e, the defiant trumpeters playing
their pretty march-call more defiantly than ever.

Introductions were the order of the next few moments, Shafter
introducing all his major and brigadier-generals to Toral. Meanwhile
Spanish soldiers were defiling past us along the road going toward our
lines, and without arms. There was no rancor or bitterness in the
expression of these men. They evinced mostly an abnormal curiosity in
observing the cavalrymen who formed our escort, and the cavalry repaid
it in kind. The soldiers on both sides wanted to know just what manner
of men they had been fighting these last few weeks.

I, myself, became lost in the fascination of these silent-shod soldiers
(for they wear a kind of tennis shoe) filing off at their rapid marching
gait. We noted that most of them were young, jolly, rather
innocent-looking fellows, and we looked especially for officers,
studying them and watching to see how "they took it." One fellow led a
very fat cow, with his knapsack and impedimenta bound to her horns.

They had nearly gone by and the end of their pack-train of little
donkeys was already in sight when a general movement of our escort made
me gather up the reins. The head of our column was just descending into
the road, going on at a trot. The ride into the city was beginning.

Shall I ever forget that ride? We rode three abreast, always at a rapid
trot and sometimes even at a canter, the General himself always setting
the pace. Just after leaving the field where the surrender had taken
place the road broadened still more until it became a veritable highway,
the broadest and best we had ever seen in Cuba, but disfigured here and
there with the dead horses of officers, the saddle and headstall still
on the carcass. The city was in plain sight now, but its aspect, with
which we had become so familiar, was changing with every hundred yards.

At the junction of the Caney road a block house was passed with its
usual trench and trocha, strong enough against infantry, as we all knew
by now. This one was of unusual strength and we would have given it more
serious attention had not our eyes been smitten with the sight of a
veritable marvel. It might have been the white swan of Lohengrin there
on the stony margin of the road, or the green dragon of Whantley, or the
Holland submarine torpedo boat; but it was none of these. It was a
carriage--a carriage.

I say it was a carriage, a hack, with girls in white muslin frock