Captain Macklin: His Memoirs

by Richard Harding Davis

“HERBERT AIKEN.”

“P.S. I have your gilt sword, and I’m going to turn it over to the officers of the Raleigh, to take back to your folks. Good luck to you, old man.”

After reading this letter, which I have preserved carefully as a characteristic souvenir of Aiken, I had but two anxieties. The first was to learn if Laguerre and the others had reached the Raleigh, and the second was how could I escape to the steamer—the first question was at once answered by the woman. She told me it was known in San Lorenzo that the late “Presidente Generale,” with three Gringoes, had reached the American war-ship and had been received on board. The Commandante of Amapala had demanded their surrender to him, but the captain of the ship had declared that as political refugees, they were entitled to the protection they claimed, and when three days later he had been ordered to return to San Francisco, he had taken them with him.

When I heard that, I gave a cheer all by myself, and I felt so much better for the news that I at once began to plot for my own departure. The day was Wednesday, the day before the steamer left Amapala, and I determined to start for the island the following evening. When I told the woman this, she protested I was much too weak to move, but the risk that my hiding-place might be discovered before another steamer-day arrived was much too great, and I insisted on making a try for the first one.

The woman accordingly procured a fishing-boat and a crew of three men, and I dug up my money-belt, and my revolver, and thanked her and paid her, for Aiken and for myself, as well as one can pay a person for saving one’s life. The next night, as soon as the sun set, I seated myself in the stern of the boat, and we pushed out from the shore of Honduras, and were soon rising and falling on the broad swell of the Pacific.

My crew were simple fishermen, unconcerned with politics, and as I had no fear of harm from them, I curled up on a mat at their feet and instantly fell asleep.

When I again awoke the sun was well up, and when I raised my head the boatman pointed to a fringe of palms that hung above the water, and which he told me rose from the Island of Amapala. Two hours later we made out the wharves and the custom-house of the port itself, and, lying well toward us in the harbor, a big steamer with the smoke issuing from her stacks, and the American flag hanging at the stern. I was still weak and shaky, and I must confess that I choked a bit at the sight of the flag, and at the thought that, in spite of all, I was going safely back to life, and Beatrice and Aunt Mary. The name I made out on the stern of the steamer was Barracouta, and I considered it the prettiest name I had ever known, and the steamer the handsomest ship that ever sailed the sea. I loved her from her keel to her topmast. I loved her every line and curve, her every rope and bolt. But specially did I love the flag at her stern and the blue Peter at the fore. They meant home. They meant peace, friends, and my own countrymen.

I gave the boatmen a double eagle, and we all shook hands with great glee, and then with new strength and unassisted I pulled myself up the companion-ladder, and stood upon the deck.

When I reached it I wanted to embrace the first man I saw. I somehow expected that he would want to embrace me, too, and say how glad he was I had escaped. But he happened to be the ship’s purser, and, instead of embracing me, he told me coldly that steerage passengers are not allowed aft. But I did not mind, I knew that I was a disreputable object, but I also knew that I had gold in my money-belt, and that clothes could be bought from the slop-chest.

So I said in great good-humor, that I wanted a first-class cabin, the immediate use of the bathroom, and the services of the ship’s barber.

My head was bound in a dirty bandage. My uniform, which I still wore as I had nothing else, was in rags from the briers, and the mud of the swamps and the sweat of the fever had caked it with dirt. I had an eight days’ beard, and my bare feet were in native sandals. So my feelings were not greatly hurt because the purser was not as genuinely glad to see me as I was to see him.

“A first-class passage costs forty dollars gold—in advance,” he said.

“That’s all right,” I answered, and I laughed from sheer, foolish happiness, “I’ll take six.”

We had been standing at the head of the companion-ladder, and as the purser moved rather reluctantly toward his cabin, a group of men came down the deck toward us.

One of them was a fat, red-faced American, the others wore the uniform of Alvarez. When they saw me they gave little squeals of excitement, and fell upon the fat man gesticulating violently, and pointing angrily at me.

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.

