“The first,” said the captain, “occurred one hot afternoon while I was lying in a hammock under a cypress tree. It was a very oppressive day and I was endeavoring to sleep, when suddenly from somewhere came the notes of violin music. Somebody was playing, ‘Maryland, my Maryland.’ The air at once brought before my mind the two years I had passed at college in northern Ohio, for one of my old fraternity songs had been set to this music. I saw the fresh green campus, bordered with maples, the gray weather-stained dormitories, the red brick gymnasium, and before me passed one after another of my old college friends. An irresistible longing came to rise and hurry to the land where they lived, away from that land of strangers.”
“And the second time?” asked Señor Cisneros.
“Was one night while lying awake and tortured with fever I heard the strains of ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ Then came a picture of my wife and child, of the wooden house, opposite the Episcopal church, in the little village where I had left them. I could see the yard, the well-sweep, yes, and I could hear the wooden roller creak as the bucket was hauled from the cool depths; and in my longing I believe I called out for some of that cold, crystal water which I had drunk when a boy.”
“The third?”
“The third,” said Captain Saunders, sitting upright, “was at Greytown, or San Juan del Norte, on a Christmas day. I was looking out into the bay when there rounded a cape and steamed in full view a ship of graceful lines, and I saw fluttering from her gaff——”
“Oh, father!” interrupted Carl. “A man-of-war is coming into the harbor!”
They all jumped to their feet, and hastened to the end of the veranda.
“There,” said the captain, “there’s the picture I saw. Look! The stars and stripes! An American war-ship has arrived.”
It was so. A cruiser, of graceful lines and tapering masts, was moving slowly over the passive waters of the bay, and streaming from her halyards was Old Glory. They watched her in silence as she steamed to a point opposite Chucuito, where the anchor was let go, and then the stillness of the afternoon was broken by the discharge of cannon as her forward guns fired a salute to the Peruvian flag that had been broken at the fore truck.
“That must be the Pensacola,” said Harvey.