"Fire!"
Over on the hill, before Caney, a man with a lanyard gave a quick jerk. There was a cap explosion at the butt of the gun and a bulging white cloud from the muzzle; the trail bounced from its shallow trench, the wheels whirled back twice on the rebound, and the shell was hissing through the air as iron hisses when a blacksmith thrusts it red-hot into cold water. Basil could hear that awful hiss so plainly that he seemed to be following the shell with his naked eye; he could hear it above the reverberating roar of the gun up and down the coast-mountain; hear it until, six seconds later, a puff of smoke answered beyond the Spanish column where the shell burst. Then in eight seconds—for the shell travelled that much faster than sound—the muffled report of its bursting struck his ears, and all that was left of the first shot that started the great little fight was the thick, sunlit smoke sweeping away from the muzzle of the gun and the little mist-cloud of the shell rising slowly upward beyond the stone fort, which seemed not to know any harm was possible or near.
Again Crittenden, leaning against the palm, heard his name called. Again it was Blackford who was opening his mouth to shout some message when—Ah! The shout died on Blackford's lips, and every man on the hill and in the woods, at that instant, stayed his foot and his hand—even a man standing with a gray horse against the blue wall—he, too, stopped to listen. It really sounded too dull and muffled for a shell; but, a few seconds later, there was a roar against the big walls of living green behind Caney.
The first shot!
"Ready!"
Even with the cry at El Poso came another sullen, low boom and another aggressive roar from Caney: then a great crackling in the air, as though thousands of schoolboys were letting off fire-crackers, pack after pack.
"Fire!"
Every ear heard, every eye saw the sudden white mist at a gun-muzzle and followed that first shell screaming toward the little Christmas toy sitting in the sun on that distant little hill. And yet it was nothing. Another and yet another mass of shrapnel went screaming, and still there was no response, no sign. It was nothing—nothing at all. Was the Spaniard asleep?
Crittenden could see attaché, correspondent, aid, staff-officer, non-combatant, sight-seer crowding close about the guns—so close that the gunners could hardly work. He could almost hear them saying, one to another: