Chapter 11

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 excused only in that way. According to the doctrine of chances I should have lost nine lives, and according to the rules governing an army in the field I should have been court-martialled. Instead of which, the men caught me up on their shoulders and carried me around the plaza, and Laguerre and Garcia looked on from the steps of the Cathedral and laughed and waved to us.

For five hours we had been lying in the blazing sun on the flat house-tops, or hidden in the shops around the plaza, and the government troops were still holding us off with one hand and spanking us with the other. Their guns were so good that, when Heinze attempted to take up a position against them with his old-style Gatlings, they swept him out of the street, as a fire-hose flushes a gutter. For five hours they had kept the plaza empty, and peppered the three sides of it so warmly that no one of us should have shown his head.

But at every shot from the Cathedral our men grew more unmanageable, and the longer the enemy held us back the more arrogant and defiant they became. Ostensibly to obtain a better shot, but in reality from pure deviltry, they would make individual sallies into the plaza, and, facing the embrasure, would empty their Winchesters at one of its openings as coolly as though they were firing at a painted bull’s-eye. The man who first did this, the moment his rifle was empty, ran for cover and was tumultuously cheered by his hidden audience. But in order to surpass him, the next man, after he had emptied his gun, walked back very deliberately, and the third man remained to refill his magazine. And so a spirit of the most senseless rivalry sprang up, and one man after another darted out into the plaza to cap the recklessness of those who had gone before him.

It was not until five men were shot dead and lay sprawling and uncovered in the sun that the madness seemed to pass. But my charging the embrasure was always supposed to be a part of it, and to have been inspired entirely by vanity and a desire to do something more extravagantly reckless than any of the others. As a matter of fact I acted on what has always seemed to me excellent reasoning, and if I went alone, it was only because, having started, it seemed safer to go ahead than to run all the way back again. I never blamed the men for running back, and so I cannot see why they should blame me for having gone ahead.

The enemy had ceased firing shrapnel and were using solid shot. When their Gatlings also ceased, I guessed that it might be that the guns were jammed. If I were right and if one avoided the solid shot by approaching the barricade obliquely, there was no danger in charging the barricade. I told my troop that I thought the guns were out of order, and that if we rushed the barricade we could take it. When I asked for volunteers, ten men came forward and at once, without asking permission, which I knew I could not get, we charged across the plaza.

Both sides saw us at the same instant, and the firing was so fierce that the men with me thought the Gatlings had reopened on us, and ran for cover.

That left me about fifty feet from the barricade, and as it seemed a toss-up whichever way I went I kept going forward. I caught the combing of the embrasure with my hands, stuck my toes between the stones, and scrambled to the top. The scene inside was horrible. The place looked like a slaughter-yard. Only three men were still on their legs; the rest were heaped around the guns. I threatened the three men with my revolver, but they shrieked for mercy and I did not fire. The men in the belfries, however, were showing no mercy to me, so I dropped inside the wall and crawled for shelter beneath a caisson. But, I recognized on the instant that I could not remain there. It was the fear of the Gatlings only which was holding back our men, and I felt that before I was shot they must know that the guns were jammed. So I again scrambled up to the barricade, and waved my hat to them to come on. At the same moment a bullet passed through my shoulder, and another burned my neck, and one of the men who had begged for mercy beat me over the head with his sword. I went down like a bag of flour, but before my eyes closed I saw our fellows pouring out of the houses and sweeping toward me.

About an hour later, when Von Ritter had cleaned the hole in my shoulder and plastered my skull, I sallied out again, and at sight of me the men gave a shout, and picked me up, and, cheering, bore me around the plaza. From that day we were the best of friends, and I think in time they grew to like me.

Two days later we pitched camp outside of Tegucigalpa, the promised city, the capital of the Republic.

Our points of attack were two: a stone bridge which joins the city proper with the suburbs, and a great hill of rock called El Pecachua. This hill either guards or betrays the capital. The houses reach almost to its base and from its crest one can drop a shell through the roof of any one of them. Consequently, when we arrived, we found its approaches strongly entrenched and the hill occupied in force by the government artillery. There is a saying in Honduras, which has been justified by countless revolutions, and which dates back to the days of Morazan the Liberator, that “He who takes Pecachua sleeps in the Palace.”

Garcia’s plan was for two days to bombard the city, and if, in that time, Alvarez had not surrendered, to attack El Pecachua by night. As usual, the work was so divided that the more dangerous and difficult part of it fell to the Foreign Legion, for in his plan Garcia so ordered it that Laguerre should storm Pecachua, while he advanced from the plain and attacked the city at the stone bridge.

But this plan was never carried out, and after our first day in front of the Capital, General Garcia never again gave an order to General Laguerre.

After midnight on the evening of that first day Aiken came to the hut where we had made our head-quarters and demanded to see the General on a matter of life and death. With him, looking very uncertain as to the propriety of the visit, were all the officers of the Legion.

