He even found means to enter some of the forts that frowned so ferociously, and yet were but hollow mockeries, mounting few modern guns. Here were evidences still of the damage inflicted by Sampson's fleet many weeks before--Spanish dilatory tactics had allowed dismounted guns to lie where they had fallen, and Roderic was of the opinion that it must have been rather warm around those regions at the time. There was something of a bustle of preparation in the city, since it had become known that General Miles and an American army had landed on the south shore of the island. Still the Spaniards did not expect to make a desperate resistance like Blanco had declared Havana would show. When the Yankee army reached San Juan and the terrible battle ships appeared again in the offing doubtless they would gracefully submit to the inevitable and yield up their arms. Meanwhile there was the usual bluster and braggadocio as to what they meant to do with the Yankee pigs once they were induced to enter the trap which the Spanish commander had so cunningly spread. They would be extravagantly comical, these bold soldiers of Spain, if they were not so very serious in what they declared. Roderic laughed in his sleeve at the awful threats so openly made in street and cafe, wherever two or more soldiers came together--in imagination he pictured the overwhelming rush of regulars and volunteers in blue, just as they had gone into the Spaniards at Caney and San Juan hill--one such mad swoop and he was ready to swear to it that the Porto Rican capital would be carried. Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast a better. Roderic did not use his whole time in tramping about the city. He made several visits to people who had been in communication with the Washington authorities, influential English residents or even native Porto Ricans who knew what was written by Destiny upon the wall, and longed for the blessed day to dawn when Liberty would descend upon the sons and daughters of the Antilles. His object was not to get information concerning the resources of the garrison. All those points he was able to pick up for himself in his round of the city and forts. As a government official he had come to San Juan, and it was in this capacity he conferred with these influential citizens. When he had finally accomplished all that was expected of him in this direction, Roderic threw off the burden of responsibility. He was now free to think once more of his own personal affairs, to let the vision of Georgia's lovely face occupy his mind as it had his heart. How he longed to see her. How fitting it seemed that the romance of his life, that had obtained its first lease in San Juan, should complete the circuit there, amid these well remembered scenes. It was concert night. Even with a hostile army marching against the capital these Spanish soldiers, who, as old campaigners laughed at fate, did not mean to be cheated out of their usual pleasure.