The war maker

DURING the Cuban filibustering days I gained more notoriety than I desired, even though it really was not a great deal, and as I did not wish to be known as a trouble-maker on the other side, where the laws against the carrying of contraband were being rigidly enforced on account of the recent “Alabama” affair, I lost my identity while crossing the Atlantic. When I reached London in the latter part of 1868 I was “George MacFarlane,” and in order that I might have an address and ostensible occupation I established the commercial house of George MacFarlane & Co., at 10 Corn Hill. My partner, who really was only a clerk, was a young Englishman named Cunningham, for whom I had been able to do a good turn while I was living in Chicago. I opened an account in the London & Westminster Bank with an initial deposit of close to seventy-five thousand pounds, which gave me a financial standing.

In order to establish my respectability with the British Board of Trade, which exercised a watchful eye and general supervision over the enforcement of the maritime laws, and to build up a reputation for eminent business respectability which would serve as a cover for the illicit but much more exciting operations in which I expected to engage as soon as opportunity offered, and at the same time to throw me naturally in contact with shipping concerns under the most favorable conditions, I bought several small vessels and began shipping general cargoes to and from the Continent, either on my own account or for others. Fate was kind to me in throwing in my way the little steamer “Leckwith,” which I bought at a bargain. She had been built as a yacht for a nobleman but did not suit him. She was not large enough to be used as a passenger boat and her depth of hold was not sufficient to make her profitable as a freighter, but she was exactly the ship I wanted as a carrier of contraband. She registered five hundred and twenty tons and could do seventeen knots when she was pushed. She was small enough to go anywhere, fast enough to beat anything that was likely to chase her, and big enough for my purposes. Until the day I buried her, years afterward, as the only means of destroying damning evidence, she served me faithfully and well, and I doubt if any ship, before or since, has made so much money for her owner.

One of the first shipping firms with which I became acquainted was that of H. Nickell & Son, of Leadenhall Street. They were speculators as well as merchants and I cultivated them, without having to wait long for results. Encouraged by the insurrection against the Bourbons, which had resulted in the abdication and flight to France of Queen Isabella, Don Carlos, the Spanish Pretender, was just then, in 1869, preparing to make his last fight for the long coveted crown of Spain. His chief agent had bought all of the arms and ammunition he could pay for from Kynoch & Co., of Birmingham, which establishment is now, I believe, owned by Joseph Chamberlain and his son and brother, though conducted under the old name, and had contracted with Nickell & Son for their delivery on the northern coast of Spain. They had lost one cargo, through the watchfulness of a Spanish warship, and had nearly come to grief with another, just before I became acquainted with them.

The Pretender’s agent then proposed that Don Carlos pay for the arms when they were delivered, instead of at the factory, as before, and suggested to Nickell & Son that they enter into a contract on that basis, to cover all future purchases.

Old man Nickell was considering this proposition when I met him and, suspecting that I had ideas regarding the sailing of ships that went beyond the uninteresting routine of strictly legitimate commerce, he told me about it, after we had come to know and understand each other a bit. Naturally, it appealed to me and it did not take us long to reach an agreement which, if it would not have blocked our plans and we had wanted to follow the foolish English fashion, would have enabled us to advertise ourselves as “Purveyors Extraordinary of Munitions of War to His Royal Majesty, Don Carlos.” It was agreed that Nickell should buy the arms while I should furnish the ship and deliver them. We were to charge a price commensurate with the risk we assumed, with something added,—for we had reason to believe the Pretender had plenty of money,—and divide the proceeds.