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 to reach Paris, and that if he were there now he must know whether there is anything in this talk of a French expedition against the Chinese in Tonkin. Also whether the Mahdi really means to make trouble for the Khedive in the Soudan. Laguerre was in the Egyptian army for three years, and knows Baker Pasha well. I was sure that if there was going to be trouble, either in China or Egypt, he could not keep out of it.

So I cabled him to the Credit Lyonnais, “Are you well? If going any more campaigns, please take me.” I waited three restless weeks for an answer, and then, as no answer came, I put it all behind me, and hung my old, torn uniform where I would not see it, and hid the presentation-sword behind the eight-day clock in the library.

Beatrice raised her eyes from her book and watched me.

“Why?” she asked.

“It hurts me,” I said.

She put down her book, and for a long time looked at me without speaking.

“I did not know you disliked it as much as that,” she said. “I wonder if we are wrong. And yet,” she added, smiling, “it does not seem a great sacrifice; to have work to do, to live at home, and in such a dear, old home as this, near a big city, and with the river in front and the country all about you. It seems better than dying of wounds in a swamp, or of fever in a hospital.”

“I haven’t complained. I’m taking my medicine,” I answered. “I know you all wouldn’t ask it of me, if you didn’t think it was for my good.” I had seated myself in front of the wood fire opposite her, and was turning the chain she gave me round and round my wrist. I slipped it off, and showed it to her as it hung from my fingers, shining in the firelight.

“And yet,” I said, “it was fine being your Knight-Errant, and taking risks for your sake, and having only this to keep me straight.” I cannot see why saying just that should have disturbed her, but certainly my words, or the sight of the chain, had a most curious effect. It is absurd, but I could almost swear that she looked frightened. She flushed, and her eyes were suddenly filled with tears. I was greatly embarrassed. Why should she be afraid of me? I was too much upset to ask her what was wrong, so I went on hastily: “But now I’ll have you always with me, to keep me straight,” I said.

She laughed at that, a tremulous little laugh, and said: “And so you won’t want it any more, will you?”

“Won’t want it,” I protested gallantly. “I’d like to see anyone make me give it up.”

“You’d give it up to me, wouldn’t you?” she asked gently. “It looks—” she added, and stopped.

“I see,” I exclaimed. “Looks like a pose, sort of effeminate, a man’s wearing a bracelet. Is that what you think?”

She laughed again, but this time quite differently. She seemed greatly relieved.

“Perhaps that’s it,” she said. “Give it me, Royal. You’ll never need any woman’s trinkets to keep you straight.”

I weighed the gold links in the hollow of my palm.

“Do you really want it?” I asked. She raised her eyes eagerly. “If you don’t mind,” she said.

I dropped the chain into her hand, but as I turned toward the fire, I could not help a little sigh. She heard me, and leaned forward. I could just see her sweet, troubled face in the firelight. “But I mean to return it you, Royal,” she said, “some day, when—when you go out again to fight wind-mills.”

“That’s safe!” I returned, roughly. “You know that time will never come. The three of you together have fixed that. I’m no longer a knight-errant. I’m a business-man now. I’m not to remember I ever was a knight-errant. I must even give up my Order of the Golden Chain, because it’s too romantic, because it might remind me that somewhere in this world there is romance, and adventure, and fighting. And it wouldn’t do. You can’t have romance around a business office. Some day, when I was trying to add up my sums, I might see it on my wrist, and forget where I was. I might remember the days when it shone in the light of a camp-fire, when I used to sleep on the ground with my arm under my head, and it was the last thing I saw, when it seemed like your fingers on my wrist holding me back, or urging me forward. Business circles would not allow that. They’d put up a sign, ‘Canvassers, pedlers, and Romance not admitted.’”

The first time I applied for a job I was unsuccessful. The man I went to see had been an instructor at Harvard when my uncle was professor there, and Aunt Mary said he had been a great friend of Professor Endicott’s. One day in the laboratory the man discovered something, and had it patented. It brought him a fortune, and he was now president of a company which manufactured it, and with branches all over the world.

