Chapter 16

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 me with disgust. I had thought I was done with brawling and fighting, of being hated and hunted. I had had my fill of it. I wanted to be let alone, I wanted to feel that everybody about me was a friend. I was not in the least alarmed, for now that I was under the Stars and Stripes, I knew that I was immune from capture, but the mere possibility of a row was intolerable.

One of the Honduranians wore the uniform of a colonel, and was, as I guessed, the Commandante of the port. He spoke to the fat man in English, but in the same breath turned to one of his lieutenants, and gave an order in Spanish.

The lieutenant started in my direction, and then hesitated and beckoned to some one behind me.

I heard a patter of bare feet on the deck, and a dozen soldiers ran past me, and surrounded us. I noticed that they and their officers belonged to the Eleventh Infantry. It was the regiment I had driven out of the barracks at Santa Barbara.

The fat American in his shirt-sleeves was listening to what the Commandante was saying, and apparently with great dissatisfaction. As he listened he scowled at me, chewing savagely on an unlit cigar, and rocking himself to and fro on his heels and toes. His thumbs were stuck in his suspenders, so that it looked as though, with great indecision he was pulling himself forward and back.

I turned to the purser and said, as carelessly as I could: “Well, what are we waiting for?”

But he only shook his head.

With a gesture of impatience the fat man turned suddenly from the Commandante and came toward me.

He spoke abruptly and with the tone of a man holding authority.

“Have you got your police-permit to leave Amapala?” he demanded.

“No,” I answered.

“Well, why haven’t you?” he snapped.

“I didn’t know I had to have one,” I said. “Why do you ask?” I added. “Are you the captain of this ship?”

“I think I am,” he suddenly roared, as though I had questioned his word. “Anyway, I’ve got enough say on her to put you ashore if you don’t answer my questions.”

I shut my lips together and looked away from him. His tone stirred what little blood there was still left in me to rebellion; but when I saw the shore with its swamps and ragged palms, I felt how perilously near it was, and Panama became suddenly a distant mirage. I was as helpless as a sailor clinging to a plank. I felt I was in no position to take offence, so I bit my lips and tried to smile.

The Captain shook his head at me, as though I were a prisoner in the dock.

“Do you mean to say,” he shouted, “that our agent sold you a ticket without you showing a police-permit?”

“I haven’t got a ticket,” I said. “I was just going to buy one now.”

The Commandante thrust himself between us.

“Ah, what did I tell you?” he cried. “You see? He is escaping. This is the man. He answers all the descriptions. He was dressed just so; green coat, red trousers, very torn and dirty--head in bandage. This is the description. Is it not so?” he demanded of his lieutenants. They nodded vigorously.

“Why--a-yes, that is the man,” the Commandante cried in triumph. “Last night he stabbed Jose Mendez in the Libertad Billiard Hall. He has wanted to murder him. If Jose, he die, this man he is murderer. He cannot go. He must come to land with me.”

He gave an order in Spanish, and the soldiers closed in around us.

I saw that I was in great peril, in danger more real than any I had faced in open fight since I had entered Honduras. For the men who had met me then had fought with fair weapons. These men were trying to take away my life with a trick, with cunning lies and false witnesses.

They knew the Captain might not surrender a passenger who was only a political offender, but that he could not harbor a criminal. And at the first glance at my uniform, and when he knew nothing more of me than that I wore it, the Commandante had trumped up this charge of crime, and had fitted to my appearance the imaginary description of an imaginary murderer. And I knew that he did this that he might send me, bound hand and foot, as a gift to Alvarez, or that he might, for his own vengeance, shoot me against a wall.

I knew how little I would receive of either justice or mercy. I had heard of Dr. Rojas killed between decks on a steamer of this same line; of Bonilla taken from the Ariadne and murdered on this very wharf at this very port of Amapala; of General Pulido strangled in the launch of the Commandante of Corinto and thrown overboard, while still in the sight of his fellow-passengers on the Southern Cross.

It was a degraded, horrible, inglorious end--to be caught by the heels after the real battle was lost; to die of fever in a cell; to be stabbed with bayonets on the wharf, and thrown to the carrion harbor-sharks.

