return the fire but to lie still and wait for further orders. Some
of them could see the rifle-pits of the enemy quite clearly and the
men in them, but many saw nothing but the bushes under which they
lay, and the high grass which seemed to burn when they pressed
against it. It was during this period of waiting that the greater
number of our men were killed. For one hour they lay on their rifles
staring at the waving green stuff around them, while the bullets
drove past incessantly, with savage insistence, cutting the grass
again and again in hundreds of fresh places. Men in line sprang from
the ground and sank back again with a groan, or rolled to one side
clinging silently to an arm or shoulder. Behind the lines hospital
stewards passed continually, drawing the wounded back to the streams,
where they laid them in long rows, their feet touching the water's
edge and their bodies supported by the muddy bank. Up and down the
lines, and through the fords of the streams, mounted aides drove
their horses at a gallop, as conspicuous a target as the steeple on a
church, and one after another paid the price of his position and fell
from his horse wounded or dead. Captain Mills fell as he was giving
an order, shot through the forehead behind both eyes; Captain
O'Neill, of the Rough Riders, as he said, "There is no Spanish bullet
made that can kill me." Steel, Swift, Henry, each of them was shot
out of his saddle.

Hidden in the trees above the streams, and above the trail, sharp-
shooters and guerillas added a fresh terror to the wounded. There
was no hiding from them. Their bullets came from every side. Their
invisible smoke helped to keep their hiding-places secret, and in the
incessant shriek of shrapnel and the spit of the Mausers, it was
difficult to locate the reports of their rifles. They spared neither
the wounded nor recognized the Red Cross; they killed the surgeons