GOD REST YE, MERRY GENTLEMEN*
Little Nell, sometimes called the Blessed Damosel, was a war correspondent for the New York Eclipse, and at sea on the dispatch boats he wore pajamas, and on shore he wore whatever fate allowed him, which clothing was in the main unsuitable to the climate. He had been cruising in the Caribbean on a small tug, awash always, habitable never, wildly looking for Cervera’s fleet; although what he was going to do with four armored cruisers and two destroyers in the event of his really finding them had not been explained by the managing editor. The cable instructions read: “Take tug; go find Cervera’s fleet.” If his unfortunate nine-knot craft should happen to find these great twenty-knot ships, with their two spiteful and faster attendants, Little Nell had wondered how he was going to lose them again. He had marveled, both publicly and in secret, on the uncompromising asininity of managing editors at odd moments, but he had wasted little time. The Jefferson G. Johnson was already coaled, so he passed the word to his skipper, bought some tinned meats, cigars, and beer, and soon the Johnson sailed on her mission, tooting her whistle in graceful farewell to some friends of hers in the bay.
So the Johnson crawled giddily to one wave-height after another, and fell, aslant, into one valley after another for a longer period than was good for the hearts of the men, because the Johnson was merely a harbor tug, with no architectural intention of parading the high seas, and the crew had never seen the decks all white water like a mere sunken reef. As for the cook, he blasphemed hopelessly hour in and hour out, meanwhile pursuing the equipment of his trade frantically from side to side of the galley. Little Nell dealt with a great deal of grumbling, but he knew it was not the real evil grumbling. It was merely the unhappy words of men who wished expression of comradeship for their wet, forlorn, half-starved lives, to which, they explained, they were not accustomed, and for which, they explained, they were not properly paid. Little Nell condoled and condoled without difficulty. He laid words of gentle sympathy before them, and smothered his own misery behind the face of a reporter of the New York Eclipse. But they tossed themselves in their cockleshell even as far as Martinique; they knew many races and many flags, but they did not find Cervera’s fleet. If they had found that elusive squadron this timid story would never have been written; there would probably have been a lyric. The Johnson limped one morning into the Mole St. Nicholas, and there Little Nell received this dispatch: “Can’t understand your inaction. What are you doing with the boat? Report immediately. Fleet transports already left Tampa. Expected destination near Santiago. Proceed there immediately. Place yourself under orders.—ROGERS, Eclipse.”
One day, steaming along the high, luminous blue coast of Santiago province, they fetched into view the fleets, a knot of masts and funnels, looking incredibly inshore, as if they were glued to the mountains. Then mast left mast, and funnel left funnel, slowly, slowly, and the shore remained still, but the fleets seemed to move out toward the eager Johnson. At the speed of nine knots an hour the scene separated into its parts. On an easily rolling sea, under a crystal sky, black-hulled transports—erstwhile packets—lay waiting, while gray cruisers and gunboats lay near shore, shelling the beach and some woods. From their gray sides came thin red flashes, belches of white smoke, and then over the waters sounded boom-boom—boom-boom. The crew of the Jefferson G. Johnson forgave Little Nell all the suffering of a previous fortnight.
To the westward, about the mouth of Santiago harbor, sat a row of castellated gray battleships, their eyes turned another way, waiting.
The Johnson swung past a transport whose decks and rigging were aswarm with black figures, as if a tribe of bees had alighted upon a log. She swung past a cruiser indignant at being left out of the game, her deck thick with white-clothed tars watching the play of their luckier brethren. The cold blue lifting seas tilted the big ships easily, slowly, and heaved the little ones in the usual sinful way, as if very little babes had surreptitiously mounted sixteen-hand trotting hunters. The Johnson leered and tumbled her way through a community of ships. The bombardment ceased, and some of the troopships edged in near the land. Soon boats black with men and towed by launches were almost lost to view in the scintillant mystery of light which appeared where the sea met the land. A disembarkation had begun. The Johnson sped on at her nine knots, and Little Nell chafed exceedingly, gloating upon the shore through his glasses, anon glancing irritably over the side to note the efforts of the excited tug. Then at last they were in a sort of cove, with troopships, newspaper boats, and cruisers on all sides of them, and over the water came a great hum of human voices, punctuated frequently by the clang of engine-room gongs as the steamers maneuvered to avoid jostling.