Aunt Mary wrote him a personal letter about me, in the hope that he might put me in charge of the foreign correspondence.

He kept me waiting outside his office-door for one full hour. During the first half-hour I was angry, but the second half-hour I enjoyed exceedingly. By that time the situation appealed to my sense of humor. When the great man finally said he would see me, I found him tilting back in a swivel-chair in front of a mahogany table. He picked out Aunt Mary’s letter from a heap in front of him, and said: “Are you the Mr. Macklin mentioned in this letter? What can I do for you?”

I said very deliberately: “You can do nothing for me. I have waited one hour to tell you so. When my aunt, Mrs. Endicott, does anyone the honor to write him a letter, there is no other business in New York City more important than attending promptly to that letter. I had intended becoming a partner in your firm; now, I shall not. You are a rude, fat, and absurd, little person. Good-morning.”

I crossed over to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and told Lowell and the other watch-officers in the ward-room of my first attempt to obtain a job. They laughed until I hoped they would strangle.

“Who the devil do you think you are, anyway,” they cried, “going around, insulting millionnaires like that?”

After leaving the cruiser that afternoon, I was so miserable that I could have jumped into the East River. It was the sight of the big, brown guns did it, and the cutlasses in their racks, and the clean-limbed, bare-throated Jackies, and the watch-officer stamping the deck just as though he were at sea, with his glass and side-arms. And when the marine at the gate of the yard shifted his gun and challenged me, it was so like old times that I could have fallen on his neck and hugged him.

Over the wharves, all along my way to the ferry, the names of strange and beautiful ports mocked at me from the sheds of the steam-ship lines; “Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and the River Plata,” “Guayaquil, Callao, and Santiago,” “Cape Town, Durban, and Lorenzo Marquez.” It was past six o’clock and very dark. The ice was pushing and grinding against the pier-heads, and through the falling snow the tall buildings in New York twinkled with thousands of electric lights, like great Christmas-trees. At one wharf a steamer of the Red D line, just in from La Guayra, was making fast, and I guiltily crept on board. Without, she was coated in a shearing of ice, but within she reeked of Spanish-America—of coffee, rubber, and raw sugar. Pineapples were still swinging in a net from the awning-rail, a two-necked water-bottle hung at the hot mouth of the engine-room. I found her captain and told him I only wanted to smell a ship again, and to find out, if where he came from, the bands were still playing in the plazas. He seemed to understand, and gave me a drink of Jamaica rum with fresh limes in it, and a black cigar; and when his steward brought them, I talked to him in Spanish just for the sound of it. For half an hour I was under the Southern Cross, and New York was 3,000 miles astern.

When I left him, the captain gave me a bag of alligator-pears to take home with me, and I promised to come the next day, and bring him a new library of old, paper novels.

But, as it turned out, I sent them instead, for that night when I reached the New York side, I saw how weakly and meanly I was acting, and I threw the alligator-pears over the rail of the ferry-boat and watched them fall into the dirty, grinding ice. I saw that I had been in rank mutiny. My bed had been made for me and I must lie in it. I was to be a business-man. I was to “settle down,” and it is only slaves who rebel.

The next day, humble and chastened in spirit, I kissed the rod, and went into the city to search for a situation. I determined to start at Forty-second Street, and work my way down town until I found a place that looked as though it could afford a foreign correspondent. But I had reached Twenty-eighth Street, without seeing any place that appealed to me, when a little groom, in a warm fur collar and chilly white breeches, ran up beside me and touched his hat. I was so surprised that I saluted him in return, and then felt uneasily conscious that that was not the proper thing to do, and that forever I had lost his respect.

“Miss Fiske would like to speak with you, sir,” he said. He ran back to a brougham that was drawn up beside the curb behind me, and opened the door. When I reached it, Miss Fiske leaned from it, smiling.

“I couldn’t help calling you back, Captain Macklin,” she said, and held out her hand.

