. I was frightfully conscious of this fact because a filled

canteen was a pearl of price; it was a great thing. It was an enormous

accident which led one to offer praises that he was luckier than ten

thousand better men.

As Leighton and I rode along, we came to a tree under which a refugee

family had halted. They were a man, his wife, two handsome daughters

and a pimply son. It was plain that they were superior people, because

the girls had dressed for the exodus and wore corsets which captivated

their forms with a steel-ribbed vehemence only proper for wear on a

sun-blistered road to a distant town. They asked us for water. Water

was the gold of the moment. Leighton was almost maudlin in his

generosity. I remember being angry with him. He lavished upon them his

whole canteen and he received in return not even a glance of--what?

Acknowledgment? No, they didn't even admit anything. Leighton wasn't a

human being; he was some sort of a mountain spring. They accepted him

on a basis of pure natural phenomena. His canteen was purely an

occurrence. In the meantime the pimple-faced approached me. He asked

for water and held out a pint cup. My response was immediate. I tilted

my canteen and poured into his cup almost a pint of my treasure. He

glanced into the cup and apparently he beheld there some innocent

sediment for which he alone or his people were responsible. In the

American camps the men were accustomed to a sediment. Well, he glanced

at my poor cupful and then negligently poured it out on the ground and

held up his cup for more. I gave him more; I gave him his cup full

again, but there was something within me which made me swear him out

completely. But he didn't understand a word. Afterward I watched if

they were capable of being moved to help on their less able fellows on

this miserable journey. Not they! Nor yet anybody else. Nobody cared

for anybody save my young friend of the Second Cavalry, who rode

seriously to and fro doing his best for people, who took him as a

result of a strange upheaval.

The fight at El Caney had been furious. General Vera del Rey with

somewhat less than 1000 men--the Spanish accounts say 520--had there

made such a stand that only about 80 battered soldiers ever emerged

from it. The attack cost Lawton about 400 men. The magazine rifle! But

the town was now a vast parrot-cage of chattering refugees. If, on the

road, they were silent, stolid and serene, in the town they found their

tongues and set up such a cackle as one may seldom hear. Notably the

women; it is they who invariably confuse the definition of situations,

and one could wonder in amaze if this crowd of irresponsible, gabbling

hens had already forgotten that this town was the deathbed, so to

speak, of scores of gallant men whose blood was not yet dry; whose

hands, of the hue of pale amber, stuck from the soil of the hasty

burial. On the way to El Caney I had conjured a picture of the women of

Santiago, proud in their pain, their despair, dealing glances of

defiance, contempt, hatred at the invader; fiery ferocious ladies, so

true to their vanquished and to their dead that they spurned the very

existence of the low-bred churls who lacked both Velasquez and

Cervantes. And instead, there was this mere noise, which reminded one

alternately of a tea-party in Ireland, a village fête in the south of

France, and the vacuous morning screech of a swarm of sea-gulls. "Good.

There is Donna Maria. This will lower her high head. This will teach

her better manners to her neighbours. She wasn't too grand to send her

rascal of a servant to borrow a trifle of coffee of me in the morning,

and then when I met her on the calle--por Dios, she was too blind to

see me. But we are all equal here. No? Little Juan has a sore toe. Yes,

Donna Maria; many thanks, many thanks. Juan, do me the favour to be

quiet while Donna Maria is asking about your toe. Oh, Donna Maria, we

were always poor, always. But you. My heart bleeds when I see how hard

this is for you. The old cat! She gives me a head-shake."

Pushing through the throng in the plaza we came in sight of the door of

the church, and here was a strange scene. The church had been turned

into a hospital for Spanish wounded who had fallen into American hands.

The interior of the church was too cave-like in its gloom for the eyes

of the operating surgeons, so they had had the altar table carried to

the doorway, where there was a bright light. Framed then in the black

archway was the altar table with the figure of a man upon it. He was

naked save for a breech-clout and so close, so clear was the

ecclesiastic suggestion, that one's mind leaped to a phantasy that this

thin, pale figure had just been torn down from a cross. The flash of

the impression was like light, and for this instant it illumined all

the dark recesses of one's remotest idea of sacrilege, ghastly and

wanton. I bring this to you merely as an effect, an effect of mental

light and shade, if you like; something done in thought similar to that

which the French impressionists do in colour; something meaningless and

at the same time overwhelming, crushing, monstrous. "Poor devil; I

wonder if he'll pull through," said Leighton. An American surgeon and

his assistants were intent over the prone figure. They wore white

aprons. Something small and silvery flashed in the surgeon's hand. An

assistant held the merciful sponge close to the man's nostrils, but he

was writhing and moaning in some horrible dream of this artificial

sleep. As the surgeon's instrument played, I fancied that the man

dreamed that he was being gored by a bull. In his pleading, delirious

babble occurred constantly the name of the Virgin, the Holy Mother.

