he were a physician at a sick-bed. Only once did he raise his eyes. It
was when the human savageness of the rifle-fire was broken by a low
mechanical rattle, like the whirr of a mowing-machine as one hears it
across the hay-fields. It spanked the air with sharp hot reports.

"Heinze has turned the Gatlings on them," he said. "They will be
coming back soon." He closed the lid of his watch with a click and
nodded gravely at me. "You can go ahead now, Captain," he said. His
tone was the same as though he had asked me to announce dinner.




IV


I jumped toward the street at the double, and the men followed me
crowded in a bunch. I shouted back at them to spread out, and they
fell apart. As I turned into the street I heard a shout from the plaza
end of it and found a dozen soldiers running forward to meet us. When
they saw the troops swing around the corner, they halted and some took
cover in the doorways, and others dropped on one knee in the open
street, and fired carefully. I heard soft, whispering sounds stealing
by my head with incredible slowness, and I knew that at last I was
under fire. I no longer felt like a boy robbing an orchard, nor a
burglar. I was instead grandly excited and happy, and yet I was quite
calm too. I am sure of this, for I remember I calculated the distance
between us and the warehouse, and compared it with the two hundred and
twenty-yard stretch in an athletic park at home. As I ran I noted also
everything on either side of me: two girls standing behind the iron