efficiency boys. They slung their rifles, hooked on
their packs and went; and that ended that part of it.

But after they were gone people living near naval quarters waited for
the next word; and that next word so often came in the form of one
laconic sentence, the same cabled back by the topside naval officer or
some American consul, that we used to wonder if they had a rubber stamp
for it--that laconic, reassuring sentence! When our country erects a
memorial structure to the United States Marine Corps, she should chisel
over the main front:

_The Marines Have Landed and Have the Situation Well in Hand_

Landed in some tropic port with some hard-pronouncing name, they have,
shoving off from the ship's side with their rifles and their packs, to
get a toe-hold somewhere against two, five, ten times their number
blazing away at them from behind sand-hills, or roof-tops, or a fine
growth of jungle, it may be.

The others are not always as well equipped as our fellows and they may
have no advance supply-base; but they know how to campaign. South of us
are multitudes who will take a bag of corn, a water-bottle, and a pair
of straw sandals and go shuffling over the hill trails for forty or
fifty miles a day. And don't think they won't fight. They will. In
countries where boys of twelve and thirteen pack a gun and go off with
their fathers in the army, they probably do not worry overmuch about
dying early.

From their retreats they like to sally forth at intervals and have a
wallop at our fellows. There was a corporal in Haiti, on outpost, with
half a dozen loyal natives acting as policemen with him. The native
guards slept in barracks by themselves; our marine in a little low shack
set up on posts a hundred yards away, with a native who acted as cook
and general helper. The next outpost was six miles away.

A band of outlaws rushed the native police in their barracks at this
post one night, and such as they did not shoot up they ran into the
brush. Our corporal was awakened from sound slumber by the firing and
shouting at the barracks. A few volleys through the sides of his own
shack waked him up good. He pulled on his trousers, taking time to
fasten them only by one button at his waist. There was no time for
socks; he pulled on his shoes, but had no time to lace them. A marine is
trained to be neat in his attire, and so our corporal apologetically
explained later that he had got no farther than that in his dressi