The same appreciative commander testifies to the invincible heroism and fortitude of those men: "I have often seen them marching with a broken or compound-fractured arm in splints, and using the other to fire the rifle or revolver. Those with a fractured thigh, or wounds which rendered them incapable of removal, often (or, rather, in early times, always) shot themselves, sooner than fall into the hands of the enemy. Such men," he adds, "do not turn up in the average of every-day life, nor do I ever expect to see their like again. I was on the Confederate side in many of the bloodiest battles of the late war; but I aver that if, at the end of that war, I had been allowed to pick five thousand of the bravest Confederate or Federal soldiers I ever saw, and could resurrect and pit against them one thousand of such men as lie beneath the orange trees of Nicaragua, I feel certain that the thousand would have scattered and utterly routed the five thousand within an hour. All military science failed, on a suddenly given field, before assailants who came on at a run, to close with their revolvers, and who thought little of charging a battery, pistol in hand." Ten men, all officers, did in the first battle of Rivas actually charge and capture a battery manned by over a hundred Costa Ricans, half of the little band being slain in the heroic feat. Their enemies bear witness to the splendid courage of the filibusters and their indomitable _sang-froid_ when called upon to face the fusillade which almost always awaited them if captured. Chevalier Belly tells of a filibuster captured, with a broken leg, and condemned to be shot, who curtly replied to the questions of a sympathetic person, as to why he had come to Nicaragua, whether he believed in a future state, and so forth; until losing patience at what he deemed such idle speech, he burst out: "Here, we've had enough of this fooling! If you mean to have this funeral come off bring on your mourners and let us get through with it."