I started to lay my rucksack on the bench along the wall, but one of the fellows sprang up with a snarl and flourished his ramrod threateningly. It was evidently a _lèse militarismus_ worthy of capital punishment for a civilian to pass between a pole supporting the eaves and the mud wall of the building. I was forced to stand in the blazing sunshine and claw out my papers. They were in English, but the caricature of an officer concealed his ignorance before his fellows by pretending to read them and at length gave me a surly permission to withdraw. No wonder Central America is a favorite _locale_ for comic opera librettos.
I descended again to the river for a swim, but had not yet stretched out for a siesta when there came pushing through the undergrowth three more "soldiers," this time all armed with muskets.
"The colonel wants to see you in the comandancia."
When I reached the hilltop again, dripping with the heat of noonday, I was permitted to sit on an adobe brick in the sacred shade. The colonel was sleeping. He recovered from that tropical ailment in time, and a rumor came floating out that he was soon to honor us with his distinguished presence. The soldiers made frantic signs to me to rise to my feet. Like Kingslake before the Turkish pasha, I felt that the honor of my race and my own haughty dignity were better served by insisting on social equality even to a colonel, and stuck doggedly to the adobe brick. The rumor proved a false alarm anyway. No doubt the great man had turned over in his sleep.
By and by the lieutenant came to say the commander was in his office, and led the way there. At the second door of the mud-and-straw building he paused to add in an awe-struck whisper:
"Take off your hat and wait until he calls you in."
Instead I stepped toward the entrance, but the teniente snatched at the slack of my shirt with a gasp of terror:
"Por Diós! Take off your revolver! If the colonel sees it...."
I shook him off and, marching in with martial stride and a haughty carelessness of attitude, sat down in the only chair in the room except that occupied by the commander, with a hearty:
He was a typical guatemalteco in whole trousers and an open shirt, but of some education, for he was writing with moderate rapidity at his homemade desk. He also wore shoes. His manner was far more reasonable than that of his illiterate underlings, and we were soon conversing rationally. He appeared to know enough English to get the gist of my passport, but handed it back with the information that I should have official Guatemalan permission to exist within the confines of his eighteen-for-a-dollar country.