It was stipulated that the first consignment should be delivered to Don Carlos himself at his headquarters near Bilbao, and before accepting the cargo I went there on an iron-ore steamer to reconnoitre. I found that the Pretender’s retreat in the mountains back from Bilbao was in the very heart of that section of Spain which was most loyal to him. Carlist sentiment was almost unanimous in the Provinces of Vizcaya, Alava, and Guipuzcoa, and strong in the adjoining Provinces of Navarre, Catalonia, and Aragon, so there was nothing to fear once we succeeded in getting up the river. Even the city of Bilbao was largely composed of Carlist supporters, but the forts which commanded the river there and at Portugalete, the deep-water port of Bilbao on the coast at the mouth of the river, were manned by unfriendly troops. The two Generals, Prim and Serrano, who were the real rulers of Spain and who placed Prince Amadeo, son of the King of Italy, on the throne a year or so later, were as much opposed to the Carlists as they had been to the Bourbons. They did not propose that the Pretender should gain any ground during the troubled period which they had brought about by the expulsion of Queen Isabella. They knew he was trying to import arms from England and they had so many warships patrolling the northern coast that it practically amounted to a blockade; but, after my experience at Charleston, I did not regard that as a serious matter.

Only a small and light-draft ship could get up the river to the point at which the arms were to be delivered, which was a few miles above Bilbao. I did not care to try it with the “Leckwith” so I chartered a smaller steamer which greatly resembled the “Santa Marta,” a Spanish coastwise ship. To avoid suspicion as to their real destination the rifles and cartridges, in boxes which gave no indication of their contents, were shipped to Antwerp, and I picked them up there. As soon as we were out of sight of land I repainted my ship and made some slight changes in her upper works, until she looked almost exactly like the “Santa Marta.” That name was then painted on her bows and the Spanish flag was hoisted over her. With this precaution I figured that we would avoid any trouble with the forts or any warships we might encounter, and we did; in fact we did not see a single warship. Of course, if we had happened to meet the real “Santa Marta,” we would have had to run for it at least, and it might have been more serious than that, but I simply took a chance that we would not run into her. We saluted the forts as we passed them and they responded without taking two looks at us.

We got over the bar at Bilbao with very little to spare under our keel and went on up the river to the appointed place, where we tied up so close to the steep bank that we threw a plank ashore. A band of gypsies—Gitanos—were camped close by, and in ten minutes they were all over the ship. Among them was a singularly beautiful girl to whom I was drawn. She followed me around the ship, which did not annoy me at all, and insisted on telling my fortune. When I consented she told me, among a lot of other things, that I would be paid a large sum of money in the mountains, and assassinated. Her dire prediction did not cause me a moment’s anxiety, as I have no faith in human ability to discern what the inhuman Fates have prescribed for us, but she was greatly worried by what the cards had told her and begged me, almost with tears in her eyes, to stay away from the mountains. As I then had no thought of going into the hills I assured her that I would do as she advised, whereat she was much relieved.

No messenger from Don Carlos came down to meet us, as had been agreed upon, and after waiting three or four days I sent one of the gypsies to his camp to advise him that the cargo awaited his orders, and the payment for it. He replied that he would send for it and that I should come to his headquarters for the money, as he wished to consult with me about further shipments. He sent along one of his aides to escort me to his camp. The Gitano girl’s warning had made so little impression on me that I did not recall it. It seemed natural enough that Don Carlos should want more arms, as we had expected he would, and that he should want to give personal directions as to where and when they were to be delivered, and without any thought of danger I set forth at once. George Brown, my sailing master, a gigantic Nova Scotian, and Bill Heather, the second officer, accompanied me, as they wished to see the country and, perhaps, the famous Pretender.

The Carlist camp was located well up in the mountains, nearly twelve miles from where we were tied up. Following the aide, we walked diagonally away from the river for about six miles, which brought us to the foothills. Then we switched off to the left for a mile and turned sharply to the right into a canyon, which we followed for three miles or more when it turned to the right again, and a two-mile tramp landed us at the headquarters of the claimant to the Spanish crown. The camp stretched away through the woods that covered the plateau to which we had climbed but we had no opportunity to inspect it, nor to form any intelligent idea as to the number of troops, for right at the head of the canyon was a large square tent, surmounted with a flag bearing the Carlist arms, which we rightly guessed was occupied by the Commander-in-Chief.