In reality it was the great moment—the moment for which men, ships, islands, and continents had been waiting for months; but somehow it did not look it. It was very calm; a certain strip of high, green, rocky shore was being rapidly populated from boat after boat; that was all. Like many preconceived moments, it refused to be supreme.
But nothing lessened Little Nell’s frenzy. He knew that the army was landing—he could see it; and little did he care if the great moment did not look its part—it was his virtue as a correspondent to recognize the great moment in any disguise. The Johnson lowered a boat for him, and he dropped into it swiftly, forgetting everything. However, the mate, a bearded philanthropist, flung after him a mackintosh and a bottle of whiskey. Little Nell’s face was turned toward those other boats filled with men, all eyes upon the placid, gentle, noiseless shore. Little Nell saw many soldiers seated stiffly beside upright rifle barrels, their blue breasts crossed with white shelter tents and blanket rolls. Launches screeched; jack-tars pushed or pulled with their boathooks; a beach was alive with working soldiers, some of them stark naked. Little Nell’s boat touched the shore amid a babble of tongues, dominated at that time by a single stern voice, which was repeating, “Fall in, B Company!”
He took his mackintosh and his bottle of whiskey and invaded Cuba. It was a trifle bewildering. Companies of those same men in blue and brown were being rapidly formed and marched off across a little open space—near a pool—near some palm trees—near a house—into the hills. At one side, a mulatto in dirty linen and an old straw hat was hospitably using a machete to cut open some green cocoanuts for a group of idle invaders. At the other side, up a bank, a blockhouse was burning furiously; while near it some railway sheds were smoldering, with a little Rogers engine standing amid the ruins, gray, almost white, with ashes until it resembled a ghost. Little Nell dodged the encrimsoned blockhouse, and proceeded where he saw a little village street lined with flimsy wooden cottages. Some ragged Cuban cavalrymen were tranquilly tending their horses in a shed which had not yet grown cold of the Spanish occupation. Three American soldiers were trying to explain to a Cuban that they wished to buy drinks. A native rode by, clubbing his pony, as always. The sky was blue; the sea talked with a gravelly accent at the feet of some rocks; upon its bosom the ships sat quiet as gulls. There was no mention, directly, of invasion—invasion for war—save in the roar of the flames at the blockhouse; but none even heeded this conflagration, excepting to note that it threw out a great heat. It was warm, very warm. It was really hard for Little Nell to keep from thinking of his own affairs: his debts, other misfortunes, loves, prospects of happiness. Nobody was in a flurry; the Cubans were not tearfully grateful; the American troops were visibly glad of being released from those ill transports, and the men often asked, with interest, “Where’s the Spaniards?” And yet it must have been a great moment! It was a great moment!
It seemed made to prove that the emphatic time of history is not the emphatic time of the common man, who throughout the change of nations feels an itch on his shin, a pain in his head, hunger, thirst, a lack of sleep; the influence of his memory of past firesides, glasses of beer, girls, theaters, ideals, religions, parents, faces, hurts, joys.
Little Nell was hailed from a comfortable veranda, and, looking up, saw Walkley of the Eclipse, stretched
in a yellow-and-green hammock, smoking his pipe with an air of having always lived in that house, in that village. “Oh, dear little Nell, how glad I am to see your angel face again! There! don’t try to hide it; I can see it. Did you bring a corkscrew too? You’re superseded as master of the slaves. Did you know it? And by Rogers, too! Rogers is a Sadducee, a cadaver, and a pelican, appointed to the post of chief correspondent, no doubt, because of his rare gift of incapacity. Never mind.”
“Where is he now?” asked Little Nell, taking seat on the steps.
“He is down interfering with the landing of the troops,” answered Walkley, swinging a leg. “I hope you have the Johnson well stocked with food as well as with cigars, cigarettes, and tobaccos, ales, wines, and liquors. We shall need them. There is already famine in the house of Walkley. I have discovered that the system of transportation for our gallant soldiery does not strike in me the admiration which I have often felt when viewing the management of an ordinary bun-shop. A hunger, stifling, jammed together amid odors, and everybody irritable—ye gods, how irritable! And so I— Look! look!”
