y 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
intrenchments on an all but vertical hill, from piles of unlimited
ammunition, and from soldiers who should have been as placid as the
earth under them for all the demoralization that hostile artillery fire
was causing them.

And not all of them passed high. After that sweep of glistening steel
rain along the edge of the woods rose the cry here, there, everywhere:

"Hospital man! hospital man!"

And here and there, in the steady pelt of bullets, went the quiet, brave
fellows with red crosses on their sleeves; across the creek, Crittenden
could see a tall, young doctor, bare-headed in the sun, stretching out
limp figures on the sand under the bank--could see him and his
assistants stripping off blouse and trousers and shirt, and wrapping and
binding, and newly wounded being ever brought in.

And behind forged soldiers forward, a tall aide at the ford urging them
across and stopping a panic among volunteers.

"Come back, you cowards--come back! Push 'em back, boys!"

A horse was crossing the stream. There was a hissing shriek in the air,
a geyser spouting from the creek, the remnants of a horse thrown upward,
and five men tossed in a swirl like straw: and, a moment later, a boy
feebly paddling towards the