“All hands will move inside the earthworks right after breakfast,” briskly spoke O’Shea. “Take charge of the men in your department, Johnny. See that the rifles are clean and serve out plenty of ammunition. And store all the fresh water ye can.”
“If it’s a Spanish vessel, can we stand her off at all, Cap’n Mike?”
“She will have a hard time shellin’ us out, Johnny. That four-sided refuge we piled up with our shovels is nothing but a big sand-bank. Shells will bury in it without explodin’. ’Tis the theory of modern fortifications. We can do our best, and maybe luck will turn our way. Anyhow, ’tis more sensible than to be shot by drum-head court-martial, which is what will happen to us if we throw up our hands and surrender. If they find us a hard nut to crack, perhaps we can make terms of some kind.”
“What about the ladies? I was hopin’ they wouldn’t have to go up against any more excitement,” wistfully said Johnny Kent.
“I have delivered me cargo. It stands no longer between us and our guests, Johnny. And ’tis my opinion that you and I will not let them suffer for the sake of saving our own skins.”
“Right you are, Cap’n Mike. I don’t care a cuss what becomes of me if you can get Miss Hollister—I mean both of ’em, of course—on board a respectable vessel of some kind.”
Soon the camp was in commotion. The methods of the leaders were brutal and direct. This was no time for soft words. Jack Gorham moved quietly, in several places at once, and when a man would argue or expostulate he was threatened with the butt of that terrible Springfield. At his side, like a huge, black shadow, stalked Jiminez, a militant assistant who jumped at the word of command.
Johnny Kent, no longer a sighing sentimentalist, bellowed at his engineers, oilers, and stokers, and the discipline of shipboard took hold of them. There was the loudest uproar in the Cuban camp. Because of their race, the patriots had to be melodramatic, to defy the unknown steamer by running to the beach and brandishing their rifles and machetes at the ribbon of smoke that trailed across the opalescent sea. But Colonel Calvo, very much more of a man in this emergency than when he had been afloat on the bounding billows, drove them back to camp and got them well in hand.
The canvas shelters were hastily ripped down and set up inside the earthworks as a protection against the sun which blazed into this windless enclosure with fierce intensity. Johnny Kent paused to say to O’Shea:
“It’s goin’ to be hades in there for the women. They can’t stand it long.”