I saw that I was in great peril, in danger more real than any I had faced in open fight since I had entered Honduras. For the men who had met me then had fought with fair weapons. These men were trying to take away my life with a trick, with cunning lies and false witnesses.
They knew the Captain might not surrender a passenger who was only a political offender, but that he could not harbor a criminal. And at the first glance at my uniform, and when he knew nothing more of me than that I wore it, the Commandante had trumped up this charge of crime, and had fitted to my appearance the imaginary description of an imaginary murderer. And I knew that he did this that he might send me, bound hand and foot, as a gift to Alvarez, or that he might, for his own vengeance, shoot me against a wall.
I knew how little I would receive of either justice or mercy. I had heard of Dr. Rojas killed between decks on a steamer of this same line; of Bonilla taken from the Ariadne and murdered on this very wharf at this very port of Amapala; of General Pulido strangled in the launch of the Commandante of Corinto and thrown overboard, while still in the sight of his fellow-passengers on the Southern Cross.
It was a degraded, horrible, inglorious end—to be caught by the heels after the real battle was lost; to die of fever in a cell; to be stabbed with bayonets on the wharf, and thrown to the carrion harbor-sharks.
I swung around upon the Captain, and fought for my life as desperately as though I had a rope around my neck.
“That man is a liar,” I cried. “I was not in Amapala last night. I came from San Lorenzo—this morning. The boat is alongside now; you can ask the men who brought me. I’m no murderer. That man knows I’m no murderer. He wants me because I belonged to the opposition government. It’s because I wear this uniform he wants me. I’m no criminal. He has no more right to touch me here, than he would if I were on Broadway.”
The Commandante seized the Captain’s arm.
“As Commandante of this port,” he screamed, “I tell you if you do not surrender the murderer to me, your ship shall not sail. I will take back your clearance-papers.”
The Captain turned on me, shaking his red fists, and tossing his head like a bull. “You see that!” he cried. “You see what you get me into, coming on board my ship without a permit! That’s what I get at every banana-patch along this coast, a lot of damned beach-combers and stowaways stealing on board, and the Commandante chasing ‘em all over my ship and holding up my papers. You go ashore!” he ordered. He swept his arm toward the gangway. “You go to Kessler, our consul. If you haven’t done nothing wrong, he’ll take care of you. You haven’t got a ticket, and you haven’t got a permit, and you’re no passenger of mine! Over you go; do you hear me? Quick now, over you go.”
I could not believe that I heard the man aright. He seemed to be talking a language I did not know.