“Are not these days happy, sir?” asked Bella Caceras.
“Y-e-s,” he stammered, somewhat confused. “You know, I meant——”
“Well, what did you mean?” she demanded laughingly.
“It was a different kind of happiness,” said Harvey, coming to the rescue.
“You said that very prettily; didn’t he, Rosita?”
“Yes, he did. But tell the honest truth, boys, where would you rather be—out in the bay, or talking with us here, on the veranda?”
“I would rather be out in the bay, and have you girls with us.”
“Look, there’s another ship coming to join the fleet!” exclaimed the youngest lad, pointing seaward; and they saw a seventh vessel farther out, heading toward the six that composed the blockading squadron.
“It was there that you were capsized, was it not?” asked Bella of Louis.
“Yes, just off the end of San Lorenzo, near where the _Blanco Encalada_ is cruising. My! Carl, but that was an anxious evening! I don’t believe I ever told you how frightened I was during the hours that we clung to the overturned cat-boat.”
“No, and I never told you. I think we kept one another’s courage up, don’t you?”
“Let’s leave this place,” said Harvey, “and go where the others are. It makes me homesick to look out over the bay.”
“Because the ships are all gone. It’s like going through a house where everybody is dead.”
Captain Saunders was talking when they came near, and they drew up chairs and listened. He had been telling those near him of a lonely six months he had passed in Nicaragua, soon after the close of the war, when he had been compelled to remain in that country as an attaché to the United States legation.
“I had not been long married,” he was saying, “and had left Mrs. Saunders and Carl in the States, for there was no steamship communication then, and the voyage to many parts of the Central American coast was made in sailing vessels. It was a very lonely life, there were few congenial spirits, and the one or two who were companionable were as homesick as I. On three occasions I was sorely tempted to go on board a steamer and sail for New York, and it is curious to note how old associations influenced me at such times.”
“The first,” said the captain, “occurred one hot afternoon while I was lying in a hammock under a cypress tree. It was a very oppressive day and I was endeavoring to sleep, when suddenly from somewhere came the notes of violin music. Somebody was playing, ‘Maryland, my Maryland.’ The air at once brought before my mind the two years I had passed at college in northern Ohio, for one of my old fraternity songs had been set to this music. I saw the fresh green campus, bordered with maples, the gray weather-stained dormitories, the red brick gymnasium, and before me passed one after another of my old college friends. An irresistible longing came to rise and hurry to the land where they lived, away from that land of strangers.”