How often he lived through that last proud little drama of his soldier
life! There was his Captain wounded, and there was the old Sergeant--the
"Governor"--with chevrons and a flag.
"You're a Sergeant, Crittenden," said the Captain.
He, Crittenden, in blood and sympathy the spirit of secession--bearer
now of the Stars and Stripes! How his heart thumped, and how his head
reeled when he caught the staff and looked dumbly up to the folds; and
in spite of all his self-control, the tears came, as they came again and
again in his delirium.
Right at that moment there was a great bustle in camp. And still holding
that flag, Crittenden marched with his company up to the trenches. There
was the army drawn up at parade, in a great ten-mile half-circle and
facing Santiago. There were the red roofs of the town, and the
batteries, which were to thunder word when the red and yellow flag of
defeat went down and the victorious Stars and Stripes rose up. There
were little men in straw hats and blue clothes coming from Santiago, and
swinging hammocks and tethering horses in an open field, while more
little men in Panama hats were advancing on the American trenches,
saluting courteously. And there were American officers jumping across
the trenches to meet them, and while they were shaking hands, on the
very stroke of twelve, there came thunder--the thunder of two-score and
one salutes. And the cheers--the cheers! From the right rose those
cheers, gathering volume as they came, swinging through the centre far
to the left, and swinging through the centre back again, until they
broke in a wild storm against the big, green hills. A storm that ran
down the foothills to the rear, was mingled with the surf at Siboney and
swung by the rocking transports out to sea. Under the sea, too, it sang,
along the cables, to ring on through the white corridors of the great
capitol and spread like a hurricane throughout all the waiting land at
home! Then he could hear bands playing--playing the "Star-Spangled
Banner"--and the soldiers cheering and cheering again. Suddenly there
was quiet; the bands were playing hymns--old, old hymns that the soldier
had heard with bowed head at his mother's knee, or in some little old
country church at home--and what hardships, privations, wounds, death of
comrades had rarely done, those old hymns did now--they brought tears.
Then some thoughtful soldier pulled a box of hardtack across the
trenches and the little Spanish soldiers fell upon it like schoolboys
and scrambled like pickaninnies for a penny.