Off on the right, toward the sea, a group of men worked at a long trench, and the wind brought a smell, a known smell. That smell, it will never leave your nose as long as you have a nose. . . . The Comandante said that they should have one of these things you burn bodies in his people did not like to dig, and in this country you must dig quickly. Then we came to his Headquarters, and got out. It was a long, low building with a veranda. The red flag of Sarmiento was fastened to a pole in front, above the blueand-white flag of the Mosquito Republic. A hundred men or so were there. Half of them lounged with slattern women on the veranda, or lay around the steps and under the house, which was raised off the ground, being in a swampy place. Most

of these were drunk, but not disorderly drunk-just sleepy and contemplative. They all had rifles-long infantry rifles of the Russian pattern.-Those rifles could tell a story themselves; they had been contracted for by the Tzar's government before the Revolution, and left on the hands of the arsenals that made them.-There were many bottles in evidence.

In front of the Comandancia, drawn up in an approximate line, were about fifty soldiers. There were tall Jamaican negroes from the coast towns, and squat Mosquito Indians from the rivers, and every intermediate shade of race and color, in every sort of garment. Many of them wore new yellow shoes and bright bandannas, loot of the Chino merchants. But they all had rifles, and they all wore red hatbands. A gaunt Spaniard in a Nicaraguan rain-cape shouted hoarsely at them and waved a sheathed machete, and they did vague things with their rifles.

By way of courtesy, we saluted, and they appeared to be gratified. One of them fell out and produced a bottle; on him rushed Nicaraguan Rain-cape and beat him with

encouraged among us-not even in the Marines.

Flanking the Comandancia was a little frame hut-the cuartel. Two Indians

the flat of his machete until our ribs ached in sympathy. "Yess, caballeros. We have ver' good dis-cipline," noted the Comandante approvingly. "No man drink rum in ranks like that in your army, no?" We admitted that the practice was not

leaned against it with rifles, and at the order of Comandante these unlocked the door. On a cot sat a wondrous fat and mournful man, in pajamas and straw slippers, and fanned himself, for the flies were busy and abundant on the floor . . . the

and it was a place of wide, cool porches, floored and wainscoted with the polished hardwood of the country. The Manager's wife, a fine and silken lady, made us welcome, and we watched the wind that rises in the afternoons on the Mosquito Gulf whip up the whitecaps and ruffle all the sea. Under the pleasant influence of tea and things, handed around by a trig black maid, the Manager's lady told us of the

the bluffs, and no shade, because of the way the coast runs here, and it was rather hard on the children. Then there was that foolish steamer, running up and down outside and shooting with a cannon, and after the Company Engineer was hit in the head, it gave you a sort of funny feeling, to sit there and hear the bullets whickering over you, and think you might be killed any minute. It was bad to think about your china, too-bullet might come along and hit it she had some very fine Royal Doulton, which she got in England, and wouldn't have anything happen to it for anything in the world. . . . One of the young men went up at noon and got some crackers and sardines, and soda-pop-she never liked sardines. . . . Then, late in the afternoon, a native with a rifle came and said the fight was finished, and they all went home.

Yes, the house had been hit, several times. The china was all right, fortunately. But-and here she rather bristled and you saw that she was really angrylook there Right in front of the door, on the porch, a tumbling slug had struck

the beautiful hardwood floor and ripped up a sliver. There was a deep, long, yellow scar, ugly against the polished surface.

It was bad enough, she said-and for all her control her chin quivered a little-to have to live in a place at the end of the world, this way. You worked so hard to have everything nice and homelikereally, you wouldn't believe the amount of trouble she'd taken with her floors, with incompetent servants and all, and having to do the work herself to show them-and now, just as it was getting fit to be seen, this crazy bullet comes along and ruins everything! She laughed bitterly at the Manager's murmur to the effect that another piece could be set in. It would never look the same, she said. Her floor was just ruined-totally ruined.

Admiral and Staff came away, driving out by the hospital, where a Jamaican woman sat on the steps with her apron over her head, and rocked back and forth, and wailed. . . . War, said the StaffMajor of Marines, reflectively, was certainly hard on folks