“Keep your fingers pressed on the triggers and the guns pointed at the enemy,” Phil instructed the anxious soldiers; “play the stream of bullets as if it were a hose, but for your lives don’t shoot until I give the order.”
The soldiers gazed in enchanted wonder at the guns. They had never seen their like before. They imagined they were something almost supernatural. Had not the Americans said one gun was equal to a company of soldiers?
“Look, Syd,” cried Phil in admiration, pointing toward Tortuga Hill; the entire hillside seemed alive with flashes of fire from countless guns, but Phil’s finger pointed at a horseman riding full gallop up the slope, shells bursting all about his mount. “There is the aide, but before reënforcements can reach us the fight will be over. If the guns don’t jam we can hold the hill.”
“My fear is that our men will not stand the preliminary shelling,” returned Sydney; “all their guns are directed at Tortuga Hill now, but when they have made their feint, look out up here. We’ll have every gun against us.”
“Our intrenchments are safe enough if the men keep down in them,” Phil encouraged, as they finished mounting the last gun and instructed its squad how to manipulate it, “but if a panic takes them, they will not listen to us. I wish we had O’Neil; his influence with these natives is next to marvelous.”
Everything was now ready; the soldiers had all been instructed how to fire and reload a second tape of six hundred fresh cartridges. All would go well if the soldiers’ courage could be depended upon to withstand the searching fire of artillery which the lads knew must soon commence.
The midshipmen viewed the appalling spectacle with nervous eyes. Regiment after regiment advanced from the cover of the trenches in extended order and pressed forward silently, the artillery behind them and on their flanks sending its heavily charged shells screeching over their heads to fall within the government lines.
“They are surely concentrating on Tortuga Hill,” Sydney exclaimed, hardly able to believe his eyes, as he saw masses of khaki clad men emerge from the dense foliage of the level country and sweep upward toward that almost impregnable position.
“They surely do not intend to assault that hill,” Phil exclaimed; “their loss would be tremendous.” Then he rubbed his eyes, believing that he must have been dreaming. The first line of assault had vanished into the earth. “Why, where did the first line go?” he shouted excitedly, peering down at the remaining columns as they swept silently forward. In but a minute the last enemy had disappeared from sight on the level plain. It seemed like magic. The soldiers whispered nervously to each other.
“What can it mean?” Sydney gasped as they gazed in wonder at this remarkable illusion. “Look out,” he cried, as a shrapnel shell exploded over their heads, sending showers of bullets all about them.