It was while in Madrid, during my European hunting, that those seeds were sown which a few months later grew into a smart willingness to let down the bars for my filibusterer’s escape. I was by stress of duty held a month in Madrid. And, first to last, I heard nothing from the natives when they spoke of America but malediction and vilest epithet. It kept me something warm, I promise, for all I had once ridden saber in hand to smite that same American government hip and thigh. I left Madrid when my work was done with never a moment’s delay; and hate for Spain and all things Spanish.
As I was brought home by commands from my superiors at the end of my Madrid work, these anti-Spanish sentiments had by no means cooled when I made the New York wharf. Decidedly if I’d been searched for a sentiment, I would have been discovered hostile to Spanish interest when, within three weeks following my home-coming, I was given the Harriet Lane, shown the suspect and his ship, and told to have a sleepless eye and seize him if he moved I am guiltless of acquaintancewith him. .
It’s the Norse instinct to hate Spain; and I was blood and lineage, decisively Norse. That affair of instinct is a mighty matter. It is curious to note how one’s partisanship will back-track one’s racial trail and pick up old race feuds and friendships; hating where one’s forbears hated, loving where they loved. Even as a child, being then a devourer of history, I well recall how—while loathing England as the foe of this country—I still went with her in sympathy was she warring with France or Spain. I remember, too, that, in England’s civil wars, I was ever for the Roundhead and against the King. This, you say, sounds strangely for my theory, coming as I do from Virginia, that state of the Cavalier. One should reflect that Cavalierism—to invent a word—is naught save a Southern boast. Virginia, like most seaboard Southern states, was in its time a sort of Botany Bay whereunto, with other delinquents, political prisoners were condemned; my own ancestors coming, in good truth! by edict of the Bloody Jeffreys for the hand they took in Monmouth’s rebellion. It is true as I state, even as a child, too young for emotions save emotions of instinct, I was ever the friend, as I read history, first of my own country; and next of England, Germany, Holland, Denmark and Sweden-Nor-way—old race-camps of my forefathers, these—and like those same forefathers the uncompromising foe of France, Spain, Italy, and the entire Latin tribe, as soon as ever my reading taught me their existence.
My filibusterer swung on his cable down the bay from Governor’s Island. During daylight I held the Harriet Lane at decent distance; when night came down I lay as closely by him as I might and give the ships room as they swept bow for stern with the tide. Also, we had a small-boat patrol in the water.