At this moment
General Alvarez, with seven hundred Honduranians, from the land
side surrounded Trujillo, and prepared to attack. Against such odds
by sea and land Walker was helpless, and he determined to fly.
That night, with seventy men, he left the town and proceeded
down the coast toward Nicaragua. The _Icarus_, having taken on
board Alvarez, started in pursuit. The President of Nicaragua was
found in a little Indian fishing village, and Salmon sent in his
shore-boats and demanded his surrender. On leaving Trujillo,
Walker had been forced to abandon all his ammunition save thirty
rounds a man, and all of his food supplies excepting two barrels of
bread. On the coast of this continent there is no spot more
unhealthy than Honduras, and when the Englishmen entered the
fishing village they found Walker's seventy men lying in the palm
huts helpless with fever, and with no stomach to fight British
blue-jackets with whom they had no quarrel. Walker inquired of
Salmon if he were asking him to surrender to the British or to the
Honduranian forces, and twice Salmon assured him, "distinctly
and specifically," that he was surrendering to the forces of her
Majesty. With this understanding Walker and his men laid down
their arms and were conveyed to the _Icarus_. But on arriving at
Trujillo, in spite of their protests and demands for trial by a British
tribunal, Salmon turned over his prisoners to the Honduranian
general.
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