My post thenceforward was, with that of others, at the head of a lane not far from the town, where we heard the voices of the combatants and the whistling of balls, but could see nothing. After some hours' comparative quiet, the drums began beating a charge again, and every gun on the ground seemed awakened and doing its best. Then there was a loud, heart-lifted shout, which rose above the din, and gave us too much joy; and, a moment after, Colonel Casey, a hard-faced, one-armed man, spurred past towards Rivas, saying, as he went, that our men were in the plaza, the greasers were running, and "we had 'em, sure as hell!" I recollect some one observing, that it were of no use to believe Colonel Casey, for he was the greatest liar in the army of Nicaragua. And shortly after, the firing having ceased, another officer, Baldwin, I think it was, came past and told us, with curses of vexation, that the men had been checked, by command, in the heat of the assault, when the greasers were already wavering,—and that the latter, recovering, had rebarricaded so strongly, that we might now all go back to Rivas and whistle.
However, this failure was not the end. Towards evening, another detachment renewed the assault, and the uproar commenced again. It seems, that, during the whole day, there was no simultaneous attack by all the detachments. Now, it was the infantry who charged,—with the riflemen in reserve, probably to prevent a rout, in case the enemy pursued a repulse; then, it was the riflemen, with the infantry in reserve; and so alternating through three or four charges;—so that there never could have been more than a very contemptible force facing the enemy at one time.
As it grew late, the wagons began to jolt past, removing the wounded to Rivas. Some were drunk and merry in spite of their wounds; and their laughter and drunken sport made strange concert with the cries and curses of the others. I remember one man going by on foot, with a small cut on the brow, from which blood was flowing copiously. He said the wound was a mere scratch,—too slight to have sent him out of the fight, had not the blood run down into his eyes and blinded him, preventing his aim. Yet this small affair brought his death shortly afterwards. The surgeons at Rivas gave him no care,—not so much as to wash his wound, or have him wash it; and the climate is so malignant to strangers, that the smallest cut, with the best care, heals only after long hesitation.
At length night came on, and our men drew off,—foiled at every attempt, having sustained great loss, and, apparently, made little impression on the enemy. They lay on their arms, however, in the outskirts, expecting to renew the attack during the night; and, to assist at this, a party of rangers had orders to leave their horses in quarters, and march on foot to join the others. Quitting our horses with regret, we walked to San Jorge, where the foot lay, awaiting the hour of attack. We found them stomach-qualmed with hunger, weary of fighting, thoroughly disheartened, and provoked against their officers. One told how an officer, whose duty it was to lead the charge, took shelter behind an orange-tree no bigger than his wrist, and shouted, "Go on, men! go on!" when he should have been saying, "Come on!" and how another, become stupid with aguardiente, had tried to force his men to a barricade, when their cartridge-boxes were empty, and their unbayonetted arms useless. There seemed also to have been slackness among the men; and some were lamenting, that the First Rifles were not what they used to be;—anciently they only wanted to see the greasers; to-day they were found taking to the bushes. They all agreed that no great number of the enemy had been killed,—whilst the filibusters, they doubted, must have lost nearly one-third of their men and many of their best officers;—among the number I recollect Major Dusenbury, highly praised.
There was one affair, however, over which they crowed and took fierce satisfaction. They told it thus:—A detached party, of about thirty of them, were seated on the roadside drinking aguardiente, preparatory to advancing. On one side was a cactus-hedge, and a grove of plantain a little in front. Whilst they sat here deeply absorbed in the aguardiente, a considerable party of the enemy got amongst the plantain-trees, and fired a hundred muskets into them at the distance of a few rods. Strange to say, the greasers were so nervous at finding no barricade between them, or were such contemptible marksmen, that not a shot took serious effect; only the demijohn of aguardiente was shivered into a thousand pieces, and the liquor ran out into the grass. The filibusters jumped up astounded and disordered; but, seeing so much good liquor running away wastefully into the grass, they grew terrible. It was an insult and injury which both men and officers appreciated. It gave every man in the troop a personal quarrel with the enemy. "Charge 'em!" shouted the captain; "we'll pay the scoundrels for the miserable trick!" At full speed they swept through a gap in the hedge, and rushed into the plantain-grove before the enemy had time to reload. But when the greasers saw them coming on fiercely, their hearts failed them, and, turning their backs, they fled towards the town. Never were filibusters or men-of-war better pleased than now! They rattled on furiously behind the nimble greasers. They sent howling death into their midst at every step of the chase. They passed bloody forms stretched here and there upon the earth. They followed the flying foe even to the edge of the town, and saw its hostile swarm running hither and thither in alarm.—Alas! General William Walker, why were you not here at this propitious moment, with all your brave spirits, invincible with rum, behind you? Then might you have rushed with the fugitives into the town, and hurled the yellow-skinned invaders into the lake! Then might the flag of Regeneration have waved even at this day over the hills and valleys of Nicaragua,—and the unfortunate author of this history have received a reward for his services!—Ay de mí! Even now, reposing in the shade of the palm-tree, fanned by the orange-scented breeze that blows over the lake, I might drink the immortal juice of the sugarcane, called aguardiente, and dream, and gaze at the cloud-wrapped cone of Ometepec!—But I must forget this.
