Captain Macklin: His Memoirs Part 21

The woman accordingly procured a fishing-boat and a crew of three men, and I dug up my money-belt, and my revolver, and thanked her and paid her, for Aiken and for myself, as well as one can pay a person for saving one's life. The next night, as soon as the sun set, I seated myself in the stern of the boat, and we pushed out from the sh.o.r.e of Honduras, and were soon rising and falling on the broad swell of the Pacific.

My crew were simple fishermen, unconcerned with politics, and as I had no fear of harm from them, I curled up on a mat at their feet and instantly fell asleep.

When I again awoke the sun was well up, and when I raised my head the boatman pointed to a fringe of palms that hung above the water, and which he told me rose from the Island of Amapala. Two hours later we made out the wharves and the custom-house of the port itself, and, lying well toward us in the harbor, a big steamer with the smoke issuing from her stacks, and the American flag hanging at the stern. I was still weak and shaky, and I must confess that I choked a bit at the sight of the flag, and at the thought that, in spite of all, I was going safely back to life, and Beatrice and Aunt Mary. The name I made out on the stern of the steamer was Barracouta, and I considered it the prettiest name I had ever known, and the steamer the handsomest ship that ever sailed the sea. I loved her from her keel to her topmast. I loved her every line and curve, her every rope and bolt. But specially did I love the flag at her stern and the blue Peter at the fore. They meant home. They meant peace, friends, and my own countrymen.

I gave the boatmen a double eagle, and we all shook hands with great glee, and then with new strength and una.s.sisted I pulled myself up the companion-ladder, and stood upon the deck.

When I reached it I wanted to embrace the first man I saw. I somehow expected that he would want to embrace me, too, and say how glad he was I had escaped. But he happened to be the ship's purser, and, instead of embracing me, he told me coldly that steerage pa.s.sengers are not allowed aft. But I did not mind, I knew that I was a disreputable object, but I also knew that I had gold in my money-belt, and that clothes could be bought from the slop-chest.

So I said in great good-humor, that I wanted a first-cla.s.s cabin, the immediate use of the bathroom, and the services of the ship's barber.

My head was bound in a dirty bandage. My uniform, which I still wore as I had nothing else, was in rags from the briers, and the mud of the swamps and the sweat of the fever had caked it with dirt. I had an eight days' beard, and my bare feet were in native sandals. So my feelings were not greatly hurt because the purser was not as genuinely glad to see me as I was to see him.

"A first-cla.s.s pa.s.sage costs forty dollars gold--in advance," he said.

"That's all right," I answered, and I laughed from sheer, foolish happiness, "I'll take six."

We had been standing at the head of the companion-ladder, and as the purser moved rather reluctantly toward his cabin, a group of men came down the deck toward us.

One of them was a fat, red-faced American, the others wore the uniform of Alvarez. When they saw me they gave little squeals of excitement, and fell upon the fat man gesticulating violently, and pointing angrily at me.

The purser halted, and if it were possible, regarded me with even greater unfriendliness. As for myself, the sight of the brown, impish faces, and the familiar uniforms filled me with disgust. I had thought I was done with brawling and fighting, of being hated and hunted. I had had my fill of it. I wanted to be let alone, I wanted to feel that everybody about me was a friend. I was not in the least alarmed, for now that I was under the Stars and Stripes, I knew that I was immune from capture, but the mere possibility of a row was intolerable.

One of the Honduranians wore the uniform of a colonel, and was, as I guessed, the Commandante of the port. He spoke to the fat man in English, but in the same breath turned to one of his lieutenants, and gave an order in Spanish.

The lieutenant started in my direction, and then hesitated and beckoned to some one behind me.

I heard a patter of bare feet on the deck, and a dozen soldiers ran past me, and surrounded us. I noticed that they and their officers belonged to the Eleventh Infantry. It was the regiment I had driven out of the barracks at Santa Barbara.

The fat American in his shirt-sleeves was listening to what the Commandante was saying, and apparently with great dissatisfaction. As he listened he scowled at me, chewing savagely on an unlit cigar, and rocking himself to and fro on his heels and toes. His thumbs were stuck in his suspenders, so that it looked as though, with great indecision he was pulling himself forward and back.

I turned to the purser and said, as carelessly as I could: "Well, what are we waiting for?"

But he only shook his head.

With a gesture of impatience the fat man turned suddenly from the Commandante and came toward me.

He spoke abruptly and with the tone of a man holding authority.

"Have you got your police-permit to leave Amapala?" he demanded.

"No," I answered.

"Well, why haven't you?" he snapped.

"I didn't know I had to have one," I said. "Why do you ask?" I added.

"Are you the captain of this ship?"

"I think I am," he suddenly roared, as though I had questioned his word. "Anyway, I've got enough say on her to put you ash.o.r.e if you don't answer my questions."

I shut my lips together and looked away from him. His tone stirred what little blood there was still left in me to rebellion; but when I saw the sh.o.r.e with its swamps and ragged palms, I felt how perilously near it was, and Panama became suddenly a distant mirage. I was as helpless as a sailor clinging to a plank. I felt I was in no position to take offence, so I bit my lips and tried to smile.

The Captain shook his head at me, as though I were a prisoner in the dock.

"Do you mean to say," he shouted, "that our agent sold you a ticket without you showing a police-permit?"

"I haven't got a ticket," I said. "I was just going to buy one now."

The Commandante thrust himself between us.

"Ah, what did I tell you?" he cried. "You see? He is escaping. This is the man. He answers all the descriptions. He was dressed just so; green coat, red trousers, very torn and dirty--head in bandage. This is the description. Is it not so?" he demanded of his lieutenants. They nodded vigorously.

"Why--a-yes, that is the man," the Commandante cried in triumph. "Last night he stabbed Jose Mendez in the Libertad Billiard Hall. He has wanted to murder him. If Jose, he die, this man he is murderer. He cannot go. He must come to land with me."

He gave an order in Spanish, and the soldiers closed in around us.

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 pa.s.senger 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-pa.s.sengers 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 d.a.m.ned beach-combers and stowaways stealing on board, and the Commandante chasing 'em all over my ship and holding up my papers. You go ash.o.r.e!" 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 pa.s.senger 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.

"Do you mean to tell me," I cried, speaking very slowly, for I was incredulous, and I was so weak besides that it was difficult for me to find the words, "that you refuse to protect me from these half-breeds, that you are going to turn me over to them--to be shot! And you call yourself an American?" I cried, "and this an American ship!"

As I turned from him I found that the pa.s.sengers had come forward and now surrounded us; big, tall men in cool, clean linen, and beautiful women, shading their eyes with their fans, and little children crowding in between them and clinging to their skirts. To my famished eyes they looked like angels out of Paradise. They were my own people, and they brought back to me how I loved the life these men were plotting to take from me. The sight of them drove me into a sort of frenzy.

"Are you going to take that man's word against mine?" I cried at the Captain. "Are you going to let him murder me in sight of that flag? You know he'll do it. You know what they did to Rojas on one of your own ships. Do you want another man butchered in sight of your pa.s.sengers?"

The Commandante crowded in front of the ship's captain.

"That man is my prisoner," he cried. "He is going to jail, to be tried by law. He shall see his consul every day. And so, if you try to leave this harbor with him, I will sink your ship from the fort!"

The Captain turned with an oath and looked up to the second officer, who was leaning over the rail of the bridge above us.