As we passed along one of the ledges we could hear sounds of life, almost of animation, coming through the loopholes that slanted in through the masonry—a yard and a half deep by four inches wide. These four-inch spaces were covered by a thick iron bar. When I had last passed there, a dead, despairing silence reigned. Now, all knew that something had happened, that more was to happen, and that good food was the order of the day. Coming back, we met the second detachment of fifty-one, being marched out to the sandy strip at the ocean-end of the fortress. Many of them will be freed to-day to join those other hundreds that I saw. They will know again the responsibilities, as well as the joys of freedom, but, alas, they will be of very little use to the state or to themselves. We walked up the broad stairs leading to the flat roofs covering the dungeons. A squad of our men had established themselves on the wide landing, with their folding-cots, rifles, and all the paraphernalia of their business. Captain Watson said, as we got upon the azotea, “The holes in the floor were ordered cut by Madero when he came into power.” I told him that I didn’t think so, they had seemed to me very old; and when we examined them the raised edges were found to be of an obsolete form and shape of brick, and the iron barrings seemed to have centuries of rust on them. Nothing was changed. Nothing had ever been changed. It remained for a foreign hand to open the doors.
The torpedo-house, which was near our landing, seemed business-like, clean, and very expensive, even to my inexpert eyes. Stores were being landed by one of the Minnesota’s boats—great sides of beef, bread, coffee, vegetables, sugar. I was so thankful to see them, and to know that hunger no longer stalked right under our bows.
I reached home in time for two baths and to change all my clothing before one o’clock, when Commander Tweedie arrived for lunch. He had a most interesting tale to tell of his journey down from Mexico City, and told it in the characteristic, deprecating way of an Englishman who has done something, but who neither wants credit nor feels that he has done anything to deserve it. He came back as far as Soledad in a special train, with a guard of twenty-five of the famous Twenty-ninth. At Soledad he saw a miserable, hungry, thirsty, worn-out party of Americans, men, women, and children, from Cordoba. Most of them had been in jail for eight days, and then found themselves stranded at Soledad for twenty-four hours, without food or drink, huddled up by the railroad station. Tweedie is a man of resource. Instead of getting back to Vera Cruz and reporting on the condition, he made up his mind that he would take the party on with him, or stay behind himself. After some telegraphing to Maass, with whom he had, fortunately, drunk a copita (oh, the power of the wicked copita!) as he passed his garrison, he finally got permission to start for Vera Cruz with the derelicts, under the fiction of their being English.
They had to walk the twenty blazing kilometers from Tejería, a sort of burning plowshare ordeal, one old lady and various children being carried in blankets. He gave them every available drop of liquid he had in his car, and he said the way the children lapped up the ginger-ale and lemonade was very amusing. Still under the auspices of Carden, a train-load of five or six hundred started, last night or this morning, for Coatzacoalcos. Sir Lionel, fearing a panic, decided not to say, till he gets off this last train-load, that our affairs are no longer in his hands. I think magnanimity can scarcely go further; my heart is full of gratitude for the inestimable services the English have rendered my countrypeople.
At four o’clock I went on shore to see Admiral Fletcher. Ensign Crisp (wearing side-arms) accompanied me. Captain Simpson thinks it more suitable to send some one with me, but never, in all her four hundred years or so of existence, has Vera Cruz been safer, more cheerful, more prosperous, more hygienic. The zopilotes circling the town must think mournfully of the days when everything was thrown into the street for all that flies or crawls to get fat and multiply on.
I found Admiral Fletcher in his headquarters at the Terminal, serene and powerful. He said, “I go out to the Florida to-morrow. I have finished my work here. Things are ready to be turned over to General Funston.” I told him not only of my admiration for his work during these last days, and what it entailed, but that more than all I admired his work of keeping peace in Mexican waters for fourteen months. A dozen incidents could have made for disturbance but for his calm judgment, his shrewd head, and the big, very human heart beating in his breast; and I said to him what I have repeated on many occasions, that it is due to Huerta, to Admiral Fletcher, and to Nelson that peace has been maintained during these long, difficult months. It was destined for an incident outside the radius of the power of these three to bring about the military occupation.
We spoke a few words of the old Indian, still wrestling on the heights. Admiral Fletcher ended by saying, in his quiet, convincing manner, “Doubtless when I get to Washington I will understand that point of view. Up to now I know it only from this end.”
I told him how I hated half-measures; how they were disastrous in every relation of life—family, civil, public, and international—and never had that been proven more clearly than here. Even he does not seem to know whether we have brought all this tremendous machinery to the shores of Mexico simply to retreat again, or whether we are to go on. As I went away, I could but tell him once more of my respect and affection for himself and my admiration for his achievements. I passed out of the room, with tears in my eyes. I had seen a great and good man at the end of a long and successful task. Later, other honors will come to him. Probably he will get the fleet. But never again will he, for fourteen long months, keep peace, with his battle-ships filling a rich and coveted harbor. When all is said and done, that is his greatest work.
XXV
Our recall from Mexican soil—A historic dinner with General Funston—The navy turns over the town of Vera Cruz to the army—The march of the six thousand blue-jackets—Evening on the Minnesota.