By-Ways of War — Part 96

In this assault the besieged suffered but a trifling loss, as the shelter of the adobe walls ensured them safety against any force which it was in the power of the enemy to bring forward. When the latter pushed their barricades too close to the walls of Rivas, the besieged fired hot shot into them and burned the swarming hordes out of their nests. Mora cared nothing for the lives of his wretched conscripts, whom he could afford to lose by hundreds, as long as the Americans fell by dozens and were not reinforced, and while the Allies could cut off supplies of food and ammunition from the beleaguered city. Unfortunately for Walker, a more dangerous enemy than death or hunger assailed Rivas. Desertion, which had begun with the weak-hearted new men, gradually spread like a pestilence, until he hardly knew in whom to trust. Whole companies deserted at a time; pickets abandoned their posts; foraging parties sent out to collect food for the hungry garrison never came back. As early as October, a company of rangers sent into the Chontales district had deserted with their equipments, on a wild attempt to reach the Atlantic by way of the Blewfields river. They never reached the coast, for some French settlers whom they had attempted to plunder fell upon them and slew them to a man.

Famine threatened Rivas. There was not an ounce of bread in the city; the men were living on scanty rations of horse and mule meat, seasoned with sugar in lieu of salt; the hospital was filled with wounded and fever patients. Henningsen said jestingly that, rather than surrender, they would devour the prisoners. Once it was whispered in the ranks that Walker and Henningsen, in anticipation of a successful assault on the town, had prepared a magazine with which to blow up the citadel in the moment of defeat, and with it friend and foe together. The rumour was a silly falsehood, but so much impression did it make upon some of the hardier spirits that, as General Henningsen told the author, seven of them came to him, each begging for the privilege of firing the train. Walker was not reduced to any such straits; he had yet three forlorn hopes; the arrival, by the San Juan river of Lockridge with reinforcements; assistance from California, and, as a last resource, flight to the north on board his schooner _Granada_. The first never came, because Lockridge, defeated before Castillo Viejo, had given up the hopeless task. The second failed when Morgan refused to co-operate with his partner, Garrison, in continuing to run the steamers from San Francisco. On the _Granada_, then, depended the only hope of retreat with honour. Walker, however, did not as yet know that the first and second hopes had failed him.