Captain Macklin: His Memoirs Part 22

"Up anchor," the Captain shouted. "Get her under weigh! There is your answer," he cried, turning upon me. "I'm not going to have this ship held up any longer, and I'm not going to risk the lives of these ladies and gentlemen by any bombardment, either. You're only going to jail.

I'll report the matter to our consul at Corinto, and he'll tell our minister."

"Corinto!" I replied. "I'll be dead before you've pa.s.sed that lighthouse."

The Captain roared with anger.

"Can't you hear what he says," he shouted. "He says he'll fire on my ship. They've fired on our ships before! I'm not here to protect every d.a.m.ned scalawag that tries to stowaway on my ship. I'm here to protect the owners, and I mean to do it. Now you get down that ladder, before we throw you down."

I knew his words were final. From the bow I heard the creak of the anchor-chains as they were drawn on board, and from the engine-room the tinkle of bells.

The ship was abandoning me. My last appeal had failed. My condition was desperate.

"Protect your owners, and yourself, d.a.m.n you!" I cried. "You're no American. You're no white man. No American would let a conch-n.i.g.g.e.r run his ship. To h.e.l.l with your protection!"

All the misery of the last two months, the bitterness of my dismissal from the Point, the ignominy of our defeat and flight, rose in me and drove me on. "And I don't want the protection of that flag either," I cried. "I wasn't good enough to serve it once, and I don't need it now."

It should be remembered that when I spoke these words I thought my death was inevitable and immediate, that it had been brought upon me by one of my own countrymen, while others of my countrymen stood indifferently by, and I hope that for what I said in that moment of fever and despair I may be forgiven.

"I can protect myself!" I cried.

Before anyone could move I whipped out my gun and held it over the Commandante's heart, and at the same instant without turning my eyes from his face I waved my other hand at the pa.s.sengers. "Take those children away," I shouted.

"Don't move!" I yelled in Spanish at the soldiers. "If one of you raises his musket I'll kill him." I pressed the c.o.c.ked revolver against the Commandante's chest. "Now, then, take me ash.o.r.e," I called to his men.

"You know me, I'm Captain Macklin. Captain Macklin, of the Foreign Legion, and you know that six of you will die before you get me. Come on," I taunted. "Which six is it to be?"

Out of the corners of my eyes I could see the bayonets lifting cautiously and forming a ring of points about me, and the sight, and my own words lashed me into a frenzy of bravado.

"Oh, you don't remember me, don't you?" I cried. "You ought to remember the Foreign Legion! We drove you out of Santa Barbara and Tabla Ve and Comyagua, and I'm your Vice-President! Take off your hats to your Vice-President! To Captain Macklin, Vice-President of Honduras!"

{Ill.u.s.tration: I sprang back against the cabin}

I sprang back against the cabin and swung the gun in swift half-circles.

The men shrank from it as though I had lashed them with a whip. "Come on," I cried, "which six is it to be? Come on, you cowards, why don't you take me!"

The only answer came from a voice that was suddenly uplifted at my side.

I recognized it as the voice of the ship's captain.

"Put down that gun!" he shouted.

But I only swung it the further until it covered him also. The man stood in terror of his ship's owners, he had a seaman's dread of international law, but he certainly was not afraid of a gun. He regarded it no more than a pointed finger, and leaned eagerly toward me. To my amazement I saw that his face was beaming with excitement and delight.

"Are you Captain Macklin?" he cried.

I was so amazed that for a moment I could only gape at him while I still covered him with the revolver.

"Yes," I answered.

"Then why in h.e.l.l didn't you say so!" he roared, and with a bellow like a bull he threw himself upon the Commandante. He seized him by his epaulettes and pushed him backward. With the strength of a bull he b.u.t.ted and shoved him across the deck.

"Off my ship you!" he roared. "Every one of you; you're a gang of murdering cutthroats."

The deck-hands and the ship-stewards, who had gathered at the gangway to a.s.sist in throwing me down it, sprang to the Captain's aid.

"Over with him, boys," he roared. "Clear the ship of them. Throw them overboard." The crew fell upon the astonished soldiers, and drove them to the side. Their curses and shrieks filled the air, the women retreated screaming, and I was left alone, leaning limply against the cabin with my revolver hanging from my fingers.

It began and ended in an instant, and as the ship moved forward and the last red-breeched soldier disappeared headforemost down the companion-ladder, the Captain rushed back to me and clutched me by both shoulders. Had it not been for the genial grin on his fat face, I would have thought that he meant to hurl me after the others.

