The enemy was making his presence known once more, and this time it became evident he was in larger force.
Another 3-inch gun was brought into play; a launch from the Marblehead, with a Colt machine gun in her bow, steamed swiftly shoreward and opened fire; skirmish lines were thrown out through the tangle of foliage, and only when a dark form was seen, which might have been that of a Spaniard, or only the swaying branches of the trees, did the boys in blue have a target.
It was guerrilla warfare, and well-calculated to test the nerves of the young soldiers who were receiving their “baptism of blood.”
Until midnight this random firing continued, and then a large body of Spanish troops charged up the hill until they were face to face with the defenders of the camp, when they retreated, being lost to view almost immediately in the blackness of the night.
June 12. Again and again the firing was renewed from this quarter or that, but the enemy did not show himself until the morning came like a flash of light, as it does in the tropics, disclosing scurrying bands of Spanish soldiers as they sought shelter in the thicket.
Now more guns were brought into play at the camp; the war-ships began shelling the shore, and the action [pg 202]was speedily brought to an end. Four Americans had been killed, and among them one of the surgeons.
At intervals during the day the crack of a rifle would tell that Spanish sharpshooters were hovering around the camp; but not until eight o’clock in the evening did the enemy approach in any great numbers.
Then the battle was on once more; again did the little band of bluejackets stand to their posts, fighting against an unseen foe. Again the war-ships flashed their search-lights and sent shell after shell into the thicket, and all the while the Spanish fire was continued with deadly effect.
Lieutenants Neville and Shaw, each with a squad of ten men, were sent out to dislodge the advance line of the enemy, and as the boys in blue swung around into the thicket with a steady, swinging stride, the Spaniards gave way, firing rapidly while so doing.
The Americans, heeding not the danger, pursued, following the foe nearly to a small stone house near the coast, which had been used as a fort. They were well up to this structure when the bullets rained upon them in every direction from out the darkness. Sergeant Goode fell fatally wounded, and the Spaniards charged, forcing the Americans to the very edge of a cliff, over which one man fell and was killed; another fell, but with no further injury than a broken leg. A third was shot through the arm, after which he and the man with the broken limb joined forces, fighting on their own account. One more was wounded, and then [pg 203]the Americans made a desperate charge, forcing the enemy back into the stone house, and then out again, after fifteen had been killed.