We were halted there and after a short wait I was ceremoniously ushered into the august presence of the Pretender. He was standing as I entered, for impressive effect rather than from courtesy, and I am compelled to admit that in personal appearance he had a great advantage over any real King I have ever seen. Perhaps forty years old, he was in the full glory of physical manhood; six feet tall, powerfully built, and unmistakably a Spaniard. He had a full beard and moustache as black as his hair, large dark eyes, a Grecian nose, and a broad high forehead which suggested a higher degree of intellectuality than he possessed. But his cold face was cruel and unscrupulous and I felt—what I afterward found was fact—that his adherents followed him chiefly from principle and were dominated much more by fear than by personal loyalty. Yet, despite a face forbidding to any keen student of human nature, he was an imposing figure, with evidences of royalty that were exaggerated by his manner. He greeted me with frigid formality in contradiction of the warm welcome I had expected, as due a saviour of the Carlist cause, and his first words, spoken in fair English, were a curt statement that he had no money but would pay for my cargo through his London agent within two months.

Chagrined at the manner of my reception and surprised at his attitude, I inquired, with some heat: “How is it possible, Your Majesty, that you are not prepared to carry out the agreement made with your agent who was acting, as he convinced us, with your full authority? Our contract stipulates that my cargo is to be paid for in cash and unless this is complied with I cannot deliver it and we will be compelled to accept no further orders from you.”

“If my agent made such a contract as that,” he retorted with assumed indignation, “he did it on his own responsibility alone and I refuse to be bound by it. I have stated my terms. If you do not care to accede to them you can go to the devil.”

It was plain that I would make no headway in that direction so I went about on the other tack, using honeyed words in place of harsh ones.

“I beg Your Majesty’s pardon,” I said with much deference, “for momentarily losing my temper. It was due to the heat and the long tramp. I am not accustomed to such enervating exercise. I see now that Your Majesty is joking. It could not be otherwise, for the word of a King of Spain is sacred.”

The flattery went home, as I supposed, and while he repeated that he had stated the exact situation, his manner was more friendly.

“You carry the joke admirably, Your Majesty,” I continued. “Had you not been born to rule you would have won fame as an actor. Your mock seriousness would, I fear, cause real seriousness at Madrid if General Prim knew of the extent to which you indulge your capacity for humor.”

When he persisted in his assertion that he was in earnest and did not propose to live up to the contract, I pointed out to him, as discreetly as possible, what the result of such a course would be. “I can only again congratulate you on your art,” I said, “for it would be ridiculous for me to believe you speak seriously. Failure to keep the agreement made by your agent even though, as I now believe, he acted without explicit instructions from you [which I did not believe at all] would destroy your excellent credit, not only with my firm but with all other dealers in revolutionary supplies, and that, of course, is not to be thought of. On the other hand, by paying for this cargo, in compliance with the contract, you will establish your credit more firmly than ever, and I have no doubt you will be able to make your own terms for further shipments. I know that Your Majesty is not only very honest but very wise.”

This argument appeared to convince him and, with a smile as though he really had been only joking, he summoned a venerable Jew, evidently his treasurer, who looked like the original of all pictures of Shylock, and, speaking so rapidly in Spanish that I could hardly understand him, ordered him to pay me twenty-eight thousand pounds, the amount called for by the manifest. The Jew returned in a few minutes with the exact amount, chiefly in Spanish notes of large denomination but with enough gold to make quite a load. While I was waiting for the money he told me he would want thirteen thousand more stands of arms and a million cartridges, which were to be shipped in two cargoes at times and places to be indicated by his agent in London, who would arrange the terms of payment, under specific instructions, to avoid any further misunderstandings. I assured him that they would be sent when and where he wanted them. With the transaction completed Don Carlos dramatically waved me out.