The General was somewhat surprised and somewhat amused, but he invited us to enter. When the officers had lined up against the walls he said, “As a rule, I call my own councils of war, but no doubt Mr. Aiken has some very good reason for affording me the pleasure of your company. What is it, Mr. Aiken?”

Instead of answering him, Aiken said, with as much manner as that of General Garcia himself, “I want a guard put outside this house, and I want the men placed far enough from it to prevent their hearing what I say.” The General nodded at me, and I ordered the sentries to move farther from the hut. I still remember the tableau I saw when I re-entered it, the row of officers leaning against the mud walls, the candles stuck in their own grease on the table, the maps spread over it, and the General and Aiken facing each other from its either end. It looked like a drumhead court-martial.

When I had shut the door of the hut Aiken spoke. His tone was one of calm unconcern.

“I have just come from the Palace,” he said, “where I have been having a talk with President Alvarez.”

No one made a sound, nor no one spoke, but like one man everyone in the room reached for his revolver. It was a most enlightening revelation of our confidence in Aiken. Laguerre did not move. He was looking steadily at Aiken and his eyes were shining like two arc lamps.

“By whose authority?” he asked.

We, who knew every tone of his voice, almost felt sorry for Aiken.

“By whose authority,” Laguerre repeated, “did you communicate with the enemy?”

“It was an idea of my own,” Aiken answered simply. “I was afraid if I told you you would interfere. Oh! I’m no soldier,” he said. He was replying to the look in Laguerre’s face. “And I can tell you that there are other ways of doing things than ‘according to Hardie.’ Alvarez’s officers came to me after the battle of Comyagua. They expected to beat you there, and when you chased them out of the city and started for the Capital they thought it was all up with them, and decided to make terms.”

“With you?” said Laguerre.

Aiken laughed without the least trace of resentment, and nodded.

“Well, you give a dog a bad name,” he said, “and it sticks to him. So, they came to me. I’m no grand-stand fighter; I’m not a fighter at all. I think fighting is silly. You’ve got all the young men you want to stop bullets for you, without me. They like it. They like to catch ‘em in their teeth. I don’t. But that’s not saying that I’m no good. You know the old gag of the lion and the little mousie, and how the mouse came along and chewed the lion out of the net. Well, that’s me. I’m no lion going ‘round seeking whom I may devour.’ I’m just a sewer rat. But I can tell you all,” he cried, slapping the table with his hand, “that, if it hadn’t been for little mousie, every one of you lions would have been shot against a stone wall. And if I can’t prove it, you can take a shot at me. I’ve been the traitor. I’ve been the go-between from the first. I arranged the whole thing. The Alvarez crowd told me to tell Garcia that even if he did succeed in getting into the Palace the Isthmian Line would drive him out of it in a week. But that if he’d go away from the country, they’d pay him fifty thousand pesos and a pension. He’s got the Isthmian Line’s promise in writing.

“This joint attack he’s planned for Wednesday night is a fake. He doesn’t mean to fight. Nobody means to fight except against you. Every soldier and every gun in the city is to be sent out to Pecachua to trap you into an ambush. Natives who pretend to have deserted from Alvarez are to lead you into it. That was an idea of mine. They thought it was very clever. Garcia is to make a pretence of attacking the bridge and a pretence of being driven back. Then messengers are to bring word that the Foreign Legion has been cut to pieces at Pecachua, and he is to disband his army, and tell every man to look out for himself.

“If you want proofs of this, I’ll furnish them to any man here that you’ll pick out. I told Alvarez that one of your officers was working against you with me, and that at the proper time I’d produce him. Now, you choose which officer that shall be. He can learn for himself that all I’m telling you is true. But that will take time!” Aiken cried, as Laguerre made a movement to interrupt him. “And if you want to get out of this fix alive, you’d better believe me, and start for the coast at once--now--to-night!”

Laguerre laughed and sprang to his feet. His eyes were shining and the color had rushed to his cheeks. He looked like a young man masquerading in a white wig. He waved his hand at Aiken with a gesture that was part benediction and part salute.

“I do believe you,” he cried, “and thank you, sir.” He glanced sharply at the officers around him as though he were weighing the value of each.

“Gentlemen,” he cried, “often in my life I have been prejudiced, and often I have been deceived, and I think that it is time now that I acted for myself. From the first, the burden of this expedition has been carried by the Foreign Legion. I know that; you, who fought the battles, certainly know it. We invaded Honduras with a purpose. We came to obtain for the peons the debt that is due them and to give them liberty and free government. And whether our allies run away or betray us, that purpose is still the same.”

He paused as though for the first time it had occurred to him that the motives of the others might not be as his own.

