Whilst the great crowd of home-bound passengers, with infinite din and
shouting, are bustling down the gangways toward the shore, our little
party of twenty or thirty Central American regenerators assemble on the
ship's bow, and answer to our names as read out by a small,
mild-featured man, whom at a glance I should have thought no
filibuster. It seems he was our captain _pro tem._, and bore
recommendations from the agent at San Francisco to a commission in the
Nicaraguan service. He had made the voyage on the cabin side of the
ship, and I saw him now for the first time. His looks betokened no
fire-eating soul; but your brave man has not necessarily a truculent
countenance; and I was, indeed, thankful for the prospect of fighting
under an honest man and no cut-throat outwardly.

We followed this our chief down the vessel's side to the shore,
catching a glimpse of Fate as we passed over the old hulk in our
course. It was one of Walker's soldiers in the last stage of fever. His
skin was as yellow and glazed as parchment, and seemed drawn over a
mere fleshless skeleton. Poor man! he lay there watching the noisy
passengers descend from the ship. "His eyes are with his heart, and
that is far away," carried back by the bustling scene to another
shore,--the goal of that passing crowd,--never more to gladden _his_
dim eye. The unrelenting grasp of death was on him; and even now,
perhaps, the waves are rolling his bleaching bones to and fro on that
distant beach. I say that this dismal omen damped the spirit of us all.
But nothing in this world can long dishearten the brave; we soon grow
lighter, and, marching along in the crowd, blackguard effectively the
witty or witless dogs that crack jokes at us and forebode hard fate
ahead of us.

When we came into the town of San Juan, we found there a general and