After the Infantry had crossed the little valley in front, the Artillery opened up and the big fight was on.
THE REAL BATTLE BEGINS.
The shell and shrapnel flew fast and furious from those little mountain guns, accompanied by the music of the "Krags."
On and on, nearer and nearer up the hillside came the crash of advancing troops, smothering other unseen trenches on their way, until by nightfall there was not a rifle but could shove its muzzle into the very face of the trench behind which the Moro warriors laid in waiting, peering down the slope between the explosions for something they feared more than the whistling fragments of Krupp shells—the blue-shirted form of the silent American soldier, with whom the Moros knew the ultimate issue rested.
EXCEPTIONAL COURAGE.
On they came, however, up the hill, silent and straight, hundreds of them, right into the open below the trench from behind which the Moros delivered a withering fire and gasped at the folly of the Americans.
Up and up they came, the lower lantacas blasting them off the face of the earth, but still they rushed on and upward against the frowning walls.
The mountain guns howled and roared over them, the walls grew troubled and shaky, falling in and falling out, dimly seen between the curtain of smoke and sheet of flame whirling about the leaping stones.
But steady eyes were gleaming where they could through the sheets of fire, and steady fingers were pulling triggers rapidly and incessantly.
The crash came unbroken and clearly heard from the midst of the uproar thundering up at the trench, as if the shells were bursting with a million rattling fragments, and down the slope were tumbling the blue-shirted figures, one under that tree, two over there by the big boulder, another here and a dozen more down there, and during the next two hours there was the most magnificent display of true courage and grit ever heard of or seen.