Captain Macklin: His Memoirs

by Richard Harding Davis

“I tell you you did sell us out,” Heinze roared. “And you’re a coward besides, and I tell you so to your face!” He sprang at Aiken, and Aiken shrank back. It made me sick to see him do it. I had such a contempt for the men against him that I hated his not standing up to them. It was to hide the fact that he had stepped back, that I jumped in front of him and pretended to restrain him. I tried to make it look as though had I not interfered, he would have struck at Heinze.

The German had swung around toward the men behind him, as though he were subpoenaing them as witnesses.

“I call him a coward to his face!” he shouted. But when he turned again I was standing in front of Aiken, and he halted in surprise, glaring at me. I don’t know what made me do it, except that I had heard enough of their recriminations, and was sick with disappointment. I hated Heinze and all of them, and myself for being there.

“Yes, you can call him a coward,” I said, as offensively as I could, “with fifty men behind you. How big a crowd do you want before you dare insult a man?” Then I turned on the others. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves,” I cried, “to all of you set on one man in your own camp? I don’t know anything about this row and I don’t want to know, but there’s fifty men here against one, and I’m on the side of that one. You’re a lot of cheap bullies,” I cried, “and this German drill-sergeant,” I shouted, pointing at Heinze, “who calls himself an officer, is the cheapest bully of the lot.” I jerked open the buckle which held my belt and revolver, and flung them on the ground. Then I slipped off my coat, and shoved it back of me to Aiken, for I wanted to keep him out of it. It was the luck of Royal Macklin himself that led me to take off my coat instead of drawing my revolver. At the Point I had been accustomed to settle things with my fists, and it had been only since I started from the coast that I had carried a gun. A year later, in the same situation, I would have reached for it. Had I done so that morning, as a dozen of them assured me later, they would have shot me before I could have got my hand on it. But, as it was, when I rolled up my sleeves the men began to laugh, and some shouted: “Give him room,” “Make a ring,” “Fair play, now,” “Make a ring.” The semi-circle spread out and lengthened until it formed a ring, with Heinze and Reeder, and Aiken holding my coat, and myself in the centre of it.

I squared off in front of the German and tapped him lightly on the chest with the back of my hand.

“Now, then,” I cried, taunting him, “I call you a coward to your face. What are you going to do about it?”

For an instant he seemed too enraged and astonished to move, and the next he exploded with a wonderful German oath and rushed at me, tugging at his sword. At the same moment the men gave a shout and the ring broke. I thought they had cried out in protest when they saw Heinze put his hand on his sword, but as they scattered and fell back I saw that they were looking neither at Heinze nor at me, but at someone behind me. Heinze, too, halted as suddenly as though he had been pulled back by a curbed bit, and, bringing his heels together, stood stiffly at salute. I turned and saw that everyone was falling out of the way of a tall man who came striding toward us, and I knew on the instant that he was General Laguerre. At the first glance I disassociated him from his followers. He was entirely apart. In any surroundings I would have picked him out as a leader of men. Even a civilian would have known he was a soldier, for the signs of his calling were stamped on him as plainly as the sterling mark on silver, and although he was not in uniform his carriage and countenance told you that he was a personage.

He was very tall and gaunt, with broad shoulders and a waist as small as a girl’s, and although he must then have been about fifty years of age he stood as stiffly erect as though his spine had grown up into the back of his head.

At the first glance he reminded me of Van Dyke’s portrait of Charles I. He had the same high-bred features, the same wistful eyes, and hewore his beard and mustache in what was called the Van Dyke fashion, before Louis Napoleon gave it a new vogue as the “imperial.”

It must have been that I read the wistful look in his eyes later, for at the moment of our first meeting it was a very stern Charles I. who confronted us, with the delicate features stiffened in anger, and the eyes set and burning. Since then I have seen both the wistful look and the angry look many times, and even now I would rather face the muzzle of a gun than the eyes of General Laguerre when you have offended him.