“Am I right?” he asked, eagerly. “Are you willing to carry out that purpose?” he demanded. “Are you ready to follow me now, to-night--not to the coast”--he shouted--“but to the Capital--to the top of Pecachua?”

Old man Webster jumped in front of us, and shot his arm into the air as though it held a standard.

“We’ll follow you to hell and back again,” he cried.

I would not have believed that so few men could have made so much noise. We yelled and cheered so wildly that we woke the camp. We could hear the men running down the road, and the sentries calling upon them to halt. The whole Legion was awake and wondering. Webster beat us into silence by pounding the table with his fist.

“I have lived in this country for forty years,” he cried, with his eyes fixed upon Laguerre, “and you are the first white man I have known who has not come into it, either flying from the law, or to rob and despoil it. I know this country. I know all of Central America, and it is a wonderful country. There is not a fruit nor a grain nor a plant that you cannot dig out of it with your bare fingers. It has great forests, great pasture-lands, and buried treasures of silver and iron and gold. But it is cursed with the laziest of God’s creatures, and the men who rule them are the most corrupt and the most vicious. They are the dogs in the manger among rulers. They will do nothing to help their own country; they will not permit others to help it. They are a menace and an insult to civilization, and it is time that they stepped down and out, and made way for their betters, or that they were kicked out. One strong man, if he is an honest man, can conquer and hold Central America. William Walker was such a man. I was with him when he ruled the best part of this country for two years. He governed all Nicaragua with two hundred white men, and never before or since have the pueblo known such peace and justice and prosperity as Walker gave them.”

Webster threw himself across the table and pointed his hand at Laguerre.

“And you, General Laguerre!” he cried, “and you? Do you see your duty? You say it calls you to-night to El Pecachua. Then if it does, it calls you farther--to the Capital! There can be no stopping half-way now, no turning back. If we follow you to-night to Pecachua, we follow you to the Palace.”

Webster’s voice rose until it seemed to shake the palm-leaf roof. He was like a man possessed. He sprang up on the table, and from the height above us hurled his words at Laguerre.

“We are not fighting for any half-breed now,” he cried; “we are fighting for you. We know you. We believe in you. We mean to make you President, and we will not stop there. Our motto shall be Walker’s motto, ‘Five or none,’ and when we have taken this Republic we shall take the other four, and you will be President of the United States of Central America.”

We had been standing open-eyed, open-mouthed, every nerve trembling, and at these words we shrieked and cheered, but Webster waved at us with an angry gesture and leaned toward Laguerre.

“You will open this land,” he cried, “with roads and railways. You will feed the world with its coffee. You will cut the Nicaragua Canal. And you will found an empire--not the empire of slaves that Walker planned, but an empire of freed men, freed by you from their tyrants and from themselves. They tell me, General,” he cried, “that you have fought under thirteen flags. To-night, sir, you shall fight under your own!”

We all cheered and cheered again, the oldest as well as myself, and I cheered louder than any, until I looked at Laguerre. Then I felt how terribly real it was to him. Until I looked at him it had seemed quite sane and feasible. But when I saw how deeply he was moved, and that his eyes were brimming with pride and resolve, I felt that it was a mad dream, and that we were wicked not to wake him. For I, who loved him like a son, understood what it meant to him. In his talk along the trail and by the camp-fire he had always dreamed of an impossible republic, an Utopia ruled by love and justice, and I now saw he believed that the dreams had at last come true. I knew that the offer these men had made to follow him, filled him with a great happiness and gratitude. And that he, who all his life had striven so earnestly and so loyally for others, would give his very soul for men who fought for him. I was not glad that they had offered to make him their leader. I could only look ahead with miserable forebodings and feel bitterly sorry that one so fine and good was again to be disillusioned and disappointed and cast down.

But there was no time that night to look ahead. The men were outside the hut, a black, growling mob crying for revenge upon Garcia. Had we not at once surrounded them they would have broken for his camp and murdered him in his hammock, and with him his ignorant, deceived followers.

But when Webster spoke to them as he had spoken to us, and told them what we planned to do, and Laguerre stepped out into the moon-light, they forgot their anger in their pride for him, and at his first word they fell into the ranks as obediently as so many fond and devoted children.

In Honduras a night attack is a discredited manoeuvre. It is considered an affront to the Blessed Virgin, who first invented sleep. And those officers who that night guarded Pecachua being acquainted with Garcia’s plot, were not expecting us until two nights later, when we were to walk into their parlor, and be torn to pieces. Consequently, when Miller, who knew Pecachua well, having served without political prejudice in six revolutions, led us up a by-path to its top, we found the government troops sleeping sweetly. Before their only sentry had discovered that someone was kneeling on his chest, our men were in possession of their batteries.

