The flatness of trajectory worked poorly. At first pop the majority of the Scouts emptied their magazines like bunches of firecrackers. Most of the bullets sped towards the rising sun, to whisper the story of their masters' unsteady nerves to the trees in the hills. To be just, however, it must be recorded that some ploughed up the ground directly beneath the marksmen's noses. Even then the mere noise—which was positively tremendous—might have checked the advance of the attackers had they not been Papa Isio's own Dios-Dios crew of mad, weird fellows, hurled on by that religious spirit which kills so finely. Their Mad Pope was sending them to everlasting glory, and Death would only expedite the voyage. On they came, howling, mouth-distorted, muscles convulsively tense, a foaming, maniacal band. At their head a big black man with rolling eyeballs bounded, waving a long lance ending in a blood-dipped standard. The war drums hummed in rhythm.
The Scouts were not at ease. Some were still peppering at the sun, but the majority were fighting their rifles, trying to reload them with stiff, clutching fingers that did not work expeditiously, or pounding at them with a rage that told of something jammed. Running up and down behind the line, the two officers were waving their swords, shouting and cursing in an attempt to reinstill in their men that automatic regularity which had been their fond pride. But the strings were broken and the puppets worked spasmodically. The incoming rush was only a hundred yards away. Suddenly, with a wonderful burst of speed, the big standard-bearer spurted ahead of his companions. A Scout rose from the trench and aimed his rifle, when the blood-dripping rag described a rapid parabola and was sticking flaccidly on the soldier's khaki, the handle quivering behind. Hafner saw the hands go up, clutching at the sun.
"With the bayonet—charge," he bellowed.
"Hold on," screamed Roberts, in frenzied warning; "they haven't had that yet!"
And then he found himself surrounded, pushed, jostled, swept away in a furious stampede. Though they "hadn't had it," the men were charging, but it was in the wrong direction. Across the plaza they avalanched, toward the stone church, and when Roberts flowed in with the tumultuous current, he had a vision of the Commandant, purple and spitting with rage, at his elbow. The heavy doors clanged shut behind them.
There was a moment of silence. The men were panting in a corner with the "I-couldn't-help-it" air of a young dog whose inherited tendencies have proved too strong for his acquired characteristics. The officers looked at each other blankly.
"Well," said Roberts, "we ought to hold 'em here, sure."
"Hold them!" screeched the Commandant. "Why, blank, blankety, blank, blank, these forsaken, evil-parented, divinity-doomed curs should drive the measly, meanly-pedigreed carabao thieves clean off this evil earth. Why, doom my soul——"
"Well, let's see about it," said Roberts, briskly, while his superior choked in a befuddlement of rage.
He ran up the gallery steps to one of the six great windows which overlooked the plaza. He peered out guardedly, then with more confidence; his nose went out, then his head; his shoulders followed, his whole bust, and he was standing in the opening, his whole wide area in full view. His lower jaw hung in limp astonishment.