“A hundred yards away was his camp, where three hundred chosen patriots of Esperando were awaiting our coming.  For a month Carlos had been drilling them there in the tactics of war, and filling them with the spirit of revolution and liberty.

“‘My Captain—­compadre mio!’ shouted Carlos, while yet my boat was being lowered.  ’You should see them in the drill by companies—­in the column wheel—­in the march by fours—­they are superb!  Also in the manual of arms—­but, alas! performed only with sticks of bamboo.  The guns, capitan—­say that you have brought the guns!’

“‘A thousand Winchesters, Carlos,’ I called to him.  ’And two Gatlings.’

“‘Valgame Dios!’ he cried, throwing his cap in the air.  ’We shall sweep the world!’

“At that moment Kearny tumbled from the steamer’s side into the river.  He could not swim, so the crew threw him a rope and drew him back aboard.  I caught his eye and his look of pathetic but still bright and undaunted consciousness of his guilty luck.  I told myself that although he might be a man to shun, he was also one to be admired.

“I gave orders to the sailing-master that the arms, ammunition, and provisions were to be landed at once.  That was easy in the steamer’s boats, except for the two Gatling guns.  For their transportation ashore we carried a stout flatboat, brought for the purpose in the steamer’s hold.

“In the meantime I walked with Carlos to the camp and made the soldiers a little speech in Spanish, which they received with enthusiasm; and then I had some wine and a cigarette in Carlos’s tent.  Later we walked back to the river to see how the unloading was being conducted.

“The small arms and provisions were already ashore, and the petty officers and squads of men conveying them to camp.  One Gatling had been safely landed; the other was just being hoisted over the side of the vessel as we arrived.  I noticed Kearny darting about on board, seeming to have the ambition of ten men, and doing the work of five.  I think his zeal bubbled over when he saw Carlos and me.  A rope’s end was swinging loose from some part of the tackle.  Kearny leaped impetuously and caught it.  There was a crackle and a hiss and a smoke of scorching hemp, and the Gatling dropped straight as a plummet through the bottom of the flatboat and buried itself in twenty feet of water and five feet of river mud.

“I turned my back on the scene.  I heard Carlos’s loud cries as if from some extreme grief too poignant for words.  I heard the complaining murmur of the crew and the maledictions of Torres, the sailing master—­I could not bear to look.

“By night some degree of order had been restored in camp.  Military rules were not drawn strictly, and the men were grouped about the fires of their several messes, playing games of chance, singing their native songs, or discussing with voluble animation the contingencies of our march upon the capital.