Crittenden's lips moved.

"God bless him."

* * * * *

"Fire!"

Over on the hill, before Caney, a man with a lanyard gave a quick jerk.

There was a cap explosion at the butt of the gun and a bulging white

cloud from the muzzle; the trail bounced from its shallow trench, the

wheels whirled back twice on the rebound, and the shell was hissing

through the air as iron hisses when a blacksmith thrusts it red-hot into

cold water. Basil could hear that awful hiss so plainly that he seemed

to be following the shell with his naked eye; he could hear it above the

reverberating roar of the gun up and down the coast-mountain; hear it

until, six seconds later, a puff of smoke answered beyond the Spanish

column where the shell burst. Then in eight seconds--for the shell

travelled that much faster than sound--the muffled report of its

bursting struck his ears, and all that was left of the first shot that

started the great little fight was the thick, sunlit smoke sweeping away

from the muzzle of the gun and the little mist-cloud of the shell rising

slowly upward beyond the stone fort, which seemed not to know any harm

was possible or near.

* * * * *

Again Crittenden, leaning against the palm, heard his name called. Again

it was Blackford who was opening his mouth to shout some message

when--Ah! The shout died on Blackford's lips, and every man on the hill

and in the woods, at that instant, stayed his foot and his hand--even a

man standing with a gray horse against the blue wall--he, too, stopped

to listen. It really sounded too dull and muffled for a shell; but, a

few seconds later, there was a roar against the big walls of living

green behind Caney.

The first shot!

"Ready!"

Even with the cry at El Poso came another sullen, low boom and another

aggressive roar from Caney: then a great crackling in the air, as though

thousands of schoolboys were letting off fire-crackers, pack after pack.

"Fire!"

Every ear heard, every eye saw the sudden white mist at a gun-muzzle and

followed that first shell screaming toward the little Christmas toy

sitting in the sun on that distant little hill. And yet it was nothing.

Another and yet another mass of shrapnel went screaming, and still there

was no response, no sign. It was nothing--nothing at all. Was the

Spaniard asleep?

Crittenden could see attaché, correspondent, aid, staff-officer,

non-combatant, sight-seer crowding close about the guns--so close that

the gunners could hardly work. He could almost hear them saying, one to

another: "Why, is this war--really war? Why, this isn't so bad."




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