A thrill of triumph shot through Strawbridge. He thought he had hit his man. He lifted himself for a good look and another shot, when a bullet flicked a bit of stone out of his merlon and cut his forehead just over his eye. The salesman dodged down, put up his fingers to the sting, and saw that he was bleeding a little. It made him angry, and he fired his rifle viciously several times at the blank purple rim of the opposite wall.
At that moment a hand was laid on his shoulder. Strawbridge looked around and saw that it was General Fombombo. The dictator was patting his shoulder warmly and encouraging him as a father might encourage the first efforts of a son.
"That's the idea—two or three quick shots, then get down."
The general himself did not keep down so carefully. He seemed sure that he would not be touched, and was careful only of his men. A contagious power surrounded the commander. His hand on Strawbridge's shoulder filled the American with warmth and confidence. He felt a passion to do some striking thing in the general's service. Standing up quite as high as the dictator himself, he suddenly cried out:
"Look! Yonder are some fellows down on the street level! Watch me get—"
The general pressed him down.
"Guard yourself," he ordered; "you are too valuable to be in this firing-line. You must go to New York for me. Report to the magazine and help send up ammunition. Descend quickly, señor!"
The drummer was about to crawl off toward the manhole, when abruptly the whole rank of rapid-fire guns began a steady shrieking. At the same moment half the riflemen reared up to shoot at something on the street level. As they did so came a cracking from the opposite building. The guards fell backward from their barricade, some wounded, some finished. Perhaps half remained standing, firing solid volleys down into the street.
Fombombo bellowed for the riflemen to remain down and let the machine-guns clean the streets. The big man's roars seemed to fling the soldiers back into their niches. The machine-gunners, with their steel shields protecting them, depressed their guns and began a vibratory screaming at something below.
Strawbridge, with a nervous spasm in his throat, peered through a machicolation. Out from behind the nearest building came a swarm of ghastly scarlet figures armed with heavy timbers. The machine-guns whipped the calle about them. Groups of the ragged red specters were struck to the ground about the timbers, but others of the rabble leaped to their places. They were the "reds." Saturnino had collected these wretches from the canal camps all over the survey, and now flung them at the dictator. There was something sickening in the charge of the "reds" across the calle. The machine-guns could not beat them back. They sowed the street with filthy red canvas bags; but still they came on and rushed their timbers under the overhang of the building, where the machine-guns could not reach them.