Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/348

270 without any one to control them, would be very likely to connect "those rascals" with the arrival of Morazan. I will not say that we wished they might all be killed, but we did wish that their bad blood might be let out, and that was almost the same thing. In fact, I did most earnestly hope never to see their faces again. I preferred being taken by any roving band in the country rather than by them, and never felt more relieved than when we heard the sound of a bugle. It was the Morazan blast of victory; and, though sounding fiercely the well-known notes of "degollar, degollar," "cut-throaty cut-throat," it was music to our ears. Very soon we heard the tramp of cavalry, and leaving our hiding-place, returned to the sala, and heard a cry of "Viva la Federacion!" This was a cheering sound. It was now dark. We opened the door an inch or two, but a lancer riding by struck it open with his lance, and asked for water. We gave him a large calabash, which another took from his hands. We threw open the door, and kept two large calabashes on the silt; and the soldiers, as they passed, took a hasty draught. Asking a question of each, we learned that it was General Morazan himself, with the survivors of his expedition against Guatimala. Our house was well known; many of the officers inquired for the family, and an aid-de-camp gave notice to the servant-woman that Morazan himself intended stopping there. The soldiers marched into the plaza, stacked their arms, and shouted "Viva Morazan!" In the morning the shout was, "Viva Carrera!" None cried "Viva la Patria!"

There was no end to our troubles. In the morning we surrendered to one party, and in the evening were captured out of their hands by another; probably before daylight Carrera would be upon us. There was only one comfort: the fellows who had broken our rest the night before, and scared the inhabitants from their homes, were now looking out for lodgings in the mountains themselves. I felt sorry for Figoroa and his aid, and on abstract principles, for the killed. As for the rest, I cared but little what became of them.

In a few moments a party of officers came down to our house. For six days they had been in constant flight through an enemy's country, changing their direction to avoid pursuit, and only stopping to rest their horses. Entering under the excitement of a successful skirmish, they struck me as the finest set of men I had seen in the country. Figoroa had come upon them so suddenly, that General Morazan, who rode at the head of his men, had two bullets pass by his head before he could draw his pistol, and he had a narrower escape than in the whole of his bloody battle in Guatimala. Colonel Calbañas, a small, quiet, gentlemanly man, the commander of the troops massacred in Honduras,