me without sulking. But with the men of the troops not directly under
my command I frequently met with trouble; and on several occasions
different men refused to obey my orders as Adjutant, and swore and
even struck at me, so that I had to knock them down. I regretted this
exceedingly, but I was forced to support my authority in some way.
After learning the circumstances Laguerre exonerated me, and punished
the men. Naturally, this did not help me with the volunteers, and for
the first ten days after I had joined the Legion I was the most
generally disliked man in it. This lasted until we reached Comyagua,
when something happened which brought the men over to my side. Indeed,
I believe I became a sort of a hero with them, and was nearly as
popular as Laguerre himself. So in the end it came out all right, but
it was near to being the death of me; and, next to hanging, the
meanest kind of a death a man could suffer.

When this incident occurred, which came so near to ending tragically
for me, we had been trying to drive the government troops out of the
cathedral of Comyagua. It was really a church and not a cathedral, but
it was so much larger than any other building we had seen in Honduras
that the men called it "The Cathedral." It occupied one whole side of
the plaza. There were four open towers at each corner, and the front
entrance was as large as a barn. Their cannon, behind a barricade of
paving stones, were on the steps which led to this door.

I carried a message from Laguerre along the end of the plaza opposite
the cathedral, and as I was returning, the fire grew so hot that I
dropped on my face. There was a wooden watering-trough at the edge of
the sidewalk, and I crawled over and lay behind it. Directly back of
me was a restaurant into which a lot of Heinze's men had broken their
way from the rear. They were firing up at the men in the towers of the