and military decorations before Houston. "I claim to be a prisoner of war at your disposal."
General Houston regarded him in utter silence for several seconds, a silence in which each man measured the other thoroughly. Plainly Santa Anna was disconcerted, and he looked around nervously, as if expecting that at any moment he might be shot in the back. Then Houston waved him to a seat on a near-by box of ammunition.
An interpreter was called up, and Santa Anna asked for a piece of opium, saying he was suffering much pain. The opium was given him and this quieted his nerves.
"That man may consider himself born to no common destiny who has conquered the Napoleon of the West," went on the Mexican general, bombastically. "It now remains for him to be generous to the vanquished."
Again Houston looked at him, a look that made Santa Anna quail.
"You should have remembered that at the Alamo," said the Texan commander.
"I am not to blame—I acted under the orders of the government of Mexico," cried Santa Anna, hastily, and tried to explain that there was a law which held that prisoners taken with arms must be treated as pirates. But Houston cut the interpreter short when translating the words.