"Good morning," said the surgeon. He changed his knife to his left hand

and gave me a wet palm. The tips of his fingers were wrinkled,

shrunken, like those of a boy who has been in swimming too long. Now,

in front of the door, there were three American sentries, and it was

their business to--to do what? To keep this Spanish crowd from swarming

over the operating table! It was perforce a public clinic. They would

not be denied. The weaker women and the children jostled according to

their might in the rear, while the stronger people, gaping in the front

rank, cried out impatiently when the pushing disturbed their long

stares. One burned with a sudden gift of public oratory. One wanted to

say: "Oh, go away, go away, go away. Leave the man decently alone with

his pain, you gogglers. This is not the national sport."

But within the church there was an audience of another kind. This was

of the other wounded men awaiting their turn. They lay on their brown

blankets in rows along the stone floor. Their eyes, too, were fastened

upon the operating-table, but--that was different. Meek-eyed little

yellow men lying on the floor awaiting their turns.

One afternoon I was seated with a correspondent friend, on the porch of

one of the houses at Siboney. A vast man on horseback came riding along

at a foot pace. When he perceived my friend, he pulled up sharply.

"Whoa! Where's that mule I lent you?" My friend arose and saluted.

"I've got him all right, General, thank you," said my friend. The vast

man shook his finger. "Don't you lose him now." "No, sir, I won't;

thank you, sir." The vast man rode away. "Who the devil is that?" said

I. My friend laughed. "That's General Shafter," said he.

I gave five dollars for the Bos'n--small, black, spry imp of Jamaica

sin. When I first saw him he was the property of a fireman on the

_Criton_. The fireman had found him--a little wharf rat--in Port

Antonio. It was not the purchase of a slave; it was that the fireman

believed that he had spent about five dollars on a lot of comic

supplies for the Bos'n, including a little suit of sailor clothes. The

Bos'n was an adroit and fantastic black gamin. His eyes were like white

lights, and his teeth were a row of little piano keys; otherwise he was

black. He had both been a jockey and a cabin-boy, and he had the

manners of a gentleman. After he entered my service I don't think there

was ever an occasion upon which he was useful, save when he told me

quaint stories of Guatemala, in which country he seemed to have lived

some portion of his infantile existence. Usually he ran funny errands

like little foot-races, each about fifteen yards in length. At Siboney

he slept under my hammock like a poodle, and I always expected that,

through the breaking of a rope, I would some night descend and

obliterate him. His incompetence was spectacular. When I wanted him to

do a thing, the agony of supervision was worse than the agony of

personal performance. It would have been easier to have gotten my own

spurs or boots or blanket than to have the bother of this little

incapable's service. But the good aspect was the humorous view. He was

like a boy, a mouse, a scoundrel, and a devoted servitor. He was

immensely popular. His name of Bos'n became a Siboney stock-word.

Everybody knew it. It was a name like President McKinley, Admiral

Sampson, General Shafter. The Bos'n became a figure. One day he

approached me with four one-dollar notes in United States currency. He

besought me to preserve them for him, and I pompously tucked them away

in my riding breeches, with an air which meant that his funds were now

as safe as if they were in a national bank. Still, I asked with some

surprise, where he had reaped all this money. He frankly admitted at

once that it had been given to him by the enthusiastic soldiery as a

tribute to his charm of person and manner. This was not astonishing for

Siboney, where money was meaningless. Money was not worth

carrying--"packing." However, a soldier came to our house one morning,

and asked, "Got any more tobacco to sell?" As befitted men in virtuous

poverty, we replied with indignation. "What tobacco?" "Why, that

tobacco what the little nigger is sellin' round."

I said, "Bos'n!" He said, "Yes, mawstah." Wounded men on bloody

stretchers were being carried into the hospital next door. "Bos'n,

you've been stealing my tobacco." His defence was as glorious as the

defence of that forlorn hope in romantic history, which drew itself up

and mutely died. He lied as desperately, as savagely, as hopelessly as

ever man fought.

