The principal portion of the enemy’s fire appeared to come from a small island about a thousand yards away, and a squad of men was detailed with a 3-inch [pg 200]field-gun to look out for the enemy in this direction, while the main force defended the camp.
After perhaps an hour had passed, during which time the boys of ’98 were virtually firing at random, the men on the picket-line fell back on the camp. Two of their number were missing. The battalion was formed on three sides of a hollow square, and stood ready to resist an attack which was not to be made until considerably later.
The firing ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Skirmishers were sent out and failed to find anything save a broad trail, marked here and there by blood, which came to an end at the water’s edge.
There were no longer detonations to be heard from the island. The 3-inch gun had been well served.
The skirmishers which had been sent out returned, bearing the bodies of two boys in blue who had been killed by the first shots, and, after death, mutilated by blows from Spanish machetes.
Night came; heavy clouds hung low in the sky; the force of the wind had increased almost to a gale; below in the bay the war-ships were anchored, their search-lights streaming out here and there like ribbons of gold on a pall of black velvet.
No signs of the enemy on land or sea, and, save for those two cold, lifeless forms on the heights, one might have believed the previous rattle of musketry had been heard only by the imagination.
Until nine o’clock in the evening the occupants of [pg 201]the camp kept careful watch, and then without warning, as before, the crack of repeating rifles broke the almost painful stillness.
U. S. S. MARBLEHEAD.