The officer who had piloted us to the camp suggested that we could find our way back to the ship without any trouble, as the trail was clearly defined, and we started back alone. Before we had gone twenty steps Brown asked if I had been paid in cash. I pointed to my bulging pockets and told him I undoubtedly had. He then confessed that he thought we were “in for it.” Six cavalrymen, he said, had started down the trail not long before I left Don Carlos’ tent, and from the action attending their movement he believed that they had been sent out to waylay and rob and probably murder us in the deep canyon into which the ravine from the camp turned. In a flash I recalled the prediction of the gypsy girl and the promise I had given her. I laughed at myself for the spasm of something like fear that came into my mind, yet I was undeniably nervous, for Brown was not a man to form foolish fancies or become unduly alarmed about anything. None of us was armed and if Brown’s suspicion was correct, which I was slow to believe, the troopers would make short work of us.

We had turned a corner that put us out of sight of the camp and were walking slowly along discussing, with deep gravity on the part of Brown and Heather and a partly assumed mock seriousness on my part, the possibilities of the situation and the general cussedness of Spanish character, when I saw a dark face peering at us through the underbrush that matted the trail on both sides. I am not sure, but I think I jumped; anyway, I know I was startled. At the first glance the face looked like nothing but one of the troopers we had been talking about but in an instant I recognized the Gitano girl who had told my fortune and begged me not to go into the mountains. She beckoned to us and we answered her summons, without any unseemly haste, perhaps, but certainly without any delay. Uttering not a word she plunged off at right angles to the trail into deep woods, in which we would have been hopelessly lost in ten minutes, with the three of us following her in Indian file. She led us over a hill and across a wide depression and then over another much higher mountain. There was not so much as a suggestion of a path and it was hard going, yet none of us complained. She brought us out to the trail at the point where we had made our first turn into the foothills. From there it was a straight road to the ship, with open country all around, so there could be no fear of ambuscade or attack.

The tension was relieved and the girl, with tears in her eyes that betrayed her real emotions, threw her arms around my neck and reproached me passionately for violating my promise to her and exposing myself to what she said would have been certain death but for her intervention. It was with difficulty that I released myself from her embrace, while Brown and Heather discreetly and rapidly walked on ahead of us. She said she heard where I had gone when she went to the ship in the morning to see me, and knowing what the plot would be, she had taken the short-cut through the mountains, by which we had returned, to intercept us as we were leaving the camp. The gypsies were loyal to the Carlists through fear of them so she could get no help from her own people, but she had prevailed on her brother to steal up the trail through the canyon to see what happened there, not to verify her suspicions, as she explained, but to prove to us that she was right. An hour after we reached the ship her brother returned and reported to her that six cavalrymen had come down the ravine from the camp and concealed themselves alongside the trail in the canyon just below the turn. After a long wait one of them galloped back toward the camp. He soon returned, after discovering that we had left the trail, and the others went back to camp with him. To Brown and Heather that seemed convincing proof of what would have happened to us but for the gypsy girl; my own notion about it was that what had happened had to happen, and I had not been killed simply because my time had not arrived. Therefore I felt nothing of gratitude; but when I came to analyze my real feeling toward the young woman, whose wondrous black eyes seemed to reflect all of the mystery and witchery of those glorious ages that died with the departure of the Moors, and were silently eloquent of a fine civilization of old centuries, I found that the deep impression her physical charms had made on me had been intensified by her mad affection for me. This made it no easy matter to leave her, but I had no notion of taking her with me, and had to get bluff Bill Heather to half carry her ashore just before the gang plank was pulled in.

Most of the arms had been removed from the ship while we were away and turned over to the guard Don Carlos had sent down. The rest of the cargo was jerked out with all speed and as soon as the last box was on the bank we got under way. We had not gone a quarter of a mile, moving slowly on account of the tortuous channel, when the gypsies came running after us, shouting and waving at us to come back. The cause of their excitement was soon discovered in the presence of my Gitano girl, who had stolen on board at the last minute, while I was below inspecting the engines, and concealed herself until we were under way.

