Every man had his eyes ahead; each was watching for the first sign of trouble.
"When the line had reached a plane within a hundred yards of the edge of the woods the soldiers expected, momentarily, to hear the signal shot, then the first scattering shots, followed by the heavy, crashing volleys.
Yet they passed this point safely and went on. The edge of the woods was gained, still without provoking hostile shots. It would have looked to one untrained in the art of war as though there were no enemy there. But this handful of soldiers knew better than to jump at any such conclusion. The Moros, like the Tagalos and Pampangos, are fond of getting an enemy at close quarters, and then leaping on him with cold steel. The Tagalo or Pampango fights with the bolo, the Moro often with the creese, and with all these brown-skinned men the game is the same—to leap up unexpectedly, from the tall grass, before the soldier has had time to throw himself on his guard.
A swift, short-armed cutting movement—a mere slash, delivered with muscular effort, and the soldier is gashed across the abdomen. After this cutting has been effectively delivered the white fighting man usually sinks down in a pool of his own blood, and his fighting days are likely to be over.
Small wonder that Uncle Sam's infantrymen prefer facing native bullets to native steel! The bolo man, or the sword man, is the soldier's greatest aversion. It is like fighting rattlesnakes!
Glancing down the line, Sergeant Hal saw one or two of the newer men flinch slightly.
"Steady, there!" Hal called, in an easy but business-like tone. "If we strike the rascals an unbroken line is the one hope for us all."
They had now reached the woods, but no halt was made. The boyish sergeant, who knew his business, marched his little command about six hundred yards under the trees.
Still no Moros were encountered.
Then Hal turned his line to the left, marching on through the woods. In this manner, in less than an hour, he had thoroughly explored the territory near the Seaforth plantation, and had returned to the point where his command had first entered the forest.