I believe them to be refugees." Immediately Lieutenant Trent signaled the advanced line, reporting the party seen out on the plain.
"Then wait and escort them in," came Commander Dillingham's order.
"O.K., sir," the detachment's signalman wigwagged back.
In three-quarters of an hour more the painfully moving party reached the detachment.

They were truly refugees, released from Mexico City and nearby points.
The sight of these suffering people, some hundred and twenty in number, and mainly Americans, was enough to cause many of the sailormen to shed unaccustomed tears, and not to be ashamed of them, either! Every degree of wretchedness and raggedness was represented by these sufferers of indescribable wrongs.
Men, and women too, showed the marks of rough handling by brutal prison guards.

There were many disfigured faces.

One man carried in a crude sling, an arm broken by a savage Mexican captor.
Such spectacles were of daily occurrence in Vera Cruz! These wretched men, women and children had been on the way on foot since the middle of the night, having painfully trudged in over the twenty-five-mile gap in which the tracks had been torn up.
Ordering his men to fall in, Lieutenant Trent escorted the patient, footsore procession in to the advanced line.

The sailormen adjusted their own steps to those of the sufferers.