The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 26, December, 1859. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
nothing, but looked cowed; and, indeed, not without excuse; for though there was a nasal whine in the tone of the little General, and no great fire in his unmeaning eye, there was yet a quiet self-reliance about him extremely imposing, and which, as I thought, reached back of any temporary sufflation as tyrant of Rivas, and was based upon perennial character. Nor is it contrary, so far as I know, to the laws of psychology, for a man to be endued with all the self-reliance of Bonaparte, with, at the same time, an unusually short gift of the great man's marvellous insight, military or other.
Such an all-pervading demoralized spirit amongst the men as this I have slightly marked was sure to be contagious; and I am persuaded that there were few of us who came down there with enthusiasm or admiration for General Walker, but lost most of it during our first days' mixture in Rivas.
At the end of some six or eight days, our company came up from the Transit road, without the California passengers having as yet made their appearance. General Walker was expecting by this steamer, so long due on the Atlantic side, a large body of recruits with cannon, bombs, and other military stores, whose arrival would put him in condition to attack the enemy at Granada. He began to grow uneasy; and at length sent an armed row-boat across the lake to the head of the Rio San Juan to get intelligence. The little party which held that river were thought to be in no danger behind the walls of San Carlos and Castillo, and still further protected by the impenetrable forests which stretched backward from either bank; but now it began to be whispered that General Walker had committed a fatal blunder in not using the surest means to keep his only communication with the Atlantic open.
In the mean while our company of rangers was ordered back to the Transit road, to remain until the passengers crossed. We rode down by a trail that lay nearer the Pacific than the one by which we had first approached Rivas.
We found the same desolate, vine-netted forest; but on this route it was broken at several points by grassy savannas, dotted thinly with calabash-trees, and browsed by a few wild mules and cattle. In one of these openings, several miles from the Transit road, we passed a red-tiled building, the only one of any sort on the trail beyond the ring-fenced cultivation of Rivas. It was known as the Jocote Ranch-house, and became afterwards the scene of a bloody defeat for the filibusters.
Our ride terminated at a large open shed, standing on the Transit road, two miles east of San Juan, which had been erected by the Transit Company, and was used by them as shelter for their carriages. Here, together with a second company of mounted rangers, we were to quarter until the arrival of the California passengers; and then it was to be our duty to guard those feeble travellers through the dominions of President Walker to the Pacific. Our own company numbered some thirty heads,—men and officers,—and being but lately come to Nicaragua, were yet tolerably healthy and lively,—although shaken at times by chills and melancholy, and nearly all turning perceptibly yellow. At all times of the day, when not in the presence of food or drink, some of them were bewailing the hour they came to Nicaragua, and sighing sadly to escape; and had Samuel Absalom come there from any light motive of vanity, he had surely repented with them: as it was, he had seen a worse day; the life, too, was not without charms for some men, and his heart stayed within him through all. The other company was even smaller than ours, older soldiers, and in much worse health,—many of them having a chill daily, others wasted with perpetual diarrhoea.
Our routine of duty at this camp was, to ride each day into the forest and hunt our ration of beef, to water our horses, and to stand an hour's guard occasionally at night; the remainder of consciousness we spent broiling and eating cow's flesh, sucking sugar-cane, and waging horrid warfare against a host of ravenous ticks and crawling creatures of basest name.
One day, after we had so passed it off for a week or more, a report reached us from Virgin Bay, that one of the Transit steamers had been seen to pass up the lake toward Granada, without stopping to land the passengers. A little after came an order from the colonel of the rangers directing our party to ride with all haste to Virgin Bay, and garrison it against the enemy. We mounted immediately and rode over the Transit as fast as such beasts as we had could carry us. On the way we met some of the American residents of Virgin Bay, with carpet-bags in their hands, hurrying across to find comfort near the emigrant steamer, which still awaited her passengers in the harbor of San Juan. They were a good deal frightened, and said an attack was expected on Virgin Bay at any hour.
When we came into the town, it was dark, and, having no time to lose in getting out the pickets, our horses were left tied under saddle in the street, and we took station, four at a post, out on the several approaches to the town. It seemed that nothing was known with certainty of the enemy; but it was doubted by no one, since the steamer had passed in sight of her wharf without making or answering signals, that the enemy were in possession of her; and it seemed probable that they would land somewhere that night, and attack before General Walker had time to prepare for them. Our force to oppose them, should they attempt to land at Virgin Bay, the only convenient place with a pier on the whole lake, was scarcely thirty in all,—a detachment from both companies having been sent a few days before to Rivas; and of this force, the privates, to a man nearly, were wanted to furnish out the picket-guards,—leaving a reserve body in the citadel of some half-dozen officers armed mostly with revolvers.
All that night we listened anxiously to the ceaseless din of the lake breaking upon the shore; but it brought no enemy, and at morning we were released from guard and sent out to forage. At our shed-camp of the previous week the animals were turned out to feed in an inclosure, and we were spared the troublesome duty of foraging. But at Virgin Bay we were forced to go at it again under disadvantages; for the town had no surrounding circle of cultivation like that of Rivas,—having been but recently redeemed from the forest by the Transit Company,—and our only resource was a few distant ranchos scattered up and down the lake shore. Beside this, we had the daily duty, as before, of searching the open savannas in the forest for beef,—the commissary department furnishing us no part of a ration but bread,—and other irregular expeditions, which kept us in the saddle the greater part of the day.
Almost a week had passed in this manner, with no appearance or news of the enemy, and we had grown heartily tired of riding and watching to no purpose, when one day the steamer hove in sight towards the north; and steaming down she went to land, almost directly opposite Virgin Bay, against the island of Ometepec. Day after day she lay there immovable, with her white side gleaming dimly across the water, and far out of the reach of us wistful filibusters;—for although there was a small brig of General Walker's floating beside the pier which ran out into the lake, yet it was out of repair; and, in any state, the wind blew too strongly and constantly from the northeast for a sail vessel to make the island, which lay almost in its teeth. Nevertheless, carpenters were set at work on it, and row-boats, borrowed of the vessels in San Juan harbor, were hauled over the Transit road; and it was said that the old brig was to be filled with soldiers and worked across to the island by aid of the row-boats. The thing seemed far from impossible. The space between the island and Virgin Bay was not above ten or twelve miles, and for part of the distance, under lee of the great volcano, the wind was lull. Could the brig be worked round the wind and brought into this calm water, the towing thenceforward was easy; and all this done in the space of one night, the surprise and recapture of the steamer were certain. In the mean while a detachment of foot marched down daily from Rivas, and, without giving us any relief, marched as regularly back again. Our hard-worked garrison, almost worn down by watching and riding, and, at sight of these men, hoping always to be relieved, snarled bitterly at such apparently useless expenditure of leg-muscle,—an article, truly, of which those lean, saffron-colored trampers had but too scanty supply for ordinary need.
One night, after the detachment of foot had gone, and there was no force but the rangers in the town, a large light, supposed to be under the boilers of the steamer, was seen on the water approaching from the north, and it was thought that the enemy were coming at last to attack us. However, when the light came almost opposite, it made toward the island and soon after disappeared. Next morning, looking across to the island, we saw a dark-colored steamer lying beside the white one; and we knew that the enemy were in possession of both the Transit steamers, and held the lake wholly at command. It was the same day, I think, that one of the boats was seen to be getting up steam, and shortly afterward she paddled out from the island, and came directly toward Virgin Bay. Things were quickly put in posture for a fight. The neutral