Frank Norris

“ In Cuba everything, the very mud and water, has a smell. After every rain, as soon as the red-hot sun is out again, vegetation reeks and smokes and sweats, and these smells steam off into the air all night, thick and stupefying, like the interior of a cathedral after high mass. ”

“ At once the place was alive with Spanish soldiery. They came forward to meet us in very brave and gay attire. First a corps of trumpeters sounded a pretty trumpet march. They blew defiantly, did these Spanish trumpeters, and as loudly as ever they could, just to show us that they were not afraid—that they did not care, not they, pooh! After these came a small detachment of guarda, with arms, who watched the Yankee soldiers with bovine intentness while they came to a halt and ordered arms in front of our position. ”

“ So what with this and with that, we worried along until just beyond the line of our trenches, where the road broadened very considerably and we could compromise by riding on the flanks of the column.
And an imposing column it was, nearly three hundred strong, and it actually appeared as if one-half was made up of brigadier-generals, major-generals, generals commanding divisions, staff officers and the like. A mere colonel was hardly better than a private on that day. We moved forward at a quick trot, General Shafter's pith helmet bobbing briskly along on ahead. ”

“ It was a time when, if ever, precedence and rank were of paramount importance, and a brigadier-general does not take it kindly when two rather forlorn-appearing men, wearing neither stripe nor shoulder strap, and mounted upon an unkempt mule and a lamentable little white pony, rank him out of his place when he is marching to receive an enemy's surrender. ”

“ Soldiers without arms, refugees, the men in brown derby hats—Cubans, negroes, dark women with black lace upon their heads, and [Pg 19] children absolutely naked, watched us very silently from the sidewalks and from balconies. The houses were of adobe, painted pale blue and pink, and roofed with rugged lichen-blackened tiles. The windows reached from sidewalk to roof and were grated heavily, the doors oak and clenched with great nail heads. Santiago, Santiago at last, after so many days of sailing, of marching, of countermarching, and of fighting. ”

“ The Spanish soldiers filed off through a break in the barbed wire fence, the defiant trumpeters playing their pretty march-call more defiantly than ever.
Introductions were the order of the next few [Pg 15] moments, Shafter introducing all his major and brigadier-generals to Toral. Meanwhile Spanish soldiers were defiling past us along the road going toward our lines, and without arms. There was no rancor or bitterness in the expression of these men. They evinced mostly an abnormal curiosity in observing the cavalrymen who formed our escort, and the cavalry repaid it in kind. ”

“ In the field below, the cavalry escort was forming, and aides, orderlies and adjutants came and went at the top speed of their horses, just as the military dramas had taught us to expect they should.
But, except ourselves, not a correspondent was in sight, and we were very like to be [Pg 10] ordered back at any moment. But the god descended from the machine in the person of Captain McKittrick of the commanding General's staff, and we were given an unqualified permission to fall in so soon as the start should be made, provided only that we fell in at the rear of any one of the generals' staffs. ”

“ Over night the men had been withdrawn from the trenches and were pitching their shelter tents on the higher and drier ground, and where our road crossed the road from Caney to Santiago we came upon hundreds of refugees returning to the city whence they had been driven a few days previous. ”

“ And then "to accompany the commanding General to a point midway between the Spanish and American lines and there to receive the surrender of General Toral. At noon, precisely, the American flag will be raised over the Governor's Palace in the city of Santiago. A salute of twenty-one guns will be fired from Captain Capron's battery. The regimental bands will play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and the troops will cheer. ”

“ I suppose it would be quite impossible to make a reader understand how incongruous this apparition seemed to us. It was in use, no doubt, carrying refugees from Caney back into the city and its presence was easily accounted for. But Mr. Kipling's phantom rickshaw could hardly have produced a greater sensation. ”