So what with this and with that, we worried along until just beyond the line of our trenches, where the road broadened very considerably and we could compromise by riding on the flanks of the column.
And an imposing column it was, nearly three hundred strong, and it actually appeared as if one-half was made up of brigadier-generals, major-generals, generals commanding divisions, staff officers and the like. A mere colonel was hardly better than a private on that day. We moved forward at a quick trot, General Shafter's pith helmet bobbing briskly along on ahead. As we passed through our lines there was a smart cheer or two from the men, and at one point a band was banging away at a nimble Sousa quickstep as we trotted by.
We were now on what had been the debatable ground, as much the enemy's as ours, and had not gone far before we were suddenly aware of a group of Spanish horsemen over the hedge of cactus to the left of the road, brightly dressed young fellows wearing the blue linen and red facings of the guarda civile, who at the sight of us turned and dashed back through the fields as though to give news of our approach. Then there was a freshly macheted opening in the hedge; the column turned in, advanced parallel with the road some hundred yards through a field of standing grass and at last halted.
At once the place was alive with Spanish soldiery. They came forward to meet us in very brave and gay attire. First a corps of trumpeters sounded a pretty trumpet march. They blew defiantly, did these Spanish trumpeters, and as loudly as ever they could, just to show us that they were not afraid—that they did not care, not they, pooh! After these came a small detachment of guarda, with arms, who watched the Yankee soldiers with bovine intentness while they came to a halt and ordered arms in front of our position.
Toral, the defeated General, came next. Suddenly it had become very quiet. The trumpeters had ceased blowing, and the rattling accoutrements of the moving troops had fallen still with the halt. The beaten General came out into the open space ahead of his staff, and General Shafter rode out to meet him, and they both removed their hats.
I cast a quick glance around the scene, at the Spaniards in their blue linen uniforms, the red and lacquer of the guarda civile, the ordered Mausers, the trumpeters resting their trumpets on their hips, at our own array, McKibben in his black shirt, Ludlow in his white leggings, and the rank and file of the escort, the bronzed, blue-trousered troopers, erect and motionless upon their mounts. It was war, and it was magnificent, seen there under the flash of a tropic sun with all that welter of green to set it off, and there was a bigness about it so that to be there seeing it at all, and, in a way, part of it, made you feel that for that moment you were living larger and stronger than ever before. It was Appomattox again, and Mexico and Yorktown. Tomorrow nearly a hundred million people the world round would read of this scene, and as many more, yet unborn, would read of it, but today you could sit in your saddle on the back of your little white bronco and view it as easily as a play.
Toral rode forward toward Shafter and, as I say, both uncovered. Toral was well-looking, his face rather red from the sun and half hidden by a fine gray mustache. He was a little bald and his forehead was high and round. As the two Generals shook hands it was so still that the noise of a man chopping wood in our lines nearly half a mile away was plainly audible. Immediately at their backs the staffs of the two watched. The escort watched. Back along the Spanish and the American trenches thousands of men stood in line and watched; Santiago watched, and Washington, Spain and the United States, the two hemispheres, the Old World and the New, paused on that moment, watching. A sentence or two was spoken in low tones and the Generals replaced their hats and shook hands smilingly.
Instantly a great creaking of saddles took place as the men eased their positions, and conversation began again. The Spanish soldiers filed off through a break in the barbed wire fence, 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.