That morning when the sun rose gloriously, as from a bath, all pink and shining and dripping with radiance, and the church bells began to clang for early mass, and the bugles at the barracks sounded the jaunty call of the reveille, two puffs of white smoke rose from thecrest of El Pecachua and drifted lazily away. At the same instant a shell sang over the roofs of Tegucigalpa, howling jeeringly, and smashed into the pots and pans of the President’s kitchen; another, falling two miles farther to the right, burst through the white tent of General Garcia, and the people in the streets, as they crossed themselves in fear, knew that El Pecachua had again been taken, and that that night a new President would sleep in the Palace.

All through the hot hours of the morning the captured guns roared and echoed, until at last we saw Garcia’s force crawling away in a crowd of dust toward the hills, and an hour later Alvarez, with the household troops, abandoning the Capital and hastening after him.

We were too few to follow, but we whipped them forward with our shells.

A half-hour later a timid group of merchants and foreign consuls, led by the Bishop and bearing a great white flag, rode out to the foot of the rock and surrendered the city.

I am sure no government was ever established more quickly than ours. We held our first cabinet meeting twenty minutes after we entered the capital, and ten minutes later Webster, from the balcony of the Palace, proclaimed Laguerre President and Military Dictator of Honduras. Laguerre in turn nominated Webster, on account of his knowledge of the country, Minister of the Interior, and made me Vice-President and Minister of War. No one knew what were the duties of a Vice-President, so I asked if I might not also be Provost-Marshal of the city, and I was accordingly appointed to that position and sent out into the street to keep order.

Aiken, as a reward for his late services, was made head of the detective department and Chief of Police. His first official act was to promote two bare-footed policemen who on his last visit to the Capital had put him under arrest.

The General, or the President, as we now called him, at once issued a ringing proclamation in which he promised every liberty that the people of a free republic should enjoy, and announced that in three months he would call a general election, when the people could either reelect him, or a candidate of their own choice. He announced also that he would force the Isthmian Line to pay the people the half million of dollars it owed them, and he suggested that this money be placed to the credit of the people, and that they should pay no taxes until the sum was consumed in public improvements. Up to that time every new President had imposed new taxes; none had ever suggested remitting them altogether, and this offer made a tremendous sensation in our favor.

There were other departures from the usual procedure of victorious presidents which helped much to make us popular. One was the fact that Laguerre did not shoot anybody against the barrack wall, nor levy forced “loans” upon the foreign merchants. Indeed, the only persons who suffered on the day he came into power were two of our own men, whom I caught looting. I put them to sweeping the streets, each with a ball and chain to his ankle, as an example of the sort of order we meant to keep among ourselves.

Before mid-day Aiken sent a list, which his spies had compiled, of sympathizers with Alvarez. He guaranteed to have them all in jail before night. But Laguerre sent for them and promised them, if they remained neutral, they should not be molested. Personally, I have always been of the opinion that most of the persons on Aiken’s list of suspects were most worthy merchants, to whom he owed money.

Laguerre gave a long audience to the cashier of the Manchester and Central American Bank, Limited, which finances Honduras, and assured him that the new administration would not force the bank to accept the paper money issued by Alvarez, but would accept the paper money issued by the bank, which was based on gold. As a result, the cashier came down the stair-case of the Palace three steps at a time, and later our censor read his cable to the Home Bank in England, in which he said that Honduras at last had an honest man for President. What was more to the purpose, he reopened his bank at three o’clock, and quoted Honduranian money on his blackboard at a rise of three per cent. over that of the day before. This was a great compliment to our government, and it must have impressed the other business men, for by six o’clock that night a delegation of American, German, and English shopkeepers called on the President and offered him a vote of confidence. They volunteered also to form a home-guard for the defence of the city, and to help keep him in office.

So, by dinner-time, we had won over the foreign element entirely, and the consuls had cabled their several ministers, advising them to advise their governments to recognize ours.

It was a great triumph for fair promises backed by fair dealing.

Although I was a cabinet minister and had a right to have my say I did not concern myself much with these graver problems of the Palace.

Instead, my first act was to cable to Beatrice that we were safe in the Capital and that I was second in command. I did not tell her I was Vice-President of a country of 300,000 people, because at Dobbs Ferry such a fact would seem hardly probable. After that I spent the day very happily galloping around the town with the Provost Guard at my heels, making friends with the inhabitants, and arranging for their defence. I posted a gun at the entrance to each of the three principal streets, and ordered mounted scouts to patrol the plains outside the Capital. I also remembered Heinze and the artillerymen who were protecting us on the heights of Pecachua, and sent them a moderate amount of rum, and an immoderate amount of canned goods and cigars. I also found time to design a wonderful uniform for the officers of our Legion--a dark-green blouse with silver facings and scarlet riding breeches--and on the plea of military necessity I ordered six tailors to sit up all night to finish them.

Uniforms for the men I requisitioned from the stores of the Government, and ordered the red facings changed to yellow.