Part 10 (1/2)
No. 2. VO[~I]E ABET FECIT SEVILLE AnO D 1724
No. 3. EL COMETA 1737
No. 4. 1780
No. 5. 1781
From the above inscriptions and dates it appears that the most modern piece of ordnance in the Morro Castle battery was cast one hundred and seventeen years ago, and the oldest one hundred and seventy-four years ago. It would be interesting to know the history of the two French cannon which, in obedience to the order of Louis XIV, were marked ”ULTIMO RATIO REGUM.” Iean Maritz, their founder, doubtless regarded them, a century ago, with as much pride as Herr Krupp feels now when he turns out a fifteen-inch steel breech-loader at Essen; but the _ultimo ratio regum_ does not carry as much weight on this side of the Atlantic in the nineteenth century as it carried on the other side in the eighteenth, and the recent discussions between Morro Castle and Admiral Sampson's fleet proved conclusively that the ”last argument of kings” is much less cogent and convincing than the first argument of battle-s.h.i.+ps.
It is doubtful, however, whether these antiquated guns were ever fired at Admiral Sampson's fleet. They were not pointed toward the sea when the castle was evacuated; I could not find any ammunition for them, either on the bastion roof where they stood or in the vaults of the castle below; there were no rammers or spongers on or about the gun-platforms, where they would naturally have been left when the guns were abandoned; and there was nothing whatever to show that they had been fired in fifty years. But it could have made little difference to the blockading fleet whether they were fired or not. They were hardly more formidable than the ”crakys of war” used by Edward III against the French at the battle of Crecy. As for the mortars, they were fit only for a museum of antiquities, or a collection of obsolete implements of war like that in the Tower of London. I hope that Secretary Alger or Secretary Long will have ”El Manticora” and ”El Cometa” brought to the United States and placed at the main entrance of the War Department or the Navy Department as curiosities, as fine specimens of artistic bronze casting, and as trophies of the Santiago campaign.
When I had finished copying the inscriptions on the cannon and the mortars, I went down into the interior of the castle to examine some pictures and inscriptions that I had noticed on the walls of a chamber in the second story, which had been used, apparently, as a guard-room or barrack. It was a large, rectangular, windowless apartment, with a wide door, a vaulted ceiling, and smooth stone walls which had been covered with plaster and whitewashed. Among the Spanish soldiers who had occupied this room there was evidently an amateur artist of no mean ability, who had amused himself in his hours of leisure by drawing pictures and caricatures on the whitewashed walls. On the left of the door, at a height of five or six feet, was a life-sized and very cleverly executed sketch of a Spaniard in a wide sombrero, reading a Havana newspaper. His eyes and mouth were wide open, as if he were amazed and shocked beyond measure by the news of some terrible calamity, and his att.i.tude, as well as the horror-stricken expression of his elongated face, seemed to indicate that, at the very least, he had just found in the paper an announcement of the sudden and violent death of all his family. Below, in quotation-marks, were the words:!!! Que BARBARIDAD.!!! Han apresado UN VIVERO.” (”What BARBARITY!!! They have captured A FIs.h.i.+NG-SMACK!!!”)
This is evidently a humorous sneer at the trifling value of the prizes taken by the vessels of our blockading fleet off Havana in the early days of the war. But there is more in the Spanish words than can well be brought out in a translation, for the reason that _vivero_ means a vessel in which fish are brought from the Yucatan banks _alive_, in large salt-water tanks. We had been accusing the Spaniards of cruelty and barbarity in their treatment of the insurgents. The artist ”gets back at us,” to use a slang phrase, by exclaiming, in pretended horror, ”What barbarous cruelty! They have captured a boat-load of _living_ fis.h.!.+”
For a Spanish soldier, that is not bad; and the touch is as delicate in the sneer of the legend as in the technic of the cartoon.
A little farther along and higher up, on the same wall, was a carefully executed and beautifully finished life-sized portrait of a tonsured Roman Catholic monk--a sketch that I should have been glad to frame and hang in my library, if it had only been possible to get it off the wall without breaking the plaster upon which it had been drawn. I thought of trying to photograph it; but the light in the chamber was not strong enough for a snap shot, and I had no tripod to support my camera during a time-exposure.
