Captain Macklin: His Memoirs

“No one listens to me,” he said. “I consider that I am very hardly used. For a consideration a friend of Alvarez told me where Alvarez had buried most of the government money. I...

I was accordingly entered upon the rolls of the Military Academy, and my career as a soldier began. I wish I could say it began brilliantly, but the records of the Academy would...

We ran straight for the long room which faced the street, and as we came in at one end of it the men behind the cots fired a frightened volley at us and fled out at the other. I...

In Honduras, Laguerre had told me that a letter to the Credit Lyonnais in Paris would always find him. I knew that since his arrival at San Francisco he had had plenty of time t...

But before we reached the outpost I saw the men who formed it, pushing their way toward us, bunched about their gatling with their clubbed rifles warding off the blows of a mob...

The trouble, when it came, was all my own making, and my dismissal was entirely due to an act of silly recklessness and my own idiocy. I had taken chances before and had not bee...

The next day when we paraded in full dress the President noticed this, and remarked, “No one but Macklin could have converted a battery of artillery, without the loss of a singl...

The purser halted, and if it were possible, regarded me with even greater unfriendliness. As for myself, the sight of the brown, impish faces, and the familiar uniforms filled m...

Poor Von Ritter drew away, deeply hurt and scandalized, but my offence was nothing to the shock he received when young Lowell ran to the carriage and caught up my hand. He looke...

I do not know whether it was the brandy they gave me that later led me to charge those guns, but I appreciate now that my conduct was certainly silly and mad enough to be excuse...

After midnight we were too stiff and sore to ride farther, and we bivouacked on the trail beside a stream. I had no desire for further sleep, and I sat at the foot of a tree smo...

“He gave you food and clothes, and a bed to lie on. It’s like you, to bite the hand that fed you. When have you ever stuck to any side or anybody if you could get a dollar more...

I was delayed in New Orleans for only one day. At the end of that time I secured passage on the steamer Panama. She was listed to sail for Aspinwall at nine o’clock the next mor...

It must have been then that for the first time I saw the wistful look come into his eyes, and suddenly felt deeply sorry for him and wished that I might dare to tell him so. I w...

I related to the others just what had occurred at the coast, and after some talk with Aiken himself, Laguerre finally agreed that he was innocent of any evil against him, and th...

It may seem presumptuous that so young a man as myself should propose to write his life and memoirs, for, as a rule, one waits until he has accomplished something in the world,...

“He owns it,” Aiken answered. “It’s like this,” he began. “You must understand that almost every republic in Central America is under the thumb of a big trading firm or a bankin...

“Nonsense, Royal,” he said, “let _me_ talk to you. We’ve been shipmates, or comrades, and all that sort of thing, and you’ve got to listen to me. Think, man, think what you’re l...