"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.