When I took it she laughed again. “Isn’t this like our last meeting?” she asked. “Don’t you remember my reaching out of the carriage, and our shaking hands? Only now,” she went on, in a most frank and friendly manner, “instead of a tropical thunder-storm, it’s a snow-storm, and instead of my running away from your shells, I’m out shopping. At least, mother’s out shopping,” she added. “She’s in there. I’m waiting for her.” She seemed to think that the situation required a chaperon.

“You mustn’t say they were my shells, Miss Fiske,” I protested. “I may insult a woman for protecting her brother’s life, but I never fire shells at her.”

It did not surprise me to hear myself laughing at the words which, when she spoke them, had seemed so terrible. It was as though none of it had ever occurred. It was part of a romantic play, and we had seen the play together. Who could believe that the young man, tramping the streets on the lookout for a job, had ever signed his name, as vice-president of Honduras, to a passport for Joseph Fiske; that the beautiful girl in the sables, with her card-case in her hand, had ever heard the shriek of shrapnel?

And she exclaimed, just as though we had both been thinking aloud: “No, it’s not possible, is it?”

“It never happened,” I said.

“But I tell you what has happened,” she went on, eagerly, “or perhaps you know. Have you heard what my father did?”

I said I had not. I refrained from adding that I believed her father capable of doing almost anything.

“Then I’m the first to tell you the news,” she exclaimed. She nodded at me energetically. “Well, he’s paid that money. He owed it all the time.’

“That’s not news,” I said.

She flushed a little, and laughed.

“But, indeed, father was not to blame,” she exclaimed. “They deceived him dreadfully. But when we got home, he looked it up, and found you were right about that money, and so he’s paid it back, not to that odious Alvarez man, but in some way, I don’t quite understand how, but so the poor people will get it.”

“Good!” I cried.

“And he’s discharged all that Isthmian crowd,” she went on.

“Better,” I said.

“And made my brother president of the new company,” she continued, and then raised her eyebrows, and waited, smiling.

“Oh, well,” I said, “since he’s your brother—‘best.’”

“That’s right,” she cried. “That’s very nice of you. Here comes mother. I want you to meet her.”

Mother came toward us, out of a French dress-maker’s. It was one of the places I had decided against, when I had passed it a few minutes before. It seemed one of the few business houses where a French linguist would be superfluous.

I was presented as “Captain Macklin—who, you know, mother—who fought the duel with Arthur—that is, who didn’t shoot at him.”

Mrs. Fiske looked somewhat startled. Even to a trained social leader it must be trying to have a man presented to you on a sidewalk as the one who did not shoot your son.

Mrs. Fiske had a toy dog under one arm, and was holding up her train, but she slipped the dog to the groom, and gave me her hand.

“How do you do, Mr.—Captain Macklin,” she said. “My son has told me a great deal about you. Have you asked Captain Macklin to come to see us, Helen?” she said, and stepped into the brougham.

“Come in any day after five,” said Miss Fiske, “and we’ll have tortillas and frijoles, and build a camp-fire in the library. What’s your address?”

“Dobbs Ferry,” I said.

“Just Dobbs Ferry?” she asked. “But you’re such a well-known person, Captain Macklin.”

“I’m Mr. Macklin now,” I answered, and I tried to shut the door on them, but the groom seemed to think that was his privilege, and so I bowed, and they drove away. Then I went at once to a drug-store and borrowed the directory, to find out where they lived, and I walked all the way up the avenue to have a look at their house. Somehow I felt that for that day I could not go on asking for a job. I saw a picture of myself on a high stool in the French dressmaker’s writing to the Paris house for more sable cloaks for Mrs. Fiske.

The Fiske mansion overlooks Central Park, and it is as big as the Academy of Music. I found that I knew it well by sight. I at once made up my mind that I never would have the courage to ring that door-bell, and I mounted a Fifth Avenue stage, and took up my work of reconnoitering for a job where Miss Fiske had interrupted it.