I swung around upon the Captain, and fought for my life as desperately as though I had a rope around my neck.

“That man is a liar,” I cried. “I was not in Amapala last night. I came from San Lorenzo--this morning. The boat is alongside now; you can ask the men who brought me. I’m no murderer. That man knows I’m no murderer. He wants me because I belonged to the opposition government. It’s because I wear this uniform he wants me. I’m no criminal. He has no more right to touch me here, than he would if I were on Broadway.”

The Commandante seized the Captain’s arm.

“As Commandante of this port,” he screamed, “I tell you if you do not surrender the murderer to me, your ship shall not sail. I will take back your clearance-papers.”

The Captain turned on me, shaking his red fists, and tossing his head like a bull. “You see that!” he cried. “You see what you get me into, coming on board my ship without a permit! That’s what I get at every banana-patch along this coast, a lot of damned beach-combers and stowaways stealing on board, and the Commandante chasing ‘em all over my ship and holding up my papers. You go ashore!” he ordered. He swept his arm toward the gangway. “You go to Kessler, our consul. If you haven’t done nothing wrong, he’ll take care of you. You haven’t got a ticket, and you haven’t got a permit, and you’re no passenger of mine! Over you go; do you hear me? Quick now, over you go.”

I could not believe that I heard the man aright. He seemed to be talking a language I did not know.

“Do you mean to tell me,” I cried, speaking very slowly, for I was incredulous, and I was so weak besides that it was difficult for me to find the words, “that you refuse to protect me from these half-breeds, that you are going to turn me over to them--to be shot! And you call yourself an American?” I cried, “and this an American ship!”

As I turned from him I found that the passengers had come forward and now surrounded us; big, tall men in cool, clean linen, and beautiful women, shading their eyes with their fans, and little children crowding in between them and clinging to their skirts. To my famished eyes they looked like angels out of Paradise. They were my own people, and they brought back to me how I loved the life these men were plotting to take from me. The sight of them drove me into a sort of frenzy.

“Are you going to take that man’s word against mine?” I cried at the Captain. “Are you going to let him murder me in sight of that flag? You know he’ll do it. You know what they did to Rojas on one of your own ships. Do you want another man butchered in sight of your passengers?”

The Commandante crowded in front of the ship’s captain.

“That man is my prisoner,” he cried. “He is going to jail, to be tried by law. He shall see his consul every day. And so, if you try to leave this harbor with him, I will sink your ship from the fort!”

The Captain turned with an oath and looked up to the second officer, who was leaning over the rail of the bridge above us.

“Up anchor,” the Captain shouted. “Get her under weigh! There is your answer,” he cried, turning upon me. “I’m not going to have this ship held up any longer, and I’m not going to risk the lives of these ladies and gentlemen by any bombardment, either. You’re only going to jail. I’ll report the matter to our consul at Corinto, and he’ll tell our minister.”

“Corinto!” I replied. “I’ll be dead before you’ve passed that lighthouse.”

The Captain roared with anger.

“Can’t you hear what he says,” he shouted. “He says he’ll fire on my ship. They’ve fired on our ships before! I’m not here to protect every damned scalawag that tries to stowaway on my ship. I’m here to protect the owners, and I mean to do it. Now you get down that ladder, before we throw you down.”

I knew his words were final. From the bow I heard the creak of the anchor-chains as they were drawn on board, and from the engine-room the tinkle of bells.

The ship was abandoning me. My last appeal had failed. My condition was desperate.

“Protect your owners, and yourself, damn you!” I cried. “You’re no American. You’re no white man. No American would let a conch-nigger run his ship. To hell with your protection!”

All the misery of the last two months, the bitterness of my dismissal from the Point, the ignominy of our defeat and flight, rose in me and drove me on. “And I don’t want the protection of that flag either,” I cried. “I wasn’t good enough to serve it once, and I don’t need it now.”

It should be remembered that when I spoke these words I thought my death was inevitable and immediate, that it had been brought upon me by one of my own countrymen, while others of my countrymen stood indifferently by, and I hope that for what I said in that moment of fever and despair I may be forgiven.

