“Aye, aye, sir!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” announced the other squinting gunners, one to each
piece.
“Fire!” shouted the battery officer, with dash of sword.
The lock strings were jerked viciously. Such a thunderous blast tore
the air to shreds that Jerry’s ear drums felt driven right into his
head, and the suction of the air, following the report, dragged him
upon his nose.
The smoke gushed wider and higher. He could see the officers standing
and peering through their spy-glasses, at the city; they shouted――he
could not hear a word, but the smoking guns had recoiled inward until
checked by ropes and chocks; the rammers swabbed with the swab ends of
their long ramrods; other sailors thumbed the vent holes; the swabbers
reversed their tools; sailors rapidly inserted a flannel bag of powder
into each muzzle; in it went, forced home by the ramrods; shells for
some guns, shot for others, had been handed up――were rammed down――out
rolled the guns, to the haul on block and tackle――
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“Fire!”
“_Boom-m-m!_”
The sailors appeared to be cheering as they toiled. The guns thundered
and smoked――recoiled as if alive and eager, were sponged and loaded
and run out again; every man was on the jump, but they all moved like
clockwork. Cowering there, back of the magazine, and glued to the side
of the trench, Jerry stared roundly. Nobody paid any attention to him.
All were too busy to take heed of a ragged boy.
“_Bang!_” A return shot had arrived. It was a shell, and had burst so
near that the fragments and the dirt rained down.
“_Bang!_” Another. The naval battery had been discovered, and Jerry was
under fire.
The naval guns and the guns of the city forts answered one another
furiously. What a clangor and turmoil――what a smother of hot smoke from
the cannon muzzles and the bursting shells! Solid shot thudded in,
too. They ripped across the parapet, cutting gashes and sending the
sand-bags flying. They bounded into the trench, and lay there spinning,
ugly and black. It was hard to tell whether they were really solid or
were going to burst. Horrors! One of the men passing ammunition had
lost his head! A solid shot skimming through the same slot out of which
a cannon muzzle pointed had taken the man’s head off; he crumpled like
a sack, and Jerry felt sick at the red sight.
When he opened his eyes and had to look again, shuddering, the body was
gone; another sailor――a live one――stood in the place, and the guns were
booming as before.
All the guns of the city forts on this side seemed to be firing at the
naval battery. Several sailors had been wounded; a young officer was
down and bleeding. The wounded were staggering to the rear; one stopped
and sank beside Jerry. He had an arm dangling and crimsoned, and a
bloody head.
“Ship ahoy, matie,” he gasped. Jerry recognized him as his first friend
of the night preceding. “You’re here again, are you? D’you know where
the sick bay is?”
“No, sir,” said Jerry.
“It’s aft some’ers down this bloomin’ trench. Lend me a tow, will you?
I’ve got a spar nigh shot off and a bit o’ shell in my figgerhead. Hard
for me to keep a course, d’you see?”
“All right. You tell me where to take you.”
“Right-o, my hearty. Steady, there. P’int due sou’-sou’east. The sick
bay and the bloody sawbones’ll be some’ers abeam. You’ll smell the
arnicky.”
With the shells exploding and the cannon-balls pursuing they made way
down the trench, the sailor leaning with his sound arm on Jerry’s
shoulders.
The sick bay, or hospital, was a sandbag-covered room at one side; not
a pleasant place――oh, no, for wounds were being dressed and things were
being cut off by the navy surgeon and his assistant. Still, it seemed
to be safe from the shot and shell, and there were not many wounded,
yet; only four or five. So Jerry lingered, until the surgeon espied him
and set him at work picking lint, serving water, and so forth.
The reports from the battery were encouraging, judging by the
conversation. The six guns were all in action, together: the three
Paixhans, which threw shells eight inches in diameter and weighing
sixty-eight pounds, and the three solid-shot pieces, which threw balls,
six inches in diameter, and weighing thirty-two pounds. These were the
heaviest American guns firing yet, for breaching.
