As to the spirit which seemed to animate these men, it was certainly most discouraging. They had lost all thoughtsupposing them to have ever had such thoughtof regenerating Central America; and most of them wished no better thing than to fill their bellies, or to escape from Nicaragua. Many of them were sunk into a physical and mental lethargy, thinking of nothing and caring for nothing, and were gone, not a few, even into lunacy. Some cursed General Walker for enticing them there under false pretences. There were men with families who professed to have come there to settle and cultivate the soil, having been persuaded that the war was ended and the country prepared for peaceful immigration. Some had paid their own passage, purposing merely to reconnoïtre, and remain or not, as it pleased them; but when they landed in Nicaragua, General Walker placed muskets in their unwilling hands, and there he had kept them, fighting, not for himself or his promises, but for life. It disgusted others that the service was not only almost certain death and thankless, but was altogether unprofitable. It was General Walker's practice, and had been always, to discharge his soldiers' wages with scrip of no cash value whatever, or so little that many neglected to draw it when due them. And this was concealed at their enlistment. Indeed, the hatred towards General Walker and the service seemed almost universal amongst the privates, and they would have revolted and thrown away their arms at any moment, had there been hope of escape in that. But they were held together by common danger in a treacherous or hostile country, separated by broad oceans and impassable forests from a land of safe refuge. There was, besides, distrust of each other; and fear, though no love, of General Walker. He was said to have the iron will and reckless courage of the true man of destiny. At one time, so they told us, a large body of fresh, able-bodied men, just arrived in Nicaragua, refused to join the filibusters on account of some disappointment about the amount of promised wages. General Walker led out his crowd of yellow men, whom the newcomers might have knocked down with the wind of their fists, and so overawed them by this display of resolution that they forthwith swallowed their complaints and joined his ranks with as good a grace as they might. I myself, in these first days, saw a little incident which impressed me that the man was no trifler. I was in his quarters one day, when an officer came in and made a report to him about some matter of his duty.
"Captain," said General Walker, looking serenely over the man's head, "if this is the way you are going to do business, Nicaragua has no further need for you. We want nothing of this sort done here, Sir."
The fierce, big-whiskered officer said 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.