Crittenden

At Tampa--the pomp and circumstance of war.

A gigantic hotel, brilliant with lights, music, flowers, women; halls

and corridors filled with bustling officers, uniformed from empty straps

to stars; volunteer and regular--easily distinguished by the ease of one

and the new and conscious erectness of the other; adjutants, millionaire

aids, civilian inspectors; gorgeous attachés--English, German, Swedish,

Russian, Prussian, Japanese--each wondrous to the dazzled republican

eye; Cubans with cigarettes, Cubans--little and big, war-like, with the

tail of the dark eye ever womanward, brave with machétes; on the divans

Cuban senoritas--refugees at Tampa--dark-eyed, of course, languid of

manner, to be sure, and with the eloquent fan, ever present,

omnipotent--shutting and closing, shutting and closing, like the wings

of a gigantic butterfly; adventurers, adventuresses; artists,

photographers; correspondents by the score--female correspondents; story

writers, novelists, real war correspondents, and real

draughtsmen--artists, indeed; and a host of lesser men with spurs yet

to win--all crowding the hotel day and night, night and day.

And outside, to the sea--camped in fine white sand dust, under thick

stars and a hot sun--soldiers, soldiers everywhere, lounging through the

streets and the railway stations, overrunning the suburbs;

drilling--horseback and on foot--through clouds of sand; drilling at

skirmish over burnt sedge-grass and stunted and charred pine woods;

riding horses into the sea, and plunging in themselves like truant

schoolboys. In the bay a fleet of waiting transports, and all over dock,

camp, town, and hotel an atmosphere of fierce unrest and of eager

longing to fill those wooden hulks, rising and falling with such

maddening patience on the tide, and to be away. All the time, meanwhile,

soldiers coming in--more and more soldiers--in freight-box, day-coach,

and palace-car.

That night, in the hotel, Grafton and Crittenden watched the crowd from

a divan of red plush, Grafton chatting incessantly. Around them moved

and sat the women of the "House of the Hundred Thousand"--officers'

wives and daughters and sisters and sweethearts and army

widows--claiming rank and giving it more or less consciously, according

to the rank of the man whom they represented. The big man with the

monocle and the suit of towering white from foot to crown was the

English naval attaché. He stalked through the hotel as though he had the

British Empire at his back.

"And he has, too," said Grafton. "You ought to see him go down the steps

to the café. The door is too low for him. Other tall people bend

forward--he always rears back."

And the picturesque little fellow with the helmet was the English

military attaché. Crittenden had seen him at Chickamauga, and Grafton

said they would hear of him in Cuba. The Prussian was handsome, and a

Count. The big, boyish blond was a Russian, and a Prince, as was the

quiet, modest, little Japanese--a mighty warrior in his own country. And

the Swede, the polite, the exquisite!