One day a delegation from the 33d Michigan came to me and said: "Are

you the proprietor of the Bos'n?" I said: "Yes." And they said: "Well,

would you please be so kind as to be so good as to give him to us?" A

big battle was expected for the next day. "Why," I answered, "if you

want him you can have him. But he's a thief, and I won't let him go

save on his personal announcement." The big battle occurred the next

day, and the Bos'n did not disappear in it; but he disappeared in my

interest in the battle, even as a waif might disappear in a fog. My

interest in the battle made the Bos'n dissolve before my eyes. Poor

little rascal! I gave him up with pain. He was such an innocent

villain. He knew no more of thievery than the whole of it. Anyhow one

was fond of him. He was a natural scoundrel. He was not an educated

scoundrel. One cannot bear the educated scoundrel. He was ingenuous,

simple, honest, abashed ruffianism.

I hope the 33d Michigan did not arrive home naked. I hope the Bos'n did

not succeed in getting everything. If the Bos'n builds a palace in

Detroit, I shall know where he got the money. He got it from the 33d

Michigan. Poor little man. He was only eleven years old. He vanished. I

had thought to preserve him as a relic, even as one preserves forgotten

bayonets and fragments of shell. And now as to the pocket of my

riding-breeches. It contained four dollars in United States currency.

Bos'n! Hey, Bos'n, where are you? The morning was the morning of

battle.

I was on San Juan Hill when Lieutenant Hobson and the men of the

_Merrimac_ were exchanged and brought into the American lines. Many of

us knew that the exchange was about to be made, and gathered to see the

famous party. Some of our Staff officers rode out with three Spanish

officers --prisoners--these latter being blindfolded before they were

taken through the American position. The army was majestically minding

its business in the long line of trenches when its eye caught sight of

this little procession. "What's that? What they goin' to do?" "They're

goin' to exchange Hobson." Wherefore every man who was foot-free staked

out a claim where he could get a good view of the liberated heroes, and

two bands prepared to collaborate on "The Star Spangled Banner." There

was a very long wait through the sunshiny afternoon. In our impatience,

we imagined them--the Americans and Spaniards--dickering away out there

under the big tree like so many peddlers. Once the massed bands, misled

by a rumour, stiffened themselves into that dramatic and breathless

moment when each man is ready to blow. But the rumour was exploded in

the nick of time. We made ill jokes, saying one to another that the

negotiations had found diplomacy to be a failure, and were playing

freeze-out poker for the whole batch of prisoners.

But suddenly the moment came. Along the cut roadway, toward the crowded

soldiers, rode three men, and it could be seen that the central one

wore the undress uniform of an officer of the United States navy.

Most of the soldiers were sprawled out on the grass, bored and wearied

in the sunshine. However, they aroused at the old circus-parade,

torch-light procession cry, "Here they come." Then the men of the

regular army did a thing. They arose _en masse_ and came to

"Attention." Then the men of the regular army did another thing. They

slowly lifted every weather-beaten hat and drooped it until it touched

the knee. Then there was a magnificent silence, broken only by the

measured hoof-beats of the little company's horses as they rode through

the gap. It was solemn, funereal, this splendid silent welcome of a

brave man by men who stood on a hill which they had earned out of blood

and death--simply, honestly, with no sense of excellence, earned out of

blood and death.

Then suddenly the whole scene went to rubbish. Before he reached the

bottom of the hill, Hobson was bowing to right and left like another

Boulanger, and, above the thunder of the massed bands, one could hear

the venerable outbreak, "Mr. Hobson, I'd like to shake the hand of the

man who----" But the real welcome was that welcome of silence. However,

one could thrill again when the tail of the procession appeared--an

army waggon containing the blue-jackets of the _Merrimac_ adventure. I

remember grinning heads stuck out from under the canvas cover of the

waggon. And the army spoke to the navy. "Well, Jackie, how does it

feel?" And the navy up and answered: "Great! Much obliged to you

fellers for comin' here." "Say, Jackie, what did they arrest ye for

anyhow? Stealin' a dawg?" The navy still grinned. Here was no rubbish.

Here was the mere exchange of language between men.

Some of us fell in behind this small but royal procession and followed

it to General Shafter's headquarters, some miles on the road to

Siboney. I have a vague impression that I watched the meeting between

Shafter and Hobson, but the impression ends there. However, I remember

hearing a talk between them as to Hobson's men, and then the

blue-jackets were called up to hear the congratulatory remarks of the

general in command of the Fifth Army Corps. It was a scene in the fine

shade of thickly-leaved trees. The general sat in his chair, his belly

sticking ridiculously out before him as if he had adopted some form of

artificial inflation. He looked like a joss. If the seamen had suddenly

begun to burn a few sticks, most of the spectators would have exhibited

no surprise. But the words he spoke were proper, clear, quiet,

soldierly, the words of one man to others. The Jackies were comic. At

the bidding of their officer they aligned themselves before the

general, grinned with embarrassment one to the other, made funny

attempts to correct the alignment, and--looked sheepish. They looked

sheepish. They looked like bad little boys flagrantly caught. They had

no sense of excellence. Here was no rubbish.