The next day I got the job. I am to begin work on Monday. It is at Schwartz & Carboy’s. They manufacture locks and hinges and agricultural things. I saw a lot of their machetes in Honduras with their paper stamp on the blade. They have almost a monopoly of the trade in South America. Fortunately, or unfortunately, one of their Spanish clerks had left them, and when I said I had been in Central America and could write Spanish easily, Schwartz, or, it may have been Carboy—I didn’t ask him which was his silly name—dictated a letter and I wrote it in Spanish. One of the other clerks admitted it was faultless. So, I regret to say, I got the job. I’m to begin with fifteen dollars, and Schwartz or Carboy added, as though it were a sort of a perquisite: “If our young men act gentlemanly, and are good dressers, we often send them to take our South American customers to lunch. The house pays the expenses. And in the evenings you can show them around the town. Our young men find that an easy way of seeing the theatres for nothing.”

Knowing the tastes of South Americans visiting New York, I replied severely that my connection with Schwartz & Carboy would end daily at four in the afternoon, but that a cross-town car passed Koster & Bial’s every hour. I half hoped he would take offence at that, and in consequence my connection, with Schwartz & Carboy might end instantly and forever; but whichever one he was, only laughed and said: “Yes, those Brazilians are a queer lot. We eat up most of our profits bailing them out of police courts the next morning. Well—you turn up Monday.”

DOBBS FERRY, Sunday, Midnight

It’s all over. It will be a long time before I add another chapter to my “Memoirs.” When I have written this one they are to be sealed, and to-morrow they are to be packed away in Aunt Mary’s cedar chest. I am now writing these lines after everyone else has gone to bed.

It happened after dinner. Aunt Mary was upstairs, and Beatrice was at the piano. We were waiting for Lowell, who had promised to come up and spend the evening. I was sitting at the centre-table, pretending to read, but watching Beatrice. Her back was turned toward me, so I could stare at her as long as I pleased. The light of the candles on each side of the music-rack fell upon her hair, and made it flash and burn. She had twisted it high, in a coil, and there never was anything more lovely than the burnished copper against the white glow of her skin, nor anything so noble as the way her head rose upon her neck and sloping shoulders. It was like a flower on a white stem.

She was not looking at the music before her, but up at nothing, while her hands ran over the keyboard, playing an old sailor’s “chantey” which Lowell has taught us. It carries with it all the sweep and murmur of the sea at night.

She could not see me, she had forgotten that I was even in the room, and I was at liberty to gaze at her and dream of her undisturbed. I felt that, without that slight, white figure always at my side, the life I was to begin on the morrow, or any other life, would be intolerable. Without the thought of Beatrice to carry me through the day I could not bear it. Except for her, what promise was there before me of reward or honor? I was no longer “an officer and a gentleman,” I was a copying clerk, “a model letter-writer.” I could foresee the end. I would become a nervous, knowing, smug-faced civilian. Instead of clean liquors, I would poison myself with cocktails and “quick-order” luncheons. I would carry a commuter’s ticket. In time I might rise to the importance of calling the local conductors by their familiar names. “Bill, what was the matter with the 8.13 this morning?” From to-morrow forward I would be “our” Mr. Macklin, “Yours of even date received. Our Mr. Macklin will submit samples of goods desired.” “Mr.” Macklin! “Our” Mr. Macklin! Ye Gods! Schwartz any servitude, I would struggle to rise above the most hateful surroundings.

I had just registered this mental vow, my eyes were still fixed appealingly on the woman who was all unconscious of the sacrifice I was about to make for her, when the servant came into the room and handed me a telegram. I signed for it, and she went out. Beatrice had not heard her enter, and was still playing. I guessed the telegram was from Lowell to say he could not get away, and I was sorry. But as I tore open the envelope, I noticed that it was not the usual one of yellow paper, but of a pinkish white. I had never received a cablegram. I did not know that this was one. I read the message, and as I read it the blood in every part of my body came to a sudden stop. There was a strange buzzing in my ears, the drums seemed to have burst with a tiny report. The shock was so tremendous that it seemed Beatrice must have felt it too, and I looked up at her stupidly. She was still playing.