The dead killed in this plantain-patch were all that our men obtained sight of. How many fell behind the barricades, where all the serious fighting took place, it was impossible to tell; though there was no reason to think that the enemy, fighting under cover, had suffered at all proportionably with our men, or, indeed, had suffered equally, losing man for man, except that ours were the better marksmen.
We passed a cold and sleepless night, awaiting the word to take up arms and advance; but in the mean time General Walker had changed his intention, and, when morning broke, the whole force quitted the outskirts and marched back into Rivas. The killed and wounded by the whole affair were reported officially at one hundred, or thereabout,—underrated, most probably, for effect upon the men. It was enough, however, considering the filibusters had no more than four hundred engaged. Amongst them, though not reported, was that devil-hearted dog which I have mentioned heretofore. He fell, shot through the head, whilst advancing with the others toward the barricade. He was lamented by the whole army,—by many superstitiously, even,—who said he had gone through all Walker's hard stresses so far untouched, and his end was prophetic of downfall.
And it is even true, that from this battle General Walker's prospects clouded rapidly. A proclamation, issued by the Costa-Rican government, promising fugitive filibusters free passage to the United States, found its way into Rivas, and immediately worked immense mischief, and was, indeed, the instrument of his overthrow. The men had no sooner seen it than they began to leave as fast as they found opportunities to escape. Guards were placed around the town, and spies in every company; but it was of no avail; and every morning it was rumored through the camp that this or that number had got off for Costa Rica during the night. General Walker, in a speech which he made a few days after to infuse new spirit, said that these were the cowards,—whose absence was beneficial, and from whom it was well that the army should be purged. However, this was exaggerated. It is true, doubtless, that there were many leaving merely from fear, who would have chosen to stay with him, rather than trust to the promises of a people believed to be treacherous and promise-breaking, and whose hatred they had incurred,—had the battles of San Jorge and Obraja been successful. And, indeed, the filibuster ranks were not wanting in cowards. Cowards might be induced to come on a desperate enterprise like this, through misrepresentation by Walker's own agents; through mere thoughtlessness, or mistake,—not knowing what soldier's metal was in them; or, with the bayonet of Hunger against their backs at home, they might be unmindful of any other bayonet on the distant shore of Nicaragua. (It should be musket-shot, however; for the greasers never found heart to use the bayonet.) And then again, many, who, when they first reached Nicaragua, were no cowards, after a few months' stay, became changed,—by the depressing effects of fever, by loss of confidence in their drunken officers, and by the absence of all incentive to fight stoutly for a leader so unpopular as Walker. It was a common saying, that in this army an old rule was reversed,—the veterans were worse fighters than the recruits. The soldier was at his best when he first landed upon the Isthmus, raw and healthy. After that, he rapidly deteriorated, losing spirit with every battle, until he became at last a thoroughbred coward. Seven or eight greasers to one filibuster was said to be good fighting, at one time; but now three or four to one was thought to be great odds; and before the game ended, I hear, they were become equally matched, man for man, almost. But, whatever General Walker said in his speech, this class of weak ones were not always the deserters. It required some little energy or strength of legs, with which these were unfurnished, to go over to the enemy at San Jorge, or walk down to Costa Rica; and the fact was, that from the first many of the healthiest and liveliest men, whose defection could least be borne, were leaving,—not from fear, mainly, but because by this proclamation they were offered the first opportunity to escape from a disagreeable service to which they thought themselves bound by no tie of love or honor.
It was now about time for a steamer to arrive at San Juan on the Pacific with the California passengers; and the next day, or the second day, perhaps, succeeding the battle at San Jorge, General Walker said to General Sanders, in his quiet, whining way,—"General Sanders, I am going to take two hundred and fifty riflemen and the rangers and go down to San Juan to bring up our recruits to Rivas; and if three thousand greasers are on the Transit road, I intend to go through them." Accordingly, the riflemen, the ranger regiment, and a small party of artillerymen with one of the two brass howitzers, met in the plaza, and set out on this expedition at midnight, with Generals Walker and Sanders both in the party.
The route of the detachment was the one I have mentioned before as inland through the forest, and striking the Transit road some miles west of the lake and Virgin Bay. It was firmly believed that we should meet the enemy somewhere on the Transit road,—since the hills through which it passed offered many excellent barricading-points, and it would seem a matter of great importance to them to cut us off from junction with any fresh recruits the steamer might land at San Juan. So there was much preparatory drinking amongst the officers, (yet I say it not in slander, for many were brave enough for any deed, and drank before battle only because they drank always,)—and less amongst the men solely because spirits had become scarce around Rivas, and dear; and there were very few, truly, who had not ceased long since to carry coin in their pockets. The captain of our company, who was an incautious man, and was frequently drinking more than was needful, on this occasion drank more than he was fitted to bear; and whilst the detachment was stopped some time getting the wheel-piece over a hard place in the road, his strong friend Aguardiente brought him to the ground, as he sat on his mule near the front with his company,—where he lay in eruptive state like a young toper, and so falling asleep lost his mule, which strayed into the forest to browse, causing him much embarrassment and confused search when the detachment was ready to start. Being up again, however, the sleep and stomachic alleviation proved beneficial, and we, his soldiers, followed after him in much greater comfort and confidence.