Very soon after this the end of the campaign came for me. I caught a

fever. I am not sure to this day what kind of a fever it was. It was

defined variously. I know, at any rate, that I first developed a

languorous indifference to everything in the world. Then I developed a

tendency to ride a horse even as a man lies on a cot. Then I--I am not

sure--I think I grovelled and groaned about Siboney for several days.

My colleagues, Scovel and George Rhea, found me and gave me of their

best, but I didn't know whether London Bridge was falling down or

whether there was a war with Spain. It was all the same. What of it?

Nothing of it. Everything had happened, perhaps. But I cared not a jot.

Life, death, dishonour--all were nothing to me. All I cared for was

pickles. _Pickles_ at any price! _Pickles!!_

If I had been the father of a hundred suffering daughters, I should

have waved them all aside and remarked that they could be damned for

all I cared. It was not a mood. One can defeat a mood. It was a

physical situation. Sometimes one cannot defeat a physical situation. I

heard the talk of Siboney and sometimes I answered, but I was as

indifferent as the star-fish flung to die on the sands. The only fact

in the universe was that my veins burned and boiled. Rhea finally

staggered me down to the army-surgeon who had charge of the

proceedings, and the army-surgeon looked me over with a keen healthy

eye. Then he gave a permit that I should be sent home. The manipulation

from the shore to the transport was something which was Rhea's affair.

I am not sure whether we went in a boat or a balloon. I think it was a

boat. Rhea pushed me on board and I swayed meekly and unsteadily toward

the captain of the ship, a corpulent, well-conditioned, impickled

person pacing noisily on the spar-deck. "Ahem, yes; well; all right.

Have you got your own food? I hope, for Christ's sake, you don't expect

us to feed you, do you?" Whereupon I went to the rail and weakly yelled

at Rhea, but he was already afar. The captain was, meantime, remarking

in bellows that, for Christ's sake, I couldn't expect him to feed me. I

didn't expect to be fed. I didn't care to be fed. I wished for nothing

on earth but some form of painless pause, oblivion. The insults of this

old pie-stuffed scoundrel did not affect me then; they affect me now. I

would like to tell him that, although I like collies, fox-terriers, and

even screw-curled poodles, I do not like him. He was free to call me

superfluous and throw me overboard, but he was not free to coarsely

speak to a somewhat sick man. I--in fact I hate him--it is all wrong--I

lose whatever ethics I possessed--but--I hate him, and I demand that

you should imagine a milch cow endowed with a knowledge of navigation

and in command of a ship--and perfectly capable of commanding a

ship--oh, well, never mind.

I was crawling along the deck when somebody pounced violently upon me

and thundered: "Who in hell are you, sir?" I said I was a

correspondent. He asked me did I know that I had yellow fever. I said

No. He yelled, "Well, by Gawd, you isolate yourself, sir." I said;

"Where?" At this question he almost frothed at the mouth. I thought he

was going to strike me. "Where?" he roared. "How in hell do I know,

sir? I know as much about this ship as you do, sir. But you isolate

yourself, sir." My clouded brain tried to comprehend these orders. This

man was a doctor in the regular army, and it was necessary to obey him,

so I bestirred myself to learn what he meant by these gorilla outcries.

"All right, doctor; I'll isolate myself, but I wish you'd tell me where

to go." And then he passed into such volcanic humour that I clung to

the rail and gasped. "Isolate yourself, sir. Isolate yourself. That's

all I've got to say, sir. I don't give a God damn where you go, but

when you get there, stay there, sir." So I wandered away and ended up

on the deck aft, with my head against the flagstaff and my limp body

stretched on a little rug. I was not at all sorry for myself. I didn't

care a tent-peg. And yet, as I look back upon it now, the situation was

fairly exciting--a voyage of four or five days before me--no food--no

friends--above all else, no friends--isolated on deck, and rather ill.

When I returned to the United States, I was able to move my feminine

friends to tears by an account of this voyage, but, after all, it

wasn't so bad. They kept me on my small reservation aft, but plenty of

kindness loomed soon enough. At mess-time, they slid me a tin plate of

something, usually stewed tomatoes and bread. Men are always good men.

And, at any rate, most of the people were in worse condition than

I--poor bandaged chaps looking sadly down at the waves. In a way, I

knew the kind. First lieutenants at forty years of age, captains at

fifty, majors at 102, lieutenant-colonels at 620, full colonels at

1000, and brigadiers at 9,768,295 plus. A man had to live two billion

years to gain eminent rank in the regular army at that time. And, of

course, they all had trembling wives at remote western posts waiting to

hear the worst, the best, or the middle.

