Disobeyed His Orders, Killed 600 Germans.
At the battle of Vailly the French were obliged to fall back, and were unable to get away with all their guns. They had time to bury most of them, though, and the only one they did not bury was spiked so that the Germans could not make any use of it.
It was with this gun that a gunner of the battery covered himself with glory. The gun crew had been ordered back, but he declared that he would not abandon the gun while any ammunition was left. He methodically emptied shell after shell into the Germans, who were moving up in serried ranks only a half mile away. Closer and closer they came, firing volleys as they advanced, but the gunner stood his ground and still had a dozen shells left when they were not more than three hundred yards away. At this distance he bowled them over like ninepins, but nothing could stop them. He let fly his last shell at only fifty yards, and did such awful execution that he was able to remove the breechblock and make good his escape, notwithstanding that he had received a bullet between his ribs.
Hardened as they were to slaughter, some of those who witnessed the deed turned faint at the ghastly sight of the mangled Germans, more than six hundred of whom were blown to pieces within five hundred yards of the gun.
War Cuts Canal Income.
John Bucklin Bishop, former secretary to the Isthmian Canal commission, who returned recently from Panama on the United Fruit steamship Tenadores, said that the income of the canal for October amounted to $376,000, which, if continued, would mean $4,500,000 a year.
“Governor Goethals has said,” Mr. Bishop asserted, “that the operating expenses of the Panama Canal amount to four million dollars, so that the canal will clear five hundred thousand dollars. The war in Europe has made a big difference in the traffic through the new waterway,[Pg 58] and the increase when peace is proclaimed will be considerable.”
“What about the slides in Culebra Cut?” he was asked.
“Colonel Goethals is not worrying over the slides in the canal,” he said. “The big dredges were ready for just such an emergency, and made short work of the two slides on the other side of Culebra Hill.”
Mr. Bishop said that ships could be passed through the canal in ten hours now, instead of twelve hours, as previously estimated.