The cablegram had been sent that morning from Marseilles. The message read, “Commanding Battalion French Zouaves, Tonkin Expedition, holding position of Adjutant open for you, rank of Captain, if accept join Marseilles. Laguerre.”

I laid the paper on my knee, and sat staring, scarcely breathing, as though I were afraid if I moved I would wake. I was trembling and cold, for I was at the parting of the ways, and I knew it. Beyond the light of the candles, beyond the dull red curtains jealously drawn against the winter landscape, beyond even the slight, white figure with its crown of burnished copper, I saw the swarming harbor of Marseilles. I saw the swaggering turcos in their scarlet breeches, the crowded troop-ships, and from every ship’s mast the glorious tri-color of France; the flag that in ten short years had again risen, that was flying over advancing columns in China, in Africa, in Madagascar; over armies that for Alsace Lorraine were giving France new and great colonies on every seaboard of the world. The thoughts that flew through my brain made my fingers clench until the nails bit into my palms. Even to dream of such happiness was actual pain. That this might come to me! To serve under the tri-color, to be a captain of the Grand Armee, to be one of the army reared and trained by Napoleon Bonaparte.

I heard a cheery voice, and Lowell passed me, and advanced bowing toward Beatrice, and she turned and smiled at him. But as she rose, she saw my face.

“Roy!” she cried. “What is it? What has happened?”

I watched her coming toward me, as someone projected from another life, a wonderful, beautiful memory, from a life already far in the past. I handed her the cablegram and stood up stiffly. My joints were rigid and the blood was still cold in my veins. She read the message, and gave a little cry, and stood silent, gazing at me. I motioned her to give it to Lowell, who was looking at us anxiously, his eyes filled with concern.

He kept his head lowered over the message for so long, that I thought he was reading it several times. When he again raised his face it was filled with surprise and disapproval. But beneath, I saw a dawning look which he could not keep down, of a great hope. It was as though he had been condemned to death, and the paper Beatrice had handed him to read had been his own reprieve.

“Tell me,” said Beatrice. Her tone was as gentle and as solemn as the stroke of a bell, and as impersonal. It neither commended nor reproved. I saw that instantly she had determined to conceal her own wishes, to obliterate herself entirely, to let me know that, so far as she could affect my choice, I was a free agent. I looked appealingly from her to Lowell, and from Lowell back to Beatrice. I still was trembling with the fever the message had lit in me. When I tried to answer, my voice was hoarse and shaking.

“It’s like drink!” I said.

Lowell raised his eyes as though he meant to speak, and then lowered them and stepped back, leaving Beatrice and myself together.

“I only want you to see,” Beatrice began bravely, “how—how serious it is. Every one of us in his life must have a moment like this, and, if he could only know that the moment had come, he might decide wisely. You know the moment has come. You must see that this is the crisis. It means choosing not for a year, but for always.” She held out her hands, entwining the fingers closely. “Oh, don’t think I’m trying to stop you, Royal,” she cried. “I only want you to see that it’s final. I know that it’s like strong drink to you, but the more you give way to it—. Don’t you think, if you gave your life here a fairer trial, if you bore with it a little longer—”

She stopped sharply as though she recognized that, in urging me to a choice, she was acting as she had determined she would not. I did not answer, but stood in silence with my head bent, for I could not look at her. I knew now how much dearer to me, even than her voice, was the one which gave the call to arms. I did indeed understand that the crisis had come. In that same room, five minutes before the message arrived, I had sworn for her sake alone to submit to the life I hated. And yet in an instant, without a moment’s pause, at the first sound of “Boots and Saddles,” I had sprung to my first love, and had forgotten Beatrice and my sworn allegiance. Knowing how greatly I loved her, I now could understand, since it made me turn from her, how much greater must be my love for this, her only rival, the old life that was again inviting me.

I was no longer to be deceived; the one and only thing I really loved, the one thing I understood and craved, was the free, homeless, untrammelled life of the soldier of fortune. I wanted to see the shells splash up the earth again, I wanted to throw my leg across a saddle, I wanted to sleep on a blanket by a camp-fire, I wanted the kiss and caress of danger, the joy which comes when the sword wins honor and victory together, and I wanted the clear, clean view of right and wrong, that is given only to those who hourly walk with death.