In rough weather, the officers made a sort of a common pool of all the

sound legs and arms, and by dint of hanging hard to each other they

managed to move from their deck chairs to their cabins and from their

cabins again to their deck chairs. Thus they lived until the ship

reached Hampton Roads. We slowed down opposite the curiously mingled

hotels and batteries at Old Point Comfort, and at our mast-head we flew

the yellow-flag, the grim ensign of the plague. Then we witnessed

something which informed us that with all this ship-load of wounds and

fevers and starvations we had forgotten the fourth element of war. We

were flying the yellow flag, but a launch came and circled swiftly

about us. There was a little woman in the launch, and she kept looking

and looking and looking. Our ship was so high that she could see only

those who rung at the rail, but she kept looking and looking and

looking. It was plain enough--it was all plain enough--but my heart

sank with the fear that she was not going to find him. But presently

there was a commotion among some black dough-boys of the 24th Infantry,

and two of them ran aft to Colonel Liscum, its gallant commander. Their

faces were wreathed in darkey grins of delight. "Kunnel, ain't dat Mis'

Liscum, Kunnel?" "What?" said the old man. He got up quickly and

appeared at the rail, his arm in a sling. He cried, "Alice!" The little

woman saw him, and instantly she covered up her face with her hands as

if blinded with a flash of white fire. She made no outcry; it was all

in this simply swift gesture, but we--we knew them. It told us. It told

us the other part. And in a vision we all saw our own harbour-lights.

That is to say those of us who had harbour-lights.

I was almost well, and had defeated the yellow-fever charge which had

been brought against me, and so I was allowed ashore among the first.

And now happened a strange thing. A hard campaign, full of wants and

lacks and absences, brings a man speedily back to an appreciation of

things long disregarded or forgotten. In camp, somewhere in the woods

between Siboney and Santiago, I happened to think of ice-cream-soda. I

had done very well without it for many years; in fact I think I loathe

it; but I got to dreaming of ice-cream-soda, and I came near dying of

longing for it. I couldn't get it out of my mind, try as I would to

concentrate my thoughts upon the land crabs and mud with which I was

surrounded. It certainly had been an institution of my childhood, but

to have a ravenous longing for it in the year 1898 was about as

illogical as to have a ravenous longing for kerosene. All I could do

was to swear to myself that if I reached the United States again, I

would immediately go to the nearest soda-water fountain and make it

look like Spanish Fours. In a loud, firm voice, I would say, "Orange,

please." And here is the strange thing: as soon as I was ashore I went

to the nearest soda-water fountain, and in a loud, firm voice I said,

"Orange, please." I remember one man who went mad that way over tinned

peaches, and who wandered over the face of the earth saying

plaintively, "Have you any peaches?"

Most of the wounded and sick had to be tabulated and marshalled in

sections and thoroughly officialised, so that I was in time to take a

position on the verandah of Chamberlain's Hotel and see my late

shipmates taken to the hospital. The verandah was crowded with women in

light, charming summer dresses, and with spruce officers from the

Fortress. It was like a bank of flowers. It filled me with awe. All

this luxury and refinement and gentle care and fragrance and colour

seemed absolutely new. Then across the narrow street on the verandah of

the hotel there was a similar bank of flowers. Two companies of

volunteers dug a lane through the great crowd in the street and kept

the way, and then through this lane there passed a curious procession.

I had never known that they looked like that. Such a gang of dirty,

ragged, emaciated, half-starved, bandaged cripples I had never seen.

Naturally there were many men who couldn't walk, and some of these were

loaded upon a big flat car which was in tow of a trolley-car. Then

there were many stretchers, slow-moving. When that crowd began to pass

the hotel the banks of flowers made a noise which could make one

tremble. Perhaps it was a moan, perhaps it was a sob--but no, it was

something beyond either a moan or a sob. Anyhow, the sound of women

weeping was in it.--The sound of women weeping.

And how did these men of famous deeds appear when received thus by the

people? Did they smirk and look as if they were bursting with the

desire to tell everything which had happened? No they hung their heads

like so many jail-birds. Most of them seemed to be suffering from

something which was like stage-fright during the ordeal of this chance

but supremely eloquent reception. No sense of excellence--that was it.

Evidently they were willing to leave the clacking to all those natural

born major-generals who after the war talked enough to make a great

fall in the price of that commodity all over the world.

The episode was closed. And you can depend upon it that I have told you

nothing at all, nothing at all, nothing at all.