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