There comes the whiplike crack of a rifle almost at the General's elbow. Far up the narrow street, full four hundred yards and more, a flying Spanish soldier throws up his hands with a death yell, and pitches forward on his face. At this, the hunting-shirt man who fired tosses his coonskin cap in the air and shouts:
“Thar, Bill Potter, the jug of whisky's mine! Thar's your Spaniard too dead to skin! If the distance ain't four hundred yard, you kin have the gun!”
“What's this?” cries the General fiercely. “Nothin', Gin'ral!” replies the hunting-shirt man, abashed at the forbidding manner of the General, “nothin', only Bill Potter, from the 'Possum Trot, bets me a jug of whisky that old Soapstick here”—holding up his rifle as identifying “old Soapstick”—“won't kill at four hundred yard.”
“Betting, eh!” retorts the General, assuming the coldly implacable. “Now it's in my mind, Mr. Soapstick, that unless you mend your morals, some one about your size will pass an hour strung up by the thumbs so high his moccasins won't touch the grass! How often must I tell you that I'm bound to break up gambling among my troops?”
The rebuked soapstick one slinks away, and the General turns to Colonel Coffee.
“Give the word, Coffee, to cease firing.”
The General's glance comes around to Governor Maurequez, still bowing and presenting his white flag.
“Where are those English?” he demands.
The frightened Governor Maurequez makes the sign of the cross. He is sorry, but the pig English withdrew to Fort Barrancas at the first signs of the coming of the victorious Senor General, taking with them their hateful red flag. Also, it was they who fired on the messenger. If the victorious Senor General will but move quickly, he may catch the pig English before they escape.
The General, half his hunting-shirt men at his back, starts for Fort Barrancas. They are two miles on their way when the earth is shaken by a thunderous explosion. Over the tops of the forest pines a gush of black smoke shoots upward toward the sky.