Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 216: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

* 214 had thought the rear guard closed up, and so moved a little too soon. Gordon gasped as he guessed at their numbers. ‘They kept coming from the trees, wave after wave of tall, sinewy, long- armed fellows with determined chins and sullen eyes. Fifty per cent. of them were armed with rifles and muskets of various makes, while the rest, in addition to the usual bolo or barong, carried long-handled, double-edged spears. ‘There were enough bolo-men there to swamp and crush the Brigadier in his cramped position, not to speak of the execution the riflemen might do from the sides of the chasm. Now a rear guard, when attacked by superior numbers, is theoretically supposed | to rush a file to the main column for help, and to close in as speedily as may be upon that column. In the face of the numbers confronting him, no man-could have blamed Gordon for retiring at once. In that case the Brigadier, who had blundered into the cafion of his own free will, would be left to general himself out of it as best he could. “By gad, why not?” Gordon soliloquized in that fleeting second. His men, too, seemed to voice the same opinion in the expression of their faces. They were of a fighting people—but! ‘He deserves cutting up—or worse, living to be retired in dis- grace.” But with the possibilities of the situation clear before him, a disturbing thought checked his exultation. In merely handing the General his maps, had he fully performed his duty? True, the General had taken a Filipino’s word against his, and had in reality given _ him no official opportunity to explain the landslide. Furthermore, he, Gordon, had not known of this move on the part of Dato Pedro. He had only allowed, in the begin- ning, the General to take his own way and march a needless ten miles. - But now that the blunder.on the part of the Brigadier had placed those regiments of American soldiers in danger of annihila- tion, was he, Gordon, wholly innocent in the matter? To settle a private grudge, he had wilfully withheld oral information— information that would have cleared the air in a word, and started the General around by the other trail. Hence, could he call himself morally guiltless? There was another thing that crashed through his mind also—a sentence from out Adventure of the past. It had something to do with 4 test, something about duty and the subjuga- tion of self in the interests of the service— some sort of bally rot that school-children spout on Washington’s birthday, and which soldiers blush at the thought of. = l” he grinned at the end of that ’*steenth part of a second. ‘“The Moros might kill him and. never let him live to know what it means to be cashiered in dis- grace. I'll check these beggars up a bit and see how he likes being protected by a boob.” He sent a man running to the rear with a message to the main column, and then yelled, with a whip and a ring in the com- mand— “‘As skirmishers—behind those ke commence—firing!” The slaughter of that first volley was ap- palling; yet at first Gordon did not hope to do more than reduce the numbers who would eventually attack the Brigadier. It seemed almost inevitable that the greater part of his company, himself included, would be wiped out in the process of “‘checking the beggars up a bit.”. Nor did fifteen seconds of steady firing change his opinion. In spite of the fact that the range was almost point blank for the single- shot Springfields, the mob refused to run. Instead, they spattered his position with a hail of lead, and, scrambling over the bodies of the dead, came rolling up the slope like the angry comb of a tidal wave. | hope soared high within him. On either side of the narrow cut were ledges, covered with rocks that could be used for breastworks and rifle-rests; and these ledges dropped a sheer twenty feet to the beginning of the slope. The Moros could not scale them. In order to reach the little men in blue and khaki, they must rush into the narrow chute, and from there up over the sides. To reach the chute, they must cross the river and two hundred yards of open, now literally alive with flying lead. Hence, in that reckless charge, the brown men left windrows of dead and wounded behind them. They fell in tens and-twen- ties until it seemed the very dead would form a barricade against their fellows’ further advance; and suddenly the boy rose to the tips of his toes in a wild shout of victory. , BUT in the mélée that followed, : = _-comichooks (E@)