My first impulse was to stop the ship and set her ashore but before I could give the order she came running to me and declared, with an imperious air of authority: “I am going with you, so pay no attention to my foolish people.”

“But, my dear girl, you cannot do that,” I protested. “I shall be accused of having stolen you.”

“You cannot steal what belongs to you,” was her quick reply.

“But I am going to a strange land where there are none of your people and where your language is a strange tongue. You will be lonely and die.”

“I never shall be lonely where you are,” she exclaimed with all the passion of her romantic soul, “and I shall not die unless they kill me here. If you go on I go with you; if I go ashore you go with me.”

Never before having encountered such affection I was content to let her have her way. Her tribesmen followed us, and called down all manner of curious curses on our heads, until they were convinced we had no thought of stopping, when two of them galloped on ahead of us toward Bilbao. They went to the fort, evidently, and told the officer in command that we were aiding Don Carlos, for as soon as we got within hailing distance we were ordered to heave to. We paid no attention to the command, of course, and as the only effect of a warning gun which followed was to increase our speed, they sent half a dozen shots at us, as a matter of duty. One of them shattered the fore-topmast and brought the fore-rigging down by the run; the others went wild. We were fired at from a height and dropping shots seldom hit, though when they do they are generally disastrous. With everything dragging forward, until the gear could be cleared away, we proceeded down the widening river at full speed. Greatly to my surprise we were not even hailed by the fort at the mouth of the river, where I had looked for some serious business, and we continued happily on our way to London.

Soon after our arrival there I established the Gitano girl, to whom I had become deeply attached, in a cottage near Chalk Farm, not far from the city. I left her amply supplied with money and there were other gypsies near there with whom she could fraternize. It is an evidence of the strange way in which my life has been ordered that I never saw her again. When I returned, at the first opportunity, in about two years, I found nothing but a pile of blackened ruins where the cottage had stood. The Gitano girl’s beauty had made her known to the people who lived nearby but they had not seen her for more than a year, and the neighboring gypsies had moved away, no one knew where. I am not much given to regrets, being content to let my destiny work itself out free from senseless protests, yet if my wishes had been consulted I would not have lost my glorious Gitano girl. Possibly the ruined cottage symbolized a love that had burned itself out or it may be that somewhere her spirit is waiting for mine. “Why?” and “When?” are questions that I never attempt to answer.

That experience finished me with Don Carlos. Seven or eight years later, when I was selling arms to Montenegro and Turkey, and not long after he had finally been driven out of Spain, I met him at Claridge’s Hotel in London, as he came in from attending church at the Greek Chapel. He recognized me and, after pausing for a second, offered me his hand, but I refused it.

“What do you mean?” he demanded angrily.

“I mean, Your Royal Highness,” I replied, with some sarcasm, “that if I am here to shake hands with you it is through no good will of yours, for you tried to have me assassinated in your mountains.” He looked at me hard for a moment, shrugged his shoulders, and walked on.

After settling up with Nickell on the Don Carlos expedition I devoted myself, for a few months, to legitimate commerce. I had bachelor quarters on Russell Square, in London, and divided my time between that city and Paris, where I opened a branch of my mercantile and shipping house at 30 Rue Vivienne. While in Paris I lived at the Grand Hotel and loafed at Charley Wells’ American restaurant nearby on the Rue Scribe. In both London and Paris I read and heard considerable about a picturesque South American named Guzman Blanco. He had been driven out of Venezuela, of which country he was Vice-President, and was said to be then planning a revolt through which he expected to gain the presidency. I was anxious to meet him but was unable to do so, as both of us were moving about a great deal. I had thought of Venezuela before I visited Europe and, attracted by the promised revolt, I decided that I would go to that country as soon as the Franco-Prussian War, which then was almost ready to break out, was over, or before that if it lasted longer than I thought it would. Just before the war began I bought three cargoes of wines at Bordeaux and sent them to London, where I sold them later at a good profit.

