Already now, the first little fight was going on, and Grafton, the last
newspaper man ashore, was making for the front--with Bob close at his
heels. It was hot, very hot, but the road was a good, hard path of clean
sand, and now and then a breeze stirred, or a light, cool rain twinkled
in the air. On each side lay marsh, swamp, pool, and tropical
jungle--and, to Grafton's Northern imagination, strange diseases lurked
like monsters everywhere. Every strange, hot odour made him uneasy and,
at times, he found himself turning his head and holding his breath, as
he always did when he passed a pest-house in his childhood. About him
were strange plants, strange flowers, strange trees, the music of
strange birds, with nothing to see that was familiar except sky,
mountain, running water, and sand; nothing home-like to hear but the
twitter of swallows and the whistle of quail.

That path was no road for a hard-drinking man to travel and, now and
then, Grafton shrank back, with a startled laugh, from the hideous
things crawling across the road and rustling into the cactus--spiders
with snail-houses over them; lizards with green bodies and yellow legs,
and green legs and yellow bodies; hairy tarantulas, scorpions, and
hideous mottled land-crabs, standing three inches from the sand, and
watching him with hideous little eyes as they shuffled sidewise into the
bushes. Moreover, he was following the trail of an army by the
uncheerful signs in its wake--the _débris_ of the last night's
camp--empty cans, bits of hardtack, crackers, bad odours, and, by and
by, odds and ends that the soldiers discarded as the sun got warm and
their packs heavy--drawers, undershirts, coats, blankets, knapsacks, an
occasional gauntlet or legging, bits of fat bacon, canned meats,
hardtack--and a swarm of buzzards in the path, in the trees, and
wheeling in the air--and smiling Cubans picking up everything they could