Davis
claims that he acted only in the interest of humanity to save
Walker in spite of himself. In any event, the result was the same.
Walker, his force cut down by hostile shot and fever and desertion,
took refuge in Rivas, where he was besieged by the allied armies.
There was no bread in the city. The men were living on horse and
mule meat. There was no salt. The hospital was filled with
wounded and those stricken with fever.
Captain Davis, in the name of humanity, demanded Walker's
surrender to the United States. Walker told him he would not
surrender, but that if the time came when he found he must fly, he
would do so in his own little schooner of war, the _Granada_,
which constituted his entire navy, and in her, as a free man, take
his forces where he pleased. Then Davis informed Walker that the
force Walker had sent to recapture the Greytown route had been
defeated by the janizaries of Vanderbilt; that the steamers from
San Francisco, on which Walker now counted to bring him
re-enforcements, had also been taken off the line, and finally that it
was his "unalterable and deliberate intention" to seize the
_Granada_. On this point his orders left him no choice. The
_Granada_ was the last means of transportation still left to Walker.
He had hoped to make a sortie and on board her to escape from the
country.
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