During the brief war, which began on July 19, 1870, and ended in the capitulation of the French at Sedan on September first, I had three ships busy with honest cargoes, but I did not get a chance to do any contraband running until just before its close. The Austrian Army was then being rearmed with the improved Werndle rifle, and thousands of the old guns were stored in the arsenal at Vienna.

Nickell had bought a lot of them at a bargain but on account of the war Austria would not release them without a guarantee that they were not to be used against Germany. I was led to believe I could sell five thousand of these rifles to the Committee of Safety at Bordeaux; so I bought that number from Nickell and, with an order for their delivery, I went to Trieste in the “Leckwith.” Charles Lever, the novelist, was then the British consul at Trieste, where he died a year or two later. On the pretence that the arms were for Japan, and that I would be able to establish that fact within a few days, I secured the removal of the guns from Vienna to the Trieste arsenal, which was only a few hundred yards from the dock at which the “Leckwith” was tied up. However, to get them over that short distance and then to get away with them was a problem that puzzled me. I was mulling over it one day in a café when a maudlin young Englishman, who was sitting at the table with me and had been trying to talk to me, pulled out a passport, all plastered with red seals and wax in the old Continental fashion. It was a most formidable and ceremonious looking document and the instant I saw it an inspiration seized me. From the most taciturn I became the most jovial of companions and plied the Englishman with wine until he fell sound asleep.

Then I took the passport from his pocket and hustled off to the arsenal. I had been assiduously cultivating the officers there and was delighted to find the young lieutenant with whom I was best acquainted in charge of the guard. I told him I would have the order for the release of the rifles within an hour and proceeded to celebrate by getting him in the same state in which I had found the convenient Englishman. I sent word to Lorensen, sailing master of the “Leckwith,” to get up a full head of steam, and engaged a dozen big wagons to be at the arsenal in an hour. I arrived with the wagons, waved the gaudy passport in front of the young officer’s face, and without trying to read it he told me to go ahead. We made quick work of getting the boxed arms to the ship and under her hatches, for the guard was changed at four o’clock and my sleepy young friend would be succeeded by an officer who was sober and in his right mind. We were not quite fast enough, however, for just as we were pulling out the new officer of the guard came running down the dock, shouting that he wanted to see the order for the release of the arms. As he was well out of arm’s-reach I made a fussy effort to hand him the passport. Then I opened it out and showed it to him, all the while explaining that it was all right.

He went away shaking his head and I anticipated trouble at the fort at the entrance to the harbor, at the head of the Adriatic, as the channel through which we had to run was narrow. The fort occupied a commanding position and had high walls from the water’s edge, with a free bastion high up. Sure enough, a shot whizzed across our bows as we reached the fort. Immediately I swung the ship in and before they saw I was not going to come to anchor, as they had supposed, we were so close under the walls that they could not bring their guns to bear on us. It was only a very few minutes, however, until they could reach us with their seaward guns, and they let go at us without any delay. The second shot took a bite out of the mainmast and it looked as though they had found our range and would smash us in a jiffy; but the brave little ship was tearing through the water at her top speed and, as we were going directly away from them, was hard to hit. Shells splashed uncomfortably close to us for a few minutes, but save for one shot that carried away some of the ginger-bread work on the stern we were not struck again, and were soon out of reach of anything like accurate fire. The “Leckwith” had stood her first baptism of fire in a way that augured well for her future, and the sign was a good one.

The arms were rushed to Bordeaux and turned over to the Committee of Safety only a few days before the battle of Sedan. I was sufficiently enthusiastic in the cause of France to land them without a proper guarantee of payment, and, in fact, they never were paid for. Everything was turmoil; so after waiting a few days I placed the bill for the arms with an attorney and hurried on to London, en route for Venezuela, where I expected to find more excitement, in which hope I was in no way disappointed. I placed the “Leckwith” and my ships in the hands of Nickell & Co., for charter, and took the first steamer for New York.