A man in garb of blue and white--something relating to what we call
bed-ticking--was seated in a curious little cupola on the top of a
Spanish blockhouse. The blockhouse sided a white military road that
curved away from the man's sight into a blur of trees. On all sides of
him were fields of tall grass, studded with palms and lined with fences
of barbed wire. The sun beat aslant through the trees and the man sped
his eyes deep into the dark tropical shadows that seemed velvet with
coolness. These tranquil vistas resembled painted scenery in a theatre,
and, moreover, a hot, heavy silence lay upon the land.
The soldier in the watching place leaned an unclean Mauser rifle in a
corner, and, reaching down, took a glowing coal on a bit of palm bark
handed up to him by a comrade. The men below were mainly asleep. The
sergeant in command drowsed near the open door, the arm above his head,
showing his long keen-angled chevrons attached carelessly with
safety-pins. The sentry lit his cigarette and puffed languorously.
Suddenly he heard from the air around him the querulous, deadly-swift
spit of rifle-bullets, and, an instant later, the poppety-pop of a
small volley sounded in his face, close, as if it were fired only ten
feet away. Involuntarily he threw back his head quickly as if he were
protecting his nose from a falling tile. He screamed an alarm and fell
into the blockhouse. In the gloom of it, men with their breaths coming
sharply between their teeth, were tumbling wildly for positions at the
loop-holes. The door had been slammed, but the sergeant lay just
within, propped up as when he drowsed, but now with blood flowing
steadily over the hand that he pressed flatly to his chest. His face
was in stark yellow agony; he chokingly repeated: "Fuego! Por Dios,
hombres!"
The men's ill-conditioned weapons were jammed through the loop-holes
and they began to fire from all four sides of the blockhouse from the
simple data, apparently, that the enemy were in the vicinity. The fumes
of burnt powder grew stronger and stronger in the little square
fortress. The rattling of the magazine locks was incessant, and the
interior might have been that of a gloomy manufactory if it were not
for the sergeant down under the feet of the men, coughing out: "Por
Dios, hombres! Por Dios! Fuego!"