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We almost could imagine the townspeople believing us to be the Rough Riders themselves and fleeing before us. And then, the empty street seemed to threaten an ambush. We thought hastily of sunken mines, of soldiers crouching behind the barriers, behind the houses at the next corner, of Mausers covering us from the latticed balconies overhead.
There were laid down by the Spaniards about 12,000 Mausers and Remingtons, and there were 10,000 in the arsenals 22,000 in all.
Stuck up on the bare brow, plain to be seen at 2000 yards, they were simply meant to draw our fire. The smokeless Mausers would have told no tales, and I have no doubt that, if the attack had come off, the device would have more or less succeeded, for the stone shelters, though obviously dummies on close inspection, looked all right at a distance. Besides, a definite mark always attracts fire.
These sharp-shooters in our front did perfectly legitimate work, and were entitled to all credit for their courage and skill. It was different with the guerillas in our rear. Quite a number of these had been posted in trees at the time of the San Juan fight. They were using, not Mausers, but Remingtons, which shot smokeless powder and a brass-coated bullet.
Here the Mausers and Lee-Metfords talked incessantly, and the conversation was carried on in a desultory way down in the river valley and among the rolling hills on the southern side.
Good portion of enemy armed with Mausers, latest pattern. Two Krupp and great many rifles captured. Insurgents fired great quantity of ammunition. Quite a number of Spanish soldiers in insurgent service who served artillery. Insurgents constructed strong intrenchments near our lines, mostly in bamboo thickets. These our men charged, killing or capturing many of the enemy.
The room devoted to ceremony is so spacious that one must consent that magnitude is akin to grandeur. There is the usual double stairway and a few stone steps to overcome. On the right and left under the second lift of stairs were corded the Spanish Mausers and Remingtons and many boxes of cartridges.
Marksmen could sweep the decks of a ship with Mausers at the distance of a mile, and with the smokeless cartridges it would have been mere conjecture where the sharpshooters were located. There are rows of armor-piercing steel projectiles from Germany still standing around rusting in the Spanish batteries, and they never did any more than they are doing.
To-day he is the chief servant of the King in the Federation, the loyal head of the Administration under the Crown, one of the half-dozen Prime Ministers of the Empire, the responsible representative and virtual ruler of all races, classes, and sects in South Africa, acclaimed by the men he led in the battle and the rout no less than by the men who faced him across the muzzles of the Mausers ten years ago.
The supporting arguments grow and twist themselves in the mouths of merchant, scientist, soldier, traveler, writer, and missionary: Darker peoples are dark in mind as well as in body; of dark, uncertain, and imperfect descent; of frailer, cheaper stuff; they are cowards in the face of mausers and maxims; they have no feelings, aspirations, and loves; they are fools, illogical idiots, "half-devil and half-child."
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