"Now then, Captain Macklin," he cried, "you come with me. You come to my cabin, and that's where you stay as long as you are on my ship. You're no pa.s.senger, you're my guest, and there's nothing on board too good for you."

"But I don't--understand," I protested faintly. "What does it mean?"

"What does it mean?" he shouted. "It means you're the right sort for me!

I haven't heard of nothing but your goings-on for the last three trips.

Vice-President of Honduras!" he exclaimed, shaking me as though I were a carpet. "A kid like you! You come to my cabin and tell me the whole yarn from start to finish. I'd rather carry you than old man Huntington himself!"

The pa.s.sengers had returned, and stood listening to his exclamations, in a wondering circle. The stewards and deck-hands, panting with their late exertions, were grinning at me with unmistakable interest.

"Bring Captain Macklin's breakfast to my cabin, you," he shouted to them. "And, Mr. Owen," he continued, addressing the Purser, with great impressiveness, "this is Captain Macklin, himself. He's going with us as my guest."

With a wink, he cautiously removed my revolver from my fingers, and slapped me jovially on the shoulder. "Son!" he exclaimed, "I wouldn't have missed the sight of you holding your gun on that gang for a cargo of bullion. I suspicioned it was you, the moment you did it. That will be something for me to tell them in 'Frisco, that will. Now, you come along," he added, suddenly, with parental solicitude, "and take a cup of coffee, and a dose of quinine, or you'll be ailing."

He pushed a way for me through the crowd of pa.s.sengers, who fell back in two long lines. As we moved between them, I heard a woman's voice ask, in a loud whisper:

"Who did you say?"

A man's voice answered, "Why, Captain Macklin," and then protested, in a rising accent, "Now, for Heaven's sake, Jennie, don't tell me you don't know who he is?"

That was my first taste of fame. It was a short-lived, limited sort of fame, but at that time it stretched throughout all Central America. I doubt if it is sufficiently robust to live in the cold lat.i.tudes of the North. It is just an exotic of the tropics. I am sure it will never weather Cape Hatteras. But although I won't amount to much in Dobbs Ferry, down here in Central America I am pretty well known, and during these last two months that I have been lying, very near to death, in the Ca.n.a.l Company's hospital, my poor little fame stuck by me, and turned strangers into kind and generous friends.

DOBBS FERRY, September, 1882

September pa.s.sed before I was a convalescent, and it was the first of October when the Port of Sydney pa.s.sed Sandy Hook, and I stood at the bow, trembling with cold and happiness, and saw the autumn leaves on the hills of Staten Island and the thousands of columns of circling, white smoke rising over the three cities. I had not let Beatrice and Aunt Mary know that I was in a hospital, but had told them that I was making my way home slowly, which was true enough, and that they need not expect to hear from me until I had arrived in New York City. So, there was no one at the dock to meet me.

But, as we came up the harbor, I waved at the people on the pa.s.sing ferry-boats, and they, shivering, no doubt, at the sight of our canvas awnings and the stewards' white jackets, waved back, and gave me my first welcome home.

It was worth all the disappointments, and the weeks in hospital, to stick my head in the ticket-window of the Grand Central Station, and hear myself say, "Dobbs Ferry, please." I remember the fascination with which I watched the man (he was talking over his shoulder to another man at the time) punch the precious ticket, and toss it to me. I suppose in his life he has many times sold tickets to Dobbs Ferry, but he never sold them as often as I had rehea.r.s.ed asking him for that one.

I had wired them not to meet me at the station, but to be waiting at the house, and when I came up the old walk, with the box-hedges on either side, they were at the door, and Aunt Mary ran to meet me, and hugged and scolded me, and cried on my shoulder, and Beatrice smiled at me, just as though she were very proud of me, and I kissed her once. After ten minutes, it did not seem as though I had ever been away from home.

And, when I looked at Beatrice, and I could not keep my eyes from her, I was filled with wonder that I had ever had the courage to go from where she was. We were very happy.

I am afraid that for the next two weeks I traded upon their affection scandalously. But it was their own fault. It was their wish that I should constantly pose in the dual roles of the returned prodigal and Oth.e.l.lo, and, as I told them, if I were an obnoxious prig ever after, they alone were responsible.

I had the ravenous hunger of the fever-convalescent, and I had an audience that would have turned General Grant into a braggart. So, every day wonderful dishes of Aunt Mary's contriving were set before me, and Beatrice would not open a book so long as there was one adventure I had left untold.

And this, as I soon learned, was the more flattering, as she had already heard most of them at second-hand.