When he turned to enter his tent he shook my hand. “I do not know when I have talked so much,” he laughed, “nor,” he added, with grave courtesy, “when I have had so intelligent a listener. Good-night.”
Throughout the evening he had been holding my sword, and as he entered the tent he handed it to me.
“Oh, I forgot,” he said. “Here is your sword, Captain.”
The flaps of the tent fell behind him, and I was left outside of them, incredulous and trembling.
I could not restrain myself, and I pushed the flaps aside.
“I beg your pardon, General,” I stammered.
He had already thrown himself upon his cot, but he rose on his elbow and stared at me.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” I gasped, “but what did you call me then--just now?”
“Call you,” he said. “Oh, I called you ‘captain.’ You are a captain. I will assign you your troop to-morrow.”
He turned and buried his face in his arm, and unable to thank him I stepped outside of the tent and stood looking up at the stars, with my grandfather’s sword clasped close in my hands. And I was so proud and happy that I believe I almost prayed that he could look down and see me.
That was how I received my first commission--in a swamp in Honduras, from General Laguerre, of the Foreign Legion, as he lay half-asleep upon his cot. It may be, if I continue as I have begun, I shall receive higher titles, from ministers of war, from queens, presidents, and sultans. I shall have a trunk filled, like that of General Laguerre’s, with commissions, brevets, and patents of nobility, picked up in many queer courts, in many queer corners of the globe. But to myself I shall always be Captain Macklin, and no other rank nor title will ever count with me as did that first one, which came without my earning it, which fell from the lips of an old man without authority to give it, but which seemed to touch me like a benediction.
The officer from whom I took over my troop was a German, Baron Herbert von Ritter. He had served as an aide-de-camp to the King of Bavaria, and his face was a patchwork of sword-cuts which he had received in the students’ duels. No one knew why he had left the German army. He had been in command of the troop with the rank of captain, but when the next morning Laguerre called him up and told him that I was now his captain he seemed rather relieved than otherwise.