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 attache, 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.”

Twanged just then a bow-string in the direction of San Juan hill, and the twang seemed to be getting louder and to be coming toward the little blue farm-house.  No cannon was in sight; there was no smoke visible, and many, with an upward look, wondered what the queer sound could be.  Suddenly there was a screeching, crackling answer in the air; the atmosphere was rent apart as by a lightning stroke directly overhead.  The man and the horse by the blue wall dropped noiselessly to the earth.  A Rough Rider paled and limped down the hill and Blackford shook his hand—­a piece of shrapnel had fallen harmlessly on his wrist.  On the hill—­Crittenden laughed as he looked—­on the hill, nobody ran—­everybody tumbled.  Besides the men at the guns, only two others were left—­civilians.

“You’re a fool,” said one.

“You’re another.”

“What’d you stay here for?”

“Because you did.  What’d you stay for?”

“Because you did.”

Then they went down together—­rapidly—­and just in time.  Another shell shrieked.  Two artillerymen and two sergeants dropped dead at their guns, and a corporal fell, mortally wounded.  A third burst in a group of Cubans.  Several of them flew out, killed or wounded, into the air; the rest ran shrieking for the woods.  Below, those woods began to move.  Under those shells started the impatient soldiers down that narrow lane through the jungle, and with Reynolds and Abe Long on the “point” was Crittenden, his Krag-Jorgensen across his breast—­thrilled, for all the world, as though he were on a hunt for big game.

* * * * *