After dinner we went up on deck, where Captain Bonath of the Ypiranga joined the party. He was more than polite to N. and myself, in a frozen way, but the air was charged and tense, and the look of surprise, indignation, and resentment not yet gone from his face. In the course of the conversation it came out that the Brazilian consul in Vera Cruz is a Mexican! There was a scarcely perceptible shrug of the shoulders on the part of the captain, and Captain Watson caught and then avoided his eye. To all inquiries and innuendoes we have only answered that, as Washington seemed to put some hope in the A. B. C. mediation affair, it was thought best, at home, to pay Brazil the compliment of putting our affairs in her hands. The fact is that all that has been done at this special moment for our needy and suffering ones has been accomplished by the long, strong arm of England. Rowan, who was also at dinner, came away with us and we walked along the pier through our lines of sentinels pacing everywhere in the heavy darkness. Away back in the country, on the dim distant sand-dunes they are pacing too, alert, prepared for any surprise.
When we came out to the Minnesota not a breath was stirring over the glassy water. Captain Simpson met us at the gangway. I told him the air was a little tense on shore, and added that I wanted to have Tweedie come to see us to-morrow. So we arranged luncheon for to-day. Captain Simpson remarked, with his usual broad outlook, “The nations will have to work out things in their own way; but we, the individuals, can always show appreciation and courtesy.”
“Minnesota,” April 30th. 8 A.M.
Yesterday, at 9.30, Captain Watson came to fetch me to go to San Juan, dashing up to the ship in great style in his motor-launch. Captain Simpson sent Lieutenant Smyth, who was eager to see it, with us. We descended the gangway in the blazing sun and got into the launch, which, however, refused to move further. Finally, after some time of hot rolling on the glassy water, we transferred to one of the Minnesota’s boats, and in a few minutes I found myself landing, after two months, at the dreadful and picturesque fortress, under its new flag. The old one, let us hope, will never again fly over hunger, insanity, despair, and disease.[19]
We found Captain Chamberlain in his office. He is a strong, fine-looking young man. Indeed, our marines and blue-jackets are a magnificent-looking set, hard as nails, and endlessly eager. Captain Chamberlain was surrounded by all the signs of “occupation,” in more senses than one. Records, arms, ammunition, uniforms of the “old régime” were piled about, waiting till the more vital issues of flesh and blood, life and death, have been disposed of. Captain Chamberlain was in New York only a week ago, and now finds himself set to clean up, in all ways, this human dumping-ground of centuries. He detailed an orderly to accompany us, and we went through a door on which the Spanish orders of the day were still to be seen written in chalk.
We started through the big machine-house, which was in excellent up-keep, so the officers said, full of all sorts of valuable material, especially electrical. This brought us out on the big central patio, where three groups of fifty-one prisoners each sat blinking in the unaccustomed light, and waiting to have straw hats portioned out to them, temporarily shielding their heads from the sun with rags, dishes, pans, baskets, and the like. An extraordinary coughing, sneezing, spitting, and wheezing was going on. Even in the hot sunshine these men were pursued by the specters of bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma, and kindred ills. We went into a dim dungeon, just cleared of these one hundred and fifty-three men. It seemed as if we must cut the air to get in, it was so thick with human miasmas; and for hours afterward an acrid, stifling something remained in my lungs, though I kept inhaling deeply the sun-baked air. As my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I looked about; the dripping walls were oozing with filth; there were wet floors, and no furniture or sanitary fittings of any kind. A few shallow saucepans, such as I had seen rations poured into at my former visit, were lying about. The rest was empty, dark, reeking horror. But God knows the place was abundantly hung and carpeted and furnished with human misery, from the dull, physical ache of the half-witted peon, to the exquisite torture of the man of mind habituated to cleanliness and comfort. What appalling dramas have there been enacted I dare not think.
One was told me. A man, not long imprisoned, accidentally found, in the darkness, a stick and a thick, empty bottle. With the bottle he drove the stick deep into the brain of a man, unknown to him, who was dozing near him. When taken out to be shot he was found to be of the educated class. He said, in unavailing self-defense, that he had been crazed by the darkness and the suffocating stench.
On coming out into the blessed air again, we examined at rather close range these lines of men just readmitted to the fellowship of sun and sky. They presented a varied and disheartening study for the ethnologist—or conqueror. There was every type, from half-breed to full Indian; the majority of the faces were pitted by smallpox. A few of the men had small, treasured bundles, to which they clung, while others, except for the rags that covered them, were as unfettered by possessions as when they were born. Thick, matted, black hair and irregular growths of stubby, Indian beards gave their faces a savage aspect. At the end of one of the lines were two very young boys, not more than thirteen or fourteen, their faces still fresh and their eyes bright. I wanted to ask why they were there, but their line had received its hats, and they were marched out through the portcullis to the beach.
Many of the inmates of San Juan were conscripts awaiting the call to “fight” for their country; others were civil delinquents, murderers, thieves. Most of the poor brutes had a vacant look on their faces. The political prisoners had already been freed. Two of the big dungeons were still full. There were five or six hundred in one space, pending the cleaning out of the empty ones, when they were to be redistributed. Captain Chamberlain was in the patio, trying to expedite matters, when we came out of the first dungeon. I think he had some sixty men to assist him, and was wrestling with book and pencil, trying to make some sort of classification and record. We walked over to another corner to inspect a dungeon said to have chains on the walls and other horrors still in place. Between the thick bars of one where those sentenced to death for civil crimes were kept peered a sinister face, pockmarked, loose of mouth, and dull-eyed. I asked the owner of it what he had done. “Maté” (“I killed”), he answered, briefly and hopelessly. He knew he was to pay the penalty.
There has not yet been time for our men to investigate fully the meager, inexact records of the prison. We went through the patio, under the big portcullis, along the way leading by the canals or moats to the graveyard by the beach. This was speakingly empty. There were only a few graves, and those seemed to be of officers or commanders of the castle and members of their families long since dead. With mortality so constantly at work, and with no graves to be found, testimony, indeed, was given by the sharks swimming in the waters. A simpler process than burial was in practice: a hunting in the darkness, a shoveling out of bodies, a throwing to the sea—the ever-ready.