The Jefferson G. Johnson, well known to them at an incredible distance, could be seen striding the broad sea, the smoke belching from her funnel, headed for Jamaica. “The Army Lands in Cuba!” shrieked Walkley. “Shafter’s Army Lands near Santiago! Special type! Half the front page! Oh, the Sadducee! The cadaver! The pelican!”
Little Nell was dumb with astonishment and fear. Walkley, however, was at least not dumb. “That’s the pelican! That’s Mr. Rogers making his first impression upon the situation. He has engraved himself upon us. We are tattooed with him. There will be a fight tomorrow, sure, and we will cover it even as you found Cervera’s fleet. No food, no horses, no money. I am transport-lame; you are sea-weak. We will never see our salaries again. Whereby Rogers is a fool.”
“Anybody else here?” asked Little Nell wearily.
“Only young Point.” Point was an artist on the Eclipse. “But he has nothing. Pity there wasn’t an almshouse in this God-forsaken country. Here comes Point now.” A sad-faced man came along carrying much luggage. “Hello, Point! lithographer and genius, have you food? Food. Well, then, you had better return yourself to Tampa by wire. You are no good here. Only one more little mouth to feed.”
Point seated himself near Little Nell. “I haven’t had anything to eat since daybreak,” he said gloomily, “and I don’t care much, for I am simply dog-tired.”
“Don’t tell me you are dog-tired, my talented friend,” cried Walkley from his hammock. “Think of me. And now what’s to be done?”
They stared for a time disconsolately at where, over the rim of the sea, trailed black smoke from the Johnson. From the landing-place below and to the right came the howls of a man who was superintending the disembarkation of some mules. The burning blockhouse still rendered its hollow roar. Suddenly the men-crowded landing set up its cheer, and the steamers all whistled long and raucously. Tiny black figures were raising an American flag over a blockhouse on the top of a great hill.
“That’s mighty fine Sunday stuff,” said Little Nell. “Well, I’ll go and get the order in which the regiments landed, and who was first ashore, and all that. Then I’ll go and try to find General Lawton’s headquarters. His division has got the advance, I think.”
“And, lo! I will write a burning description of the raising of the flag,” said Walkley. “While the brilliant Point buskies for food—and makes damn sure he gets it,” he added fiercely.
Little Nell thereupon wandered over the face of the earth, threading out the story of the landing of the regiments. He only found about fifty men who had been the first American soldier to set foot on Cuba, and of these he took the most probable. The army was going forward in detail, as soon as the pieces were landed. There was a house something like a crude country tavern—the soldiers in it were looking over their rifles and talking. There was a well of water quite hot—more palm trees—an inscrutable background.
When he arrived again at Walkley’s mansion he found the veranda crowded with correspondents in khaki, duck, dungaree, and flannel. They wore riding breeches, but that was mainly forethought. They could see now that fate intended them to walk. Some were writing copy, while Walkley discoursed from his hammock. Rhodes—doomed to be shot in action some days later—was trying to borrow a canteen from men who had one, and from men who had none. Young Point, wan, utterly worn out, was asleep on the floor. Walkley pointed to him. “That is how he appears after his foraging journey, during which he ran all Cuba through a sieve. Oh, yes; a can of corn and a half-bottle of lime juice.”
“Say, does anybody know the name of the commander of the 26th Infantry?”
“Who commands the first brigade of Kent’s Division?”
“What was the name of the chap that raised the flag?”
“What time is it?”
And a woeful man was wandering here and there with a cold pipe, saying plaintively, “Who’s got a match? Anybody here got a match?”
Little Nell’s left boot hurt him at the heel, and so he removed it, taking great care and whistling through his teeth. The heated dust was upon them all, making everybody feel that bathing was unknown and shattering their tempers. Young Point developed a snore which brought grim sarcasm from all quarters. Always, below, hummed the traffic of the landing-place.
When night came Little Nell thought best not to go to bed until late, because he recognized the mackintosh as but a feeble comfort. The evening was a glory. A breeze came from the sea, fanning spurts of flame out of the ashes and charred remains of the sheds, while overhead lay a splendid summer night sky, aflash with great tranquil stars. In the streets of the village were two or three fires, frequently and suddenly reddening with their glare the figures of low-voiced men who moved here and there. The lights of the transports blinked on the murmuring plain in front of the village; and far to the westward Little Nell could sometimes note a subtle indication of a playing searchlight, which alone marked the presence of the invisible battleships, half-mooned about the entrance of Santiago harbor, waiting—waiting—waiting.