“I can protect myself!” I cried.

Before anyone could move I whipped out my gun and held it over the Commandante’s heart, and at the same instant without turning my eyes from his face I waved my other hand at the passengers. “Take those children away,” I shouted.

“Don’t move!” I yelled in Spanish at the soldiers. “If one of you raises his musket I’ll kill him.” I pressed the cocked revolver against the Commandante’s chest. “Now, then, take me ashore,” I called to his men. “You know me, I’m Captain Macklin. Captain Macklin, of the Foreign Legion, and you know that six of you will die before you get me. Come on,” I taunted. “Which six is it to be?”

Out of the corners of my eyes I could see the bayonets lifting cautiously and forming a ring of points about me, and the sight, and my own words lashed me into a frenzy of bravado.

“Oh, you don’t remember me, don’t you?” I cried. “You ought to remember the Foreign Legion! We drove you out of Santa Barbara and Tabla Ve and Comyagua, and I’m your Vice-President! Take off your hats to your Vice-President! To Captain Macklin, Vice-President of Honduras!”

{Illustration: I sprang back against the cabin}

I sprang back against the cabin and swung the gun in swift half-circles. The men shrank from it as though I had lashed them with a whip. “Come on,” I cried, “which six is it to be? Come on, you cowards, why don’t you take me!”

The only answer came from a voice that was suddenly uplifted at my side. I recognized it as the voice of the ship’s captain.

“Put down that gun!” he shouted.

But I only swung it the further until it covered him also. The man stood in terror of his ship’s owners, he had a seaman’s dread of international law, but he certainly was not afraid of a gun. He regarded it no more than a pointed finger, and leaned eagerly toward me. To my amazement I saw that his face was beaming with excitement and delight.

“Are you Captain Macklin?” he cried.

I was so amazed that for a moment I could only gape at him while I still covered him with the revolver.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Then why in hell didn’t you say so!” he roared, and with a bellow like a bull he threw himself upon the Commandante. He seized him by his epaulettes and pushed him backward. With the strength of a bull he butted and shoved him across the deck.

“Off my ship you!” he roared. “Every one of you; you’re a gang of murdering cutthroats.”

The deck-hands and the ship-stewards, who had gathered at the gangway to assist in throwing me down it, sprang to the Captain’s aid.

“Over with him, boys,” he roared. “Clear the ship of them. Throw them overboard.” The crew fell upon the astonished soldiers, and drove them to the side. Their curses and shrieks filled the air, the women retreated screaming, and I was left alone, leaning limply against the cabin with my revolver hanging from my fingers.

It began and ended in an instant, and as the ship moved forward and the last red-breeched soldier disappeared headforemost down the companion-ladder, the Captain rushed back to me and clutched me by both shoulders. Had it not been for the genial grin on his fat face, I would have thought that he meant to hurl me after the others.

“Now then, Captain Macklin,” he cried, “you come with me. You come to my cabin, and that’s where you stay as long as you are on my ship. You’re no passenger, you’re my guest, and there’s nothing on board too good for you.”

“But I don’t--understand,” I protested faintly. “What does it mean?”

“What does it mean?” he shouted. “It means you’re the right sort for me! I haven’t heard of nothing but your goings-on for the last three trips. Vice-President of Honduras!” he exclaimed, shaking me as though I were a carpet. “A kid like you! You come to my cabin and tell me the whole yarn from start to finish. I’d rather carry you than old man Huntington himself!”

The passengers had returned, and stood listening to his exclamations, in a wondering circle. The stewards and deck-hands, panting with their late exertions, were grinning at me with unmistakable interest.

“Bring Captain Macklin’s breakfast to my cabin, you,” he shouted to them. “And, Mr. Owen,” he continued, addressing the Purser, with great impressiveness, “this is Captain Macklin, himself. He’s going with us as my guest.”

With a wink, he cautiously removed my revolver from my fingers, and slapped me jovially on the shoulder. “Son!” he exclaimed, “I wouldn’t have missed the sight of you holding your gun on that gang for a cargo of bullion. I suspicioned it was you, the moment you did it. That will be something for me to tell them in ‘Frisco, that will. Now, you come along,” he added, suddenly, with parental solicitude, “and take a cup of coffee, and a dose of quinine, or you’ll be ailing.”

