III
When the launch did leave for Honduras, there was further formality. It was scheduled to depart a las nueve en punto—at nine o’clock sharp—with much verbal emphasis on the sharp. A squad of Salvadorean soldiers manned the dock, and halted me at my approach. My baggage was placed in the office, and the door locked, and I was motioned to a bench. Stevedores were loading the diminutive vessel with a set of dilapidated furniture, which did not appear worth transporting from one place to another, but which was being appraised by a pompous official, and duly taxed, while its owner waved his hands and proclaimed that he was being robbed. Official and owner finally adjourned to the governor’s residence to settle the dispute, and did not reappear until nearly noon.
Meanwhile the passengers waited. Cargo difficulties having been adjusted, the pompous official called each of us to the office in turn, collected a small fee, and took our names and histories. He then compiled a list, and sent it away to be typewritten for presentation to the commandante of police. After another hour or two, the list reappeared, covered with huge red seals, and flowing signatures. There followed next a minute inspection of baggage, which, in other lands, occurs only when one enters the country. My notes aroused suspicion. The inspector examined each page, pretending to read it. Was I carrying away the country’s military secrets? The eight barefoot soldiers gathered closer, and glared suspiciously. These secrets were important.
But at last we were permitted to embark, still with formality. The soldiers lined up before the gangway. The official read our names from the list, and we embarked one by one, surveyed by the accusing eyes of authority. The captain of the launch took the wheel, and jangled a bell as a signal to the engineer three feet behind him; the engineer jangled another bell to let the captain know he had understood the signal correctly. And we were off for Honduras, visible just across the bay—at some hour of mid-afternoon en punto.
IV
It was a brief voyage, through island-dotted waters alive with pelicans and seagulls, to Amapala, the one Honduranean port of entry on the Pacific, situated upon a volcanic island.
Another official glanced idly at my passport, and waved aside my baggage without examining it. Several weeks later, when I departed, the same official was to raise as much rumpus as the Salvadorean authorities had raised, but to-day he offered no difficulties. Within a few minutes, we were all back in the launch, chugging toward the mainland, to San Lorenzo, where commenced the automobile road to the Honduran capital.
Arriving too late to catch the daily truck, we settled ourselves for the night. San Lorenzo was merely a ramshackle village of thatched huts in the jungle, a village in keeping with Honduras’ reputation as the most backward country in Central America.
Two Chinamen, however, had opened a neat little hotel there, and were ready for business. And there was entertainment in plenty, for Hop On and Hop Off, co-proprietors of the establishment, were engaged in discharging their native servant. The Honduranean, a big, niggerish-looking fellow with murder in his eye—in both eyes, to be accurate—was objecting to being discharged. He kept slouching from table to table, picking up dishes, and smashing them on the floor. Hop On and Hop Off were going frantic with rage at each new act of vandalism, but neither of them was of heroic stature, wherefore they resorted to strategy rather than force. They had taken shelter behind two doors at opposite ends of the dining room, and would pop out from concealment one at a time to shout curses at their erstwhile employee. No sooner would the Honduranean rush at one with his knife, than the door would slam shut in his face, while the other door opened and the other Hop screamed curses from the opposite wall. Finally, tired with the exertion, the big native accepted his discharge as final, and strolled outside to tell his troubles to the rest of the village, which had assembled to watch the excitement.
They were all ugly-visaged fellows. They lacked the gentle suavity of the neighboring peoples. They might have been no taller than Size B Irishmen, but after one had dwelt among the Lilliputians of Guatemala, they looked like giants. A taint of negro blood was evident in their features, for Honduras—which has a long strip of coast upon the Caribbean—was in past years a favorite refuge for run-away slaves from the West Indies, and its population to-day is the most heterogeneous in Central America. Little tufts of goat-like whiskers on chin and cheek did not add to their personal beauty. Altogether, this was the least charming race I had yet discovered on my travels.