negro cavalry and the Rough Riders were deploying to the right. Now
broke the storm. Imagine sheet after sheet of hailstones, coated with
polished steel, and swerved when close to the earth at a sharp angle to
the line of descent, and sweeping the air horizontally with an awful
hiss--swifter in flight than a peal of thunder from sky to earth, and
hardly less swift than the lightning flash that caused it.

"T-t-seu-u-u-h! T-t-seu-oo! T-t-seu-oo!"--they went like cloud after
cloud of lightning-winged insects, and passing, by God's mercy and the
Spaniard's bad marksmanship--passing high. Between two crashes, came a
sudden sputter, and some singing thing began to play up and down through
the trees, and to right and left, in a steady hum. It was a machine gun
playing for the range--like a mighty hose pipe, watering earth and trees
with a steady, spreading jet of hot lead. It was like some strange, huge
monster, unseeing and unseen, who knows where his prey is hidden and is
searching for it blindly--by feeling or by sense of smell--coming ever
nearer, showering the leaves down, patting into the soft earth ahead,
swishing to right and to left, and at last playing in a steady stream
about the prostrate soldiers.

"Swish-ee! Swish-ee! Swishee!"

"Whew!" said Abe Long.

"God!" said Reynolds.

Ah, ye scornful veterans of the great war. In ten minutes the Spaniard
let fly with his Mauser more bullets than did you fighting hard for two
long hours, and that one machine gun loosed more death stings in an hour
than did a regiment of you in two. And they were coming from