"I don't think I ought to let you go. The enemy does not know
peace is on yet, and there are a lot of guerillas--"
Chesterton shook his head in pitying wonder.
"Not let me go!" he exclaimed. "Why, General, you haven't enough men in
your command to stop me, and as for the Spaniards and guerillas--! I'm
homesick," cried the young man. "I'm so damned homesick that I am liable
to die of it before the transport gets me to Sandy Hook."
"If you are shot up by an outpost," growled the general, "you will be
worse off than homesick. It's forty miles to Mayaguez. Better wait till
daylight. Where's the sense of dying, after the fighting's over?"
"If I don't catch that transport I sure _will_ die," laughed Chesterton.
His head was bent and he was tugging at his saddle girths. Apparently
the effort brought a deeper shadow to his tan, "but nothing else can
kill me! I have a charm, General," he exclaimed.
"We hadn't noticed it," said the general.
The staff officers, according to regulations, laughed.
"It's not that kind of a charm," said Chesterton. "Good-by, General."
The road was hardly more than a trail, but the moon made it as light as
day, and cast across it black tracings of the swinging vines and
creepers; while high in the air it turned the polished surface of the
palms into glittering silver.
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