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So in the end it came out all right, but it was near to being the death of me; and, next to hanging, the meanest kind of a death a man could suffer. When this incident occurred, which came so near to ending tragically for me, we had been trying to drive the government troops out of the cathedral of Comyagua.
We were a week in reaching Comyagua, which was the only place that we expected would offer any resistance until we arrived outside of the capital. During that week our march was exactly similar to the one we had made from the camp to Santa Barbara. There was the same rough trail, the jungle crowding close on either flank, the same dusty villages, the same fierce heat.
Naturally, this did not help me with the volunteers, and for the first ten days after I had joined the Legion I was the most generally disliked man in it. This lasted until we reached Comyagua, when something happened which brought the men over to my side. Indeed, I believe I became a sort of a hero with them, and was nearly as popular as Laguerre himself.
Out of the corners of my eyes I could see the bayonets lifting cautiously and forming a ring of points about me, and the sight, and my own words lashed me into a frenzy of bravado. "Oh, you don't remember me, don't you?" I cried. "You ought to remember the Foreign Legion! We drove you out of Santa Barbara and Tabla Ve and Comyagua, and I'm your Vice-President!
While I was at head- quarters our scouts came in to report that the enemy was escaping along the trail to Comyagua, and that two of their guns had stalled in the mud, not one mile out from Santa Barbara. This was great news, and to my delight I was among those who hurried out to the place where the guns were supposed to be.
"And I can tell you that there are other ways of doing things than 'according to Hardie. Alvarez's officers came to me after the battle of Comyagua. They expected to beat you there, and when you chased them out of the city and started for the Capital they thought it was all up with them, and decided to make terms." "With you?" said Laguerre.
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