d about, but most of all they looked beyond the
enemy's right flank, to the line of the hill's crest there. For just
beyond that jagged line and somewhere below Old Brothers and Sisters and
the eight other companies must be toiling up. But they would have to
appear in the interval of the Imperialists' downward rush. Driscoll
turned to his bugler. "Blow, Hanks! Blow like the _very_ devil!"

The blast sounded long and shrill, like a plaintive wail. The six
hundred pumped lead up the hill mechanically, but their hearts were
echoing the clarion's cry for help, and rather than on the foe sweeping
down over the rocks to crush them, their eyes were strained on the
sun-emblazoned line against the sky. But the parson was a man. At last,
just over the slope's crest, a head appeared, a cherubic head with
spectacles, and two arms waved for haste to others behind. And instantly
more heads bobbed up, and more yet, until the jagged line was fairly
encrusted with mouse-colored sombreros, like barnacles on a stranded
keel.

From where they were the new comers began their work, lying flat on
their stomachs. Once over the ridge, down each man fell and joined the
chorus of musketry. Their fusilade thickened to a blanket of flame,
closely woven. The host rushing down the slope forgot the tales that
were told of the marvelous sixteen-shot rifles. They thought instead
that an army of Republicans, and not a man less, were upon their flank.
For how else could volleys be so well sustained, how else so deadly? And
how fast they themselves were dropping! The thing was not like bullets,
but as the earth caving under them. The charge turned to panic. They
plunged on downward, indeed, and even sheer into the cross fire of
Driscoll's six-shooters and the one howitzer. But it was headlong
flight. At the trench they did not stop to grapple, but fought their way
through and fled on down the hill, on across the grassy plain, nor
paused until they had crowded pell-mell into the main Imperialist army
drawn up before the Alameda.

Maximilian and his resplendent staff were there at the Alameda. The
Emperor was perhaps less astounded than they.

"Ai, general, if you _had_ known how Tampico fell!" he said to
Miramon.

Yet neither was actually dismayed. The Cimatario and five thousand men
had succumbed to a thousand or fifteen hundred daredevils. It was hard
enough to believe, in all conscience. But the daredevils could be
dislodged, and they must be, at o