Instantly Peters and Jones fired their guns. Then Jenkins leaped out of sight, and Buck, after firing where he stood, sought cover beside his friends.
The slackers promptly fired a volley from their green covert in response, the bullets rattling through the palmettos and passing over the heads of the two seated boys.
"Lie down flat!" Buck commanded them.
"Here, nigger, take this extra gun and shoot," cried Peters, shoving it toward July with his left hand as he raised his own gun with his right.
July took the gun with a frightened air and a sickly smile, but prepared to obey.
Hubert flattened himself out on the grass and lay still, as ordered; but Ted, unable to endure such inaction, with its attendant inability to see what was going on, crawled quietly and unnoticed into the palmettos to the left of the men until he reached a point where, by resting on his elbows and cautiously parting the leafage in front of him, he could scan the open and see the green covert sheltering the enemy as it trembled under the shock of each volley fired into it.
"Aim low," he presently heard Buck say. "The only way to end it is to hit some of 'em."
"I wish we had an American flag to run up," thought Ted, as the next volley was fired.
A moment later he forgot this aspiration, as a cry of pain was heard from the slackers' covert.