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Then, with an awful suddenness, their cry became the cry of death, for out from the bushes belched a yellow line of fire as the rifles of Trent and his men rang out their welcome. A dozen at least of the men of Bekwando looked never again upon the faces of their wives, the rest hesitated. Trent, in whom was the love of fighting, made then his first mistake.
A dark canopy hung over the scene, every moment increasing in density as the guns belched forth their flashes of flame and clouds of smoke, filling the pure air of heaven with sulphureous vapours, and almost concealing the fierce combatants from each other's gaze.
The next instant the roar was increased tenfold, and from the loopholes high on the walls of the storehouse flashed other thin red spurts of flame. Terror-stricken, Chloe dashed for the cottage. Along the entire length of the timber-line, spikes of flame belched forth, and the crash and roar of rifles drowned the rush of the moccasin feet.
Gloomy thoughts were dispelled at once by the instinct of hospitality. "You're fair wet, man. Pull a chair to the hearth. And you have a bit smut on your nose, Davie." "It's frae the railway engine. Edinburgh was a reekie toon eneugh afore the engines cam' in an' belched smuts in ilka body's faces."
In another corner the excavators found skeletons of sheep. Here was a pen for live animals which a man might buy for his banquet or for a sacrifice to his gods. His slave would lead the sheep away through the crowds. But on that terrible day when the volcano belched, the poor bleating animals were deserted. Their pen held them and the ashes covered them and to-day we can see their skeletons.
A cannon belched forth, doing fearful havoc, but those in front could not retreat because of those pushing behind them, and in a twinkle one Mexican soldier was piled above another, until the top of the wall was gained, and, as one authority states, they came "tumbling over it like sheep," falling, in some cases, directly on the bodies of the Texans below.
Occasionally the sickening mixture would sink from view, as if the tortured wretch had swallowed it. Then we could hear, hundreds of feet below, unearthly retching; and, in a moment, it would all come up again, belched out with an explosive force that hurled a boiling spray of mud so high that we rushed down the slope. A single drop of it would have burned like molten lead.
But though the motives which inspired him were very wildly mixed and very uncertain in their origin, there is no doubt whatever as to the deed to which amongst themselves they inspired him that Christmas morning. The Malakoff belched hell. The flying crowds hustled him and threw him twice or thrice. But he was on his feet again, racing towards that prone figure.
It belched forth shoots of fire five hundred yards long, and emitted hisses so loud, so harsh, and so ear-piercing, that King Iobates heard them, fifty miles off, and trembled till the throne shook under him. "Well-a-day!" thought the poor king; "the Chimaera is certainly coming to devour me!"
When the hotel caught, and the hook-and-ladder gang got into it, the way the upper windows belched mattresses, mirrors, toilet-sets, pictures and beds was unbelievable. Almost everything in the building was saved, and some of it was successfully repaired afterward. The axmen had their innings that day, too.
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