“Yes, shiver my timbers!” growled Jerry’s sailor to one of the other
wounded. “Scott axed for ’em, didn’t he? Would the commodore please to
land a few o’ the navy toys and furnish the bass in this here music?
Would the navy lend the army some genuyine main-deck guns, of a kind to
fire a broadside with and send the bloomin’ dons to Davy Jones? ‘Bless
my bloody eyes!’ says the commodore. ‘Sartinly I will, general. But I
must fight ’em.’ And ain’t we a-fightin’ of ’em? Well, I guess we are,
matie!”
So being navy guns, they were being “fought” by the navy. From seven
hundred yards their shot and shell were tearing right through the walls
of the city. The astonished Mexicans were fighting back with three
batteries, all aimed at the naval battery, to put it out.
The army was erecting another battery, nearby――Battery Number 4, of the
heaviest army cannon, sixty-eight-pounders and twenty-four-pounders.
Pretty soon these would join with the navy fire.
The work in the sick bay slackened, and Jerry stole up “forward” again.
The din and the rush were as bad as ever. The sailors, bared to the
waist, were black with powder grime and streaked with sweat, on faces,
bodies and arms. The guns were alive and alert――they were monsters,
belching, darting back, fuming, while they waited to be fed, then
eagerly darting to belch once more.
After each shot the gun squads cheered, peering an instant through the
fog.
“Another for the dons’ lockers!”
“Hooray, lads! We’ve cut his bloomin’ flag away.”
“No, no! It’s up again.”
Yonder, across the heaving plain, the figure of a Mexican officer had
leaped upon the parapet of a bastion fort set in the walls and was
fastening the Mexican flag to its broken flagpole. It was a brave act.
Cheers greeted him.
The crew in front of Jerry reloaded at top speed. The great gun spoke.
“They’re serving those pieces like rifles,” said somebody, in Jerry’s
ear. “By thunder, they’re planting shot and shell exactly where they
please.” That was the surgeon, who had come forward for a view. “But
the enemy’s making mighty good practice, too. He has German artillery
officers.”
Suddenly the surgeon yelled, and grabbing Jerry forced him flat.
“Look sharp!”
The parapet of the battery was scored ragged. The gun platforms and
the trench were littered with shell fragments and spent solid shot.
Now there had sounded a soft “plump” or thud. A round black sphere as
large as Jerry’s head had landed in the bottom of the wide space behind
the guns――it was only a few feet to the rear of the quarter-gunner who
stood holding in his arms a copper tank containing the powder charges.
Each charge weighed ten pounds.
He heard the thump, and what did he do but turn and stoop and put
his hand upon the thing! Evidently it was hot――it was smoking――a
shell! Down dived the quarter-gunner, quick as a wink, plastering
himself against the ground. There was a chorus of startled shouts,
and――“_Boom!_” the shell had exploded.
The tremendous shock drove Jerry rolling over and over. As seemed
to him, the trench and the emplacements and the battery and all the
men had been blown to bits. But when he picked himself up amidst the
dense smoke, instead of seeing bloody shreds everywhere, he saw the
men likewise picking themselves up and staring about dazedly. The
ammunition chest had exploded also, but even the quarter-gunner had not
been harmed. One lieutenant had had his hat-brim torn off; that was all.
“A thirteen-inch bomb, from the castle,” the surgeon remarked. “Young
man, we’d better get out of here, and stay where we belong.”
“Send that boy out of fire,” an officer barked. “Now, my hearties! Show
those fellows we’re still alive.”
Cheering, the sailors jumped to their task.
His head ringing, Jerry stumbled back with the surgeon. And at the
hospital he got a quick dismissal.
“You heard the orders, youngster. Follow your nose and keep going.”
That was good advice, when such shells were landing and he could be
of no use. So Jerry scuttled back down the trench, hoping to run upon
Hannibal somewhere.