"It's cold steel, men! Fix bayonets!" shouted Sergeant Noll.
But Sergeant Hal and two men had dragged the Gatling, momentarily silenced, to one side of the road, where they could still employ this machine of destruction.
Another belt of cartridges Sergeant Overton fed in. Then he started the machine again.
R-r-r-r-rip! The Gatling was performing at hand-to-hand quarters now. Noll sent a dozen men to stand by the gun, defending it from capture with their lives.
Clash! Zing! Slash! Slash! Thrust—cut! It was steel against steel now. On more open ground the Moros might have had a slight advantage, for they are skilled users of the sword and creese, and when their blood is up they know little in the way of terror.
R-r-r-r-r-rip! It was the Gatling, at such close quarters, that now dismayed the brown men. With no mean quality of heroism, they threw themselves against the gun's defenders. They would seize that demon of machinery and hurl it over into the gully below. But the doughboys, with bayonets stationed on the sides of the gun, thrust or stabbed them back. No native approached the muzzle of the Gatling and lived to cause further trouble. In as wide an arc as possible Sergeant Hal swung the nose of the piece from side to side.
Private Danton, standing close to Hal, ready to feed in the next belt of cartridges, fell with a Moro bullet in his brain. Another soldier sprang forward, snatched up the belt of ammunition and stood ready to feed.
Fully twenty-five hundred rounds of Gatling ammunition were thus fired into the dense brown ranks before the Moros felt that they could endure it no longer. On that narrow road they had failed to reach the piece itself. Four brown sharpshooters, back in the ranks, had been detailed by a Moro officer to climb a tree and fill with lead the body of the indomitable young sergeant. As the bullets sang past his head, Hal discovered the tree, turned the Gatling muzzle that way, and fairly shot the leaves off a portion of it. Two of the sharpshooters dropped, riddled through. The other pair dropped from sheer terror.