When little Nell returned to the veranda he stumbled along a man-strewn place, until he came to the spot where he left his mackintosh; but he found it gone. His curses mingled then with those of the men upon whose bodies he had trodden. Two English correspondents, lying awake to smoke a last pipe, reared and looked at him lazily. “What’s wrong, old chap?” murmured one. “Eh? Lost it, eh? Well, look here; come here and take a bit of my blanket. It’s a jolly big one. Oh, no trouble at all, man. There you are. Got enough? Comfy? Good night.”
A sleepy voice arose in the darkness. “If this hammock breaks, I shall hit at least ten of those Indians down there. Never mind. This is war.”
The men slept. Once the sound of three or four shots rang across the windy night, and one head uprose swiftly from the veranda, two eyes looked dazedly at nothing, and the head as swiftly sank. Again a sleepy voice was heard. “Usual thing! Nervous sentries!” The men slept. Before dawn a pulseless, penetrating chill came into the air, and the correspondents awakened, shivering, into a blue world. Some of the fires still smoldered. Walkley and Little Nell kicked vigorously into Point’s framework. “Come on, brilliance! Wake up, talent! Don’t be sodgering. It’s too cold to sleep, but it’s not too cold to hustle.” Point sat up dolefully. Upon his face was a childish expression. “Where are we going to get breakfast?” he asked, sulking.
“There’s no breakfast for you, you hound! Get up and hustle.” Accordingly they hustled. With exceeding difficulty they learned that nothing emotional had happened during the night, save the killing of two Cubans who were so secure in ignorance that they could not understand the challenge of two American sentries. Then Walkley ran a gamut of commanding officers, and Little Nell pumped privates for their impressions of Cuba. When his indignation at the absence of breakfast allowed him, Point made sketches. At the full break of day the Adolphus, an Eclipse dispatch boat, sent a boat a
shore with Tailor and Shackles in it, and Walkley departed tearlessly for Jamaica, soon after he had bestowed upon his friends much tinned goods and blankets.
“Well, we’ve got our stuff off,” said Little Nell. “Now Point and I must breakfast.”
Shackles, for some reason, carried a great hunting knife, and with it little Nell opened a tin of beans. “Fall to,” he said amiably to Point.
There were some hard biscuits. Afterwards they—the four of them—marched off on the route of the troops. They were well loaded with luggage, particularly young Point, who had somehow made a great gathering of unnecessary things. Hills covered with verdure soon enclosed them. They heard that the army had advanced some nine miles with no fighting. Evidences of the rapid advance were here and there—coats, gauntlets, blanket rolls on the ground. Mule-trains came herding back along the narrow trail to the sound of a little tinkling bell. Cubans were appropriating the coats and blanket rolls.
The four correspondents hurried onward. The surety of impending battle weighed upon them always, but there was a score of minor things more intimate. Little Nell’s left heel had chafed until it must have been quite raw, and every moment he wished to take seat by the roadside and console himself from pain. Shackles and Point disliked each other extremely, and often they foolishly quarreled over something, or nothing. The blanket rolls and packages for the hand oppressed everybody. It was like being burned out of a boarding house, and having to carry one’s trunk eight miles to the nearest neighbor. Moreover, Point, since he had stupidly over-loaded, with great wisdom placed various cameras and other trifles in the hands of his three less burdened and more sensible friends. This made them fume and gnash, but in complete silence, since he was hideously youthful and innocent and unaware. They all wished to rebel, but none of them saw their way clear, because—they did not understand. But somehow it seemed a barbarous project—no one wanted to say anything—cursed him privately for a little ass, but—said nothing. For instance, Little Nell wished to remark, “Point, you are not a thoroughbred in a half of a way. You are an inconsiderate, thoughtless little swine.” But, in truth, he said, “Point, when you started out you looked like a Christmas tree. If we keep on robbing you of your bundles there soon won’t be anything left for the children.” Point asked dubiously, “What do you mean?” Little Nell merely laughed with deceptive good nature.