There were several other sketches and caricatures on the left-hand wall; but none of them was as good as were the two that I have described, and, after examining them all carefully, I cast my eyes about the room to see what I could find in the shape of ”loot” that would be worth carrying away as a memento of the place. Apart from old shoes, a modern kerosene-lamp of gla.s.s, a dirty blanket or two, and a cot-bed, there seemed to be nothing worth confiscating except a couple of Spanish newspapers hanging against the right-hand wall on a nail. One was ”El Imparcial,” a sheet as large as the New York ”Sun”; and the other, ”La Saeta,” an ill.u.s.trated comic paper about the size of ”Punch.” They had no intrinsic value, of course, and as ”relics” they were not particularly characteristic; but ”newspapers from a bastion in Morro Castle” would be interesting, I thought, to some of my journalistic friends at home, so I decided to take them. I put up my hand to lift them off the nail without tearing them, and was amazed to discover that neither nail nor newspapers had any tangible existence. They had been drawn on the plaster, by that confounded soldier-artist, with a lead-pencil I felt worse deceived and more chagrined than the Greek pony that neighed at the painted horse of Apelles! But I need not have felt so humiliated. Those newspapers would have deceived the elect; and I am not sure that the keenest-sighted proof-reader of the ”Imparcial” would not have read and corrected a whole column before he discovered that the paper was plaster and that the letters had been made with a pencil.
Major Greene of the United States Signal-Service, to whom I described these counterfeit newspapers, went to the castle a few days later, and, notwithstanding the fact that he had been forewarned, he tried to take ”La Saeta” off the nail. He trusted me enough to believe that one of the papers was deceptive; but he felt sure that a real copy of ”La Saeta”
had been hung over a counterfeit ”Imparcial” in order to make the latter look more natural. If the soldier who drew the caricatures, portraits, and newspapers in that guard-room escaped shot, sh.e.l.l, and calenture, and returned in safety to Spain, I hope that he may sometime find in a Spanish journal a translation of this chapter, and thus be made aware of the respectful admiration that I shall always entertain for him and his artistic talents.
In all the rooms of the castle that had been occupied by soldiers I found, scratched or penciled on the walls, checker-board calendars on which the days had been successively crossed off; rude pictures and caricatures of persons or things; individual names; and brief reflections or remarks in doggerel rhyme or badly spelled prose, which had been suggested to the writers, apparently, by their unsatisfactory environment. One man, for example, has left on record this valuable piece of advice:
”Unless you have a good, strong 'pull' [_mucha influencia_], don't complain that your rations are bad. If you do, you may have to come and live in Morro Castle, where they will be much worse.”
Another, addressing a girl named ”Petenera,” who seems to have gotten him into trouble, exclaims:
Petenera, my life! Petenera, my heart!
It is all your fault.
That I lie here in Morro Suffering pain and writing my name On the plastered wall.
JOSe.
Probably ”Jose” went to see ”Petenera” without first obtaining leave of absence, and was shut up in one of the gloomy guard-rooms of Morro Castle as a punishment.
Another wall-writer, in a philosophic, reflective, and rather melancholy mood, says:
Tu me sobreviviras.
Que vale el ser del hombres Cuando un escrito vale mas!
You [my writing] will survive me.
What avails it to be a man, when a sc.r.a.p of writing is worth more!
It is a fact which, perhaps, may not be wholly unworthy of notice that, among the sketches I saw and the mural inscriptions I copied in all parts of Morro Castle, there was not an indecent picture nor an improper word, sentence, or line. Spanish soldiers may be cruel, but they do not appear to be vicious or corrupt in the way that soldiers often are.
In wandering through the corridors and gloomy chambers of the castle, copying inscriptions on walls and cannon, and exploring out-of-the-way nooks and corners, I spent a large part of the day. I found that the masonry of the fortress had suffered even less from the guns of Admiral Sampson's fleet than I had supposed. The eastern and southeastern faces of the upper cube had been damaged a little; the parapet, or battlement, of the gun-floor had been shattered in one place, and the debris from it had fallen over and partly blocked up the steps leading to that floor from the second story; two or three of the corner turrets had been injured by small sh.e.l.ls; and there was a deep scar, or circular pit, in the face of the eastern wall, over the moat, where the masonry had been struck squarely by a heavy projectile; but, with the exception of these comparatively trifling injuries, the old fortress remained intact.