He pushed a way for me through the crowd of passengers, who fell back in two long lines. As we moved between them, I heard a woman’s voice ask, in a loud whisper:

“Who did you say?”

A man’s voice answered, “Why, Captain Macklin,” and then protested, in a rising accent, “Now, for Heaven’s sake, Jennie, don’t tell me you don’t know who he is?”

That was my first taste of fame. It was a short-lived, limited sort of fame, but at that time it stretched throughout all Central America. I doubt if it is sufficiently robust to live in the cold latitudes of the North. It is just an exotic of the tropics. I am sure it will never weather Cape Hatteras. But although I won’t amount to much in Dobbs Ferry, down here in Central America I am pretty well known, and during these last two months that I have been lying, very near to death, in the Canal Company’s hospital, my poor little fame stuck by me, and turned strangers into kind and generous friends.

DOBBS FERRY, September, 1882

September passed before I was a convalescent, and it was the first of October when the Port of Sydney passed Sandy Hook, and I stood at the bow, trembling with cold and happiness, and saw the autumn leaves on the hills of Staten Island and the thousands of columns of circling, white smoke rising over the three cities. I had not let Beatrice and Aunt Mary know that I was in a hospital, but had told them that I was making my way home slowly, which was true enough, and that they need not expect to hear from me until I had arrived in New York City. So, there was no one at the dock to meet me.

But, as we came up the harbor, I waved at the people on the passing ferry-boats, and they, shivering, no doubt, at the sight of our canvas awnings and the stewards’ white jackets, waved back, and gave me my first welcome home.

It was worth all the disappointments, and the weeks in hospital, to stick my head in the ticket-window of the Grand Central Station, and hear myself say, “Dobbs Ferry, please.” I remember the fascination with which I watched the man (he was talking over his shoulder to another man at the time) punch the precious ticket, and toss it to me. I suppose in his life he has many times sold tickets to Dobbs Ferry, but he never sold them as often as I had rehearsed asking him for that one.

I had wired them not to meet me at the station, but to be waiting at the house, and when I came up the old walk, with the box-hedges on either side, they were at the door, and Aunt Mary ran to meet me, and hugged and scolded me, and cried on my shoulder, and Beatrice smiled at me, just as though she were very proud of me, and I kissed her once. After ten minutes, it did not seem as though I had ever been away from home. And, when I looked at Beatrice, and I could not keep my eyes from her, I was filled with wonder that I had ever had the courage to go from where she was. We were very happy.

I am afraid that for the next two weeks I traded upon their affection scandalously. But it was their own fault. It was their wish that I should constantly pose in the dual roles of the returned prodigal and Othello, and, as I told them, if I were an obnoxious prig ever after, they alone were responsible.

I had the ravenous hunger of the fever-convalescent, and I had an audience that would have turned General Grant into a braggart. So, every day wonderful dishes of Aunt Mary’s contriving were set before me, and Beatrice would not open a book so long as there was one adventure I had left untold.

And this, as I soon learned, was the more flattering, as she had already heard most of them at second-hand.

I can remember my bewilderment that first evening as I was relating the story of the duel, and she corrected me.

“Weren’t you much nearer?” she asked. “You fired at twenty paces.”

“So we did,” I cried, “but how could you know that?”

“Mr. Lowell told us,” she said.

“Lowell!” I shouted. “Has Lowell been here?”

“Yes, he brought us your sword,” Beatrice answered. “Didn’t you see where we placed it?” and she rose rather quickly, and stood with her face toward the fireplace, where, sure enough, my sword was hanging above the mantel.

“Oh yes,” said Aunt Mary, “Mr. Lowell has been very kind. He has come out often to ask for news of you. He is at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We like him so much,” she added.

“Like him!” I echoed. “I should think you would! Isn’t that bully,” I cried, “to think of his being so near me, and that he’s a friend of yours already. We must have him out to-morrow. Isn’t he fine, Beatrice?”

