Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 218: what you’re looking at

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

ens sx 216 delivery of their rations—this man who treated each and every one with absolute fairness, and who, above all, had proven to be a bueno soldado dato in their previous en- gagements— he chose to die rather than be beaten. Bueno! Allah il Allah, bui Teniente MacDono’ il Teniente MacDono’—and be —— to the consequences! The men he called upon leaped ae the cut behind him. The two parties met with a crash; wl the hideous din of the rifles and the shock of contact tore the boy loose from his moor- ings. He could never have given a coherent account of the actions there in the cut. As but four men could fight abreast, the con- testants were jambed till there was scarce breathing-room. He heard as in a dream the wild curses of the twenty men who were pushing forward behind him, while in front of him there swayed a stinking, bellowing sea of black, black heads with wide-open red, red mouths. These were studded with filed, black teeth, and ran with streams of betel-juice that filled him with a sickening sense of fury and nausea. He fired into them blindly till his pistol had emptied its chamber; then he lashed out with his saber, cutting and slashing in a mad frenzy. After a seeming century of this, he began . to stumble and to struggle with his con- sciousness. It seemed that, no matter how many he cut down, the devils would come on. Something warm gushed down his neck 7 and side, and his left foot felt as if he were pulling it in and out of a stream of scalding water. His stomach appeared to have turned completely over. His mouth was caked with cotton. His sword arm strug- gled against hellish rubber cords that pulled it down. He began to sob weakly. Perhaps, after all, he had made a mistake in not remaining above to direct the movements of his men. But in entertaining this doubt, he in- sulted the non-commissioned officers who had attended his little night school. While the privates in the cut pushed forward, and elbowed one another aside to bayonet the foremost of the Moro crush, the sergeants and corporals above kept their men firing into the mob below. Lying atop the insurmountable ledges, and firing at a distance of twenty feet, their Adventure fire wrought fearful havoc with the mass. In addition to this, the non-coms fed the de- fenders of the cut. As each man pressed forward over the body of a fallen comrade, another slipped down into the chute to take his place. This Gordon could not know, as he dared not turn his head. He only knew that the hellish roar of the rifles was driving him crazy, and that the world seemed full of dancing bolos, flashing spear-heads and jab- bing bayonets. He was choking with the rancid odor of blood, betel-juice and sweat. Neither could he pull his leg from the hot water that seemed to rise now to his knee. He staggered and cried out, sensing dimly that he could not remain upright much longer. And then a great cry went up, a wave seemed to push him forward, and he suffered the amazing sensation of being sucked up into a long, black funnel. Eze CONSCIOUSNESS returned with a sy sensation of drowning. He stag- ~<# gered to his feet, swabbing viciously at the water which a corporal had thrown into his face. Stumbling about amid the slippery dead bodies, he cleared his eyes at last of blood and sweat and water. He sensed the meaning of it all then, for the remainder of the Moros were in full retreat. He opened his lips to yell, but the effort produced only a dry cough. Reeling with dizziness, he sat down on a rock to quench his raging thirst. When the last of the enemy had disap- peared behind the trees, the youth’s head had cleared somewhat. He looked ’round about him, taking inventory. Some of his little men were writhing on the ground, torn by horrible wounds. Others twisted and gasped in the throes of extreme physical exhaustion. Still others staggered round and about their dead com- rades, their faces resembling those of a runner at the fag end of a heart-breaking marathon. Here a man shricked with hysteria, and there a man mumbled drowsily, as drunk as if he were filled with moonshine whisky. The comparatively fresh sharpshooters from the ledges wreaked their vengeance upon the wounded with butt and bayonet, while the remainder helped their stricken fellows or lay prone upon the ground, gasp- ing like fish out of water. EComircbooks (9)