I raised my head, and spoke very softly:

“It is too late. I am sorry. But I have decided. I must go.”

Lowell stepped out of the shadow, and faced me with the same strange look, partly of wonder, and partly of indignation.

“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 losing. Think of all the things you are giving up. Don’t be a weak child. This will affect your whole life. You have no right to decide it in a minute.”

I stepped to its hiding-place, and took out the sword my grandfather had carried in the Civil War; the sword I had worn in Honduras. I had hidden it away, that it might not remind me that once I, too, was a soldier. It acted on me like a potion. The instant my fingers touched its hilt, the blood, which had grown chilled, leaped through my body. In answer I held the sword toward Lowell. It was very hard to speak. They did not know how hard. They did not know how cruelly it hurt me to differ from them, and to part from them. The very thought of it turned me sick and miserable. But it was written. It had to be.

“You ask me to think of what I am giving up,” I said, gently. “I gave up this. I shall never surrender it again. I am not deciding in a minute. It was decided for me long ago. It’s a tradition. It’s handed down to me. My grandfather was Hamilton, of Cerro Gordo, of the City of Mexico, of Gettysburg. My father was ‘Fighting’ Macklin. He was killed at the head of his soldiers. All my people have been soldiers. One fought at the battle of Princeton, one died fighting the king at Culloden. It’s bred in me. It’s in the blood. It’s the blood of the Macklins that has decided this. And I—I am the last of the Macklins, and I must live and die like one.”

The house is quiet now. They have all left me to my packing, and are asleep. Lowell went early and bade me good-by at the gate. He was very sad and solemn. “God bless you, Royal,” he said, “and keep you safe, and bring you back to us.” And I watched him swinging down the silent, moon-lit road, knocking the icicles from the hedges with his stick. I stood there some time looking after him, for I love him very dearly, and then a strange thing happened. After he had walked quite a distance from the house, he suddenly raised his head and began to whistle a jolly, rollicking sea-song. I could hear him for some minutes. I was glad to think he took it so light-heartedly. It is good to know that he is not jealous of my great fortune.

To-night we spared each other the parting words. But to-morrow they must be spoken, when Aunt Mary and Beatrice come to see me sail away on the French liner. The ship leaves at noon, and ten days later I shall be in Havre. Ye gods, to think that in ten days I shall see Paris! And then, the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, the Indian Ocean, Singapore, and, at last, the yellow flags and black dragons of the enemy. It cannot last long, this row. I shall be coming home again in six months, unless the Mahdi makes trouble. Laguerre was three years in the Khedive’s service, and with his influence an ex-captain of the French army should have little difficulty in getting a commission in Egypt.

Then, after that, I really will come home. But not as an ex-soldier. This time I shall come home on furlough. I shall come home a real officer, and play the prodigal again to the two noblest and sweetest and best women in God’s world. All women are good, but they are the best. All women are so good, that when one of them thinks one of us is worthy to marry her, she pays a compliment to our entire sex. But as they are all good and all beautiful, Beatrice being the best and most beautiful, I was right not to think of marrying only one of them. With the world full of good women, and with a fight always going on somewhere, I am very wise not to “settle down.” I know I shall be very happy.

In a year I certainly must come back, a foreign officer on leave, and I shall go to West Point and pay my respects to the Commandant. The men who saw me turned out will have to present arms to me, and the older men will say to the plebs, “That distinguished-looking officer with the French mustache, and the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, is Captain Macklin. He was turned out of here. Now he’s only a soldier of fortune. He belongs to no country.”

But when the battalion is drawn up at retreat and the shadows stretch across the grass, I shall take up my stand once more on the old parade ground, with all the future Grants and Lees around me, and when the flag comes down, I shall raise my hand with theirs, and show them that I have a country, too, and that the flag we salute together is my flag still.