But my experience in Latin America had taught me that it is always some one else who is killed there. Having missed seeing so many insurrections elsewhere, I felt it a duty to witness this one. And I wandered through the dim streets, deserted as on Christmas Eve, and gloomy again with drizzling rain. The soldiery were again on patrol, searching me at every half block, even though they had seen me searched by their cohorts just a few feet away.
No open windows gave me a view to-night of families gathered about a Christmas tree. Doors and windows alike were shut and tightly barred. Not a soul was to be met except the barefoot troops. Not a light was to be seen except the flickering street lamp at each corner.
At the leading hotel the door was unlocked, and I pushed inside. Instead of the usual swarm of native aristocrats, the only occupants of the café were the bartender, a bootblack, and three gringos. They were Doc, Sparks, and Pop. Doc had the little bootblack on his knee, feeding him cheese, and teaching him to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Sparks was shaking dice with the bartender to determine which should give the other his hat and go home bareheaded. Pop had four bottles of whiskey before him, with which the party was about to adjourn to his room, and he was covering the back of an envelope with figures in his effort to determine how four bottles could be evenly distributed among three men. Seeing me he threw the pencil in the air.
“Solved!” he cried.
And we adjourned to Pop’s quarters in the second story of the annex. I had some qualms as to the advisability of joining, for I dreaded the prospect of missing the revolution, but the other gringos already had reached the stage where refusal of such an invitation is considered an affront. Arrived in Pop’s room, they listened to my protest, and overruled it.
“You don’t need to see a revolution. We’ll tell you all about everything that happened in the whole history of Honduras. What do you want first?”
“How about the last revolution?”
Doc, elected raconteur for the three, assumed the attitude of a high-school declaimer, and announced:
“The last revolution.” He cleared his throat, and commenced dramatically. “I was standing in the doorway of the Young Men’s Christian Association—”
“In the doorway of the Agurcia,” corrected Sparks.