every rifle in the Spanish line. To load his piece, each of our men
was forced to crawl to it on his stomach, rise on one elbow in order
to shove in the shell and lock the breech, and then, still flat on
the ground, wriggle below the crest. In the three minutes three men
were wounded and two killed; and the guns were withdrawn. I also
withdrew. I withdrew first. Indeed, all that happened after the
first three seconds of those three minutes is hearsay, for I was in
the Santiago road at the foot of the hill and retreating briskly.
This road also was under a cross-fire, which made it stretch in
either direction to an interminable distance. I remember a
government teamster driving a Studebaker wagon filled with ammunition
coming up at a gallop out of this interminable distance and seeking
shelter against the base of the hill. Seated beside him was a small
boy, freckled and sunburned, a stowaway from one of the transports.
He was grandly happy and excited, and his only fear was that he was
not "under fire." From our coign of safety, with our backs to the
hill, the teamster and I assured him that, on that point, he need
feel no morbid doubt. But until a bullet embedded itself in the blue
board of the wagon he was not convinced. Then with his jack-knife he
dug it out and shouted with pleasure. "I guess the folks will have
to believe I was in a battle now," he said. That coign of safety
ceasing to be a coign of safety caused us to move on in search of
another, and I came upon Sergeant Borrowe blocking the road with his
dynamite gun. He and his brother and three regulars were busily
correcting a hitch in its mechanism. An officer carrying an order
along the line halted his sweating horse and gazed at the strange gun
with professional knowledge.

"That must be the dynamite gun I have heard so much about," he
shouted. Borrowe saluted and shouted assent. The officer, greatly