By and by bulletins began to come in to the mother at Canewood from her
boy at Tampa. There was little psychology in Basil's bulletin:
"I got here all right. My commission hasn't come, and I've joined
the Rough Riders, for fear it won't get here in time. The Colonel
was very kind to me--called me Mister.
"I've got a lieutenant's uniform of khaki, but I'm keeping it out
of sight. I may have no use for it. I've got two left spurs, and
I'm writing in the Waldorf-Astoria. I like these Northern fellows;
they are gentlemen and plucky--I can see that. Very few of them
swear. I wish I knew where brother is. The Colonel calls everybody
Mister--even the Indians.
"Word comes to-night that we are to be off to the front. Please
send me a piece of cotton to clean my gun. And please be easy about
me--do be easy. And if you insist on giving me a title, don't call
me Private--call me Trooper.
"Yes, we are going; the thing is serious. We are all packed up now;
have rolled up camping outfit and are ready to start.
"Baggage on the transport now, and we sail this afternoon. Am sorry
to leave all of you, and I have a tear in my eye now that I can't
keep back. It isn't a summer picnic, and I don't feel like shouting
when I think of home; but I'm always lucky, and I'll come out all
right. I'm afraid I sha'n't see brother at all. I tried to look
cheerful for my picture (enclosed). Good-by.
"Some delay; actually on board and steam up.
"Waiting--waiting--waiting. It's bad enough to go to Cuba in boats
like these, but to lie around for days is trying. No one goes
ashore, and I can hear nothing of brother. I wonder why the General
didn't give him that commission instead of me. There is a curious
sort of fellow here, who says he knows brother. His name is
Blackford, and he is very kind to me. He used to be a regular, and
he says he thinks brother took his place in the --th and is a
regular now himself--a private; I don't understand. There is mighty
little Rough Riding about this.
"P. S.--My bunkie is from Boston--Bob Sumner. His father commanded
a negro regiment in a fight once against my father; think of it!
"Hurrah! we're off."
It was a tropical holiday--that sail down to Cuba--a strange, huge
pleasure-trip of steamships, sailing in a lordly column of three; at
night, sailing always, it seemed, in a harbour of brilliant lights under
multitudinous stars and over thickly sown beds of tiny phosphorescent
stars that were blown about like flowers in a wind-storm by the frothing
wake of the ships; by day, through a brilliant sunlit sea, a cool
breeze--so cool that only at noon was the heat tropical--and over smooth
water, blue as sapphire. Music night and morning, on each ship, and
music coming across the little waves at any hour from the ships about.
Porpoises frisking at the bows and chasing each other in a circle around
bow and stern as though the transports sat motionless; schools of
flying-fish with filmy, rainbow wings rising from one wave and
shimmering through the sunlight to the foamy crest of another--sometimes
hundreds of yards away. Beautiful clear sunsets of rose, gold-green, and
crimson, with one big, pure radiant star ever like a censor over them;
every night the stars more deeply and thickly sown and growing ever
softer and more brilliant as the boats neared the tropics; every day
dawn rich with beauty and richer for the dewy memories of the dawns that
were left behind.