scarf; I felt the hot barrel of a rifle burning my palm, I smelt the
pungent odor of spent powder, my throat and nostrils were assailed
with smoke. I suffered all the fierce joy and agony of battle, and the
picture of the white figure of Beatrice grew dim and receded from me,
and as it faded the eyes regarded me wistfully and reproached me, but
I would not heed them, but turned my own eyes away. And again I saw
the menacing negro faces and the burning sunlight and the strange flag
that tossed and whimpered in the air above my head, the strange flag
of unknown, tawdry colors, like the painted face of a woman in the
street, but a flag at which I cheered and shouted as though it were my
own, as though I loved it; a flag for which I would fight and die.

The train twisted its length into the great station, the men about me
rose and crowded down the aisle, and I heard the cries of newsboys and
hackmen and jangling car-bells, and all the roar and tumult of a great
city at night.

But I had already made my choice. Within an hour I had crossed to the
Jersey side, and was speeding south, south toward New Orleans, toward
the Gulf of Mexico, toward Honduras, to Colonel Laguerre and his
foreign legion.




II


S.S. PANAMA,
OFF COAST OF HONDURAS