“Silence!”
“Not even allowed to express natural emotion,” murmured our hero. He couldn’t have talked much in his breathless condition, just then, even if he wanted to.
He saw the soldier’s musket-butt aimed at him, and dodged as nimbly as he could.
Click!
Another soldier cocked his weapon, aiming fully at the American’s head.
At this the commanding officer smiled. Some of the soldiers laughed softly. They wanted to see the Yankee flinch, and were sure that he would—for had not their Havana newspapers told them that all the Yankees were cowards?
But Hal, who felt reasonably sure that nothing short of violence on his part would result in his death just then, did not feel inwardly alarmed.
Instead, he slowly folded his arms, closed one eye, and with the other squinted down the steel barrel that stared him in the face.
“Bah!” muttered he who had aimed, now raising the muzzle of his piece. “The Yankee pig doesn’t even know what a gun is.”
“Silence!” came sharply from the commanding officer.