The Artillery roared in anger and anguish, but apparently of no avail, for the long streams of fire continued to pour from the fort with regular intervals, and more blue-shirted figures went tumbling down the hill.
But this did not continue very long, for the Artillery turned loose all its little dogs of war and they barked fiercely and hurled death projectiles into the fort and trenches with renewed vigor.
Think how you would feel if a person should hurl a stone at you with a tremendous shout.
Multiply the stone and shout by twenty millions, add fire and smoke and nauseous vapors, and imagine the earth trembling beneath your feet, with the air filled with screaming projectiles, even then you cannot imagine the terror of that Artillery assault.
DEFIANT TO THE LAST.
But the fanatical Moros would not give up; there they stood in the very midst of that hurricane of death, calm, immovable, and indifferent to it all. Their resistance could not help but be admired as they stood there calm and defiant, against that advancing, enveloping thunderstorm of musketry. But it must not be imagined that they were idle; far from it. If one can imagine taking a handful of pebbles and hurling them with a strong force against a pane of glass, then, and then only, can one imagine the whirlwind of bullets which the Moros were pouring into that little army of Americans out there in the open.
When it is considered that the Americans were out in the open storming this fort while the Moros were strongly fortified and deeply intrenched, the fierceness of the battle and the heroism of the troops can be imagined. Nothing like it had ever been seen before and nothing like it ever will be seen again. Regardless of bullets and the flying fragments of shell and shrapnel, Baldwin's men kept steadily onward and upward, until they were within a few yards of that impregnable wall, through whose portholes there poured a constant stream of fire. It was like gazing through the doors of a red hot furnace. And all the time the swarm of blue-shirted figures rolled on and upward until they could have dropped a stone over the wall.
They had now gone the limit, as they were very near the dangerous zone of the exploding shrapnel and were compelled to halt to keep from being struck by their own men.
THE WALLS TREMBLE.
Suddenly, back on the hill where the little dogs of war were barking, a command was heard, "Battery, Fire!" and the air was filled with flying projectiles which went screaming and screeching across the open and striking the walls of the fort with a mighty impact, that structure was shaken to its very foundations. Even untouched, one felt shaky and uncertain on that hillside, and one would have felt his body rending to pieces as he looked where a shell burst in the midst of a trench, and heard the filthy squelch and sharp cries above the roar, and saw the awful faces through the red glare and curtain of smoke, and the mangled corpses of dead bodies hurled high in the air.