She had taken down the sword, and was standing holding it out to me.

“Yes, he is,” she said, “and he is very fond of you, too, Royal. I don’t believe you’ve got a better friend.”

Attractive as the prodigal son may seem at first, he soon becomes a nuisance. Even Othello when he began to tell over his stories for the second time must have been something of a bore. And when Aunt Mary gave me roast beef for dinner two nights in succession, and after dinner Beatrice picked up “Lorna Doone” and retired to a corner, I knew that I had had my day.

The next morning at breakfast, in a tone of gentle reproach, I announced that I was going out into the cold world, as represented by New York City, to look for a job. I had no idea of doing anything of the sort. I only threw out the suggestion tentatively, and I was exceedingly disgusted when they caught up my plan with such enthusiasm and alacrity, that I was forced to go on with it. I could not see why it was necessary for me to work. I had two thousand dollars a year my grandfather had left me, and my idea of seeking for a job, was to look for it leisurely, and with caution. But the family seemed to think that, before the winter set in, I should take any chance that offered, and, as they expressed it, settle down.

None of us had any very definite ideas as to what I ought to do, or even that there was anything I could do. Lowell, who is so much with us now, that I treat him like one of the family, argued that to business men my strongest recommendation would be my knowledge of languages. He said I ought to try for a clerkship in some firm where I could handle the foreign correspondence. His even suggesting such work annoyed me extremely. I told him that, on the contrary, my strongest card was my experience in active campaigning, backed by my thorough military education, and my ability to command men. He said unfeelingly, that you must first catch your men, and that in down-town business circles a military education counted for no more than a college-course in football.

“You good people don’t seem to understand,” I explained (we were holding a family council on my case at the time); “I have no desire to move in down-town business circles. I hate business circles.”

“Well, you must live, Royal,” Aunt Mary said. “You have not enough money to be a gentleman of leisure.”

“Royal wouldn’t be content without some kind of work,” said Beatrice.

“No, he can’t persuade us he’s not ambitious!” Lowell added. “You mean to make something of yourself, you know you do, and you can’t begin too early.”

Since Lowell has been promoted to the ward-room, he talks just like a grandfather.

“Young man,” I said, “I’ve seen the day when you were an ensign, and I was a Minister of War, and you had to click your heels if you came within thirty feet of my distinguished person. Of course, I’m ambitious, and the best proof of it is, that I don’t want to sit in a bird-cage all my life, counting other people’s money.”

Aunt Mary looked troubled, and shook her head at me.

“Well, Royal,” she remonstrated, “you’ve got very little of your own to count, and some day you’ll want to marry, and then you’ll be sorry.”

I don’t know why Aunt Mary’s remark should have affected anyone except myself, but it seemed to take all the life out of the discussion, and Beatrice remembered she had some letters to write, and Lowell said he must go back to the Navy Yard, although when he arrived he told us he had fixed it with another man to stand his watch. The reason I was disturbed was because, when Aunt Mary spoke, it made me wonder if she were not thinking of Beatrice. One day just after I arrived from Panama, when we were alone, she said that while I was gone she had been in fear she might die before I came back, and that Beatrice would be left alone. I laughed at her and told her she would live a hundred years, and added, not meaning anything in particular, “And she’ll not be alone. I’ll be here.”

Then Aunt Mary looked at me very sadly, and said: “Royal, I could die so contentedly if I thought you two were happy.” She waited, as though she expected me to make some reply, but I couldn’t think of anything to say, and so just looked solemn, then she changed the subject by asking: “Royal, have you noticed that Lieutenant Lowell admires Beatrice very much?” And I said, “Of course he does. If he didn’t, I’d punch his head.” At which she again looked at me in such a wistful, pained way, smiling so sadly, as though for some reason she were sorry for me.

They all seemed to agree that I had had my fling, and should, as they persisted in calling it, “settle down.” A most odious phrase. They were two to one against me, and when one finished another took it up. So that at last I ceased arguing and allowed myself to be bullied into looking for a position.

But before surrendering myself to the downtown business circles I made one last effort to remain free.