Shall I ever forget that ride? We rode three abreast, always at a rapid trot and sometimes even at a canter, the General himself always setting the pace. Just after leaving the field where the surrender had taken place the road broadened still more until it became a veritable highway, the broadest and best we had ever seen in Cuba, but disfigured here and there with the dead horses of officers, the saddle and headstall still on the carcass. The city was in plain sight now, but its aspect, with which we had become so familiar, was changing with every hundred yards.
At the junction of the Caney road a block house was passed with its usual trench and trocha, strong enough against infantry, as we all knew by now. This one was of unusual strength and we would have given it more serious attention had not our eyes been smitten with the sight of a veritable marvel. It might have been the white swan of Lohengrin there on the stony margin of the road, or the green dragon of Whantley, or the Holland submarine torpedo boat; but it was none of these. It was a carriage—a carriage.
I say it was a carriage, a hack, with girls in white muslin frocks in it, the driver lounging on the box and two miserable horses dozing in the harness. I suppose it would be quite impossible to make a reader understand how incongruous this apparition seemed to us. It was in use, no doubt, carrying refugees from Caney back into the city and its presence was easily accounted for. But Mr. Kipling's phantom rickshaw could hardly have produced a greater sensation.
"A carriage!"
"Say, will you look at that!"
"Well, for God's sake!"
"Damned if it isn't a carriage!"
"Say, Jim, look at the carriage!"
"It is a carriage for a fact—well, of all the things!"