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Updated: May 1, 2025
In this retreat many of the enemy would drop down among the dead, then rise, run a considerable distance, and drop again, thus confusing the riflemen's aim. One fellow had thus got about four hundred and fifty yards from the American line, and, thinking himself secure, he made a derisive gesture. "I'll have a shot at him anyhow," cried a rifleman; so he fired, and the poor devil dropped.
The Mambava, shot through and through, feeling death upon them, maintained their momentum long enough to drive their weapons through the khaki jackets, or, at the least, to go down with their teeth buried in the riflemen's necks, as if that draught of blood might reanimate them.
"Lieutenant Butters!" called Deck, as he rode to the head of the riflemen's portion of the column. The late jail-keeper rode to a little opening in the woods, where Deck had halted, and received his orders. He then formed his command in line, probably animated by the drill in which he had been engaged for two days. He then numbered them from one up to thirty.
The Confederates evidently believed that they were flanked by a large force, and began to fall back towards the intrenchments, crowding the companies in the rear before them. The men in the first company continued to fall in appalling numbers before the riflemen's unerring aim. The Riverlawns pressed them with renewed zeal, and they fell back into the gap made by the flankers.
The contrabandista chief had made his arrangements in a way that when he explained them made his hearers believe that nothing could be better. His reluctant silence respecting the position of the two lads had impressed the Spanish King with the belief that he considered the young riflemen's situation to be hopeless, and that he felt that he had done everything possible.
A cloud of smoke rose in the air, and at the same moment, almost, the explosion of a shell was seen on the riflemen's hill. The branches of the trees were cut off and twisted, and the sharpshooters rushed down the declivity as though their own weapons had been turned against them.
Not more than three or four shots had been fired before a tremendous yell was heard coming from the riflemen's hill, and the sharpshooters fled down the slope. It appeared as though Captain Ripley had watched the fort for a purpose, and, when he saw the flash of the great gun, had ordered his men to run, and they had done so.
Now he was subjected to a medley of sounds: the Riflemen's march, the signals, the bells and the brass bands on the steamers, until at last the whole crash and din was drowned by the throbbing of the screw. At ten o'clock he lit his spirit lamp and boiled his shaving water. His starched shirt lay on his chest of drawers, white and stiff as a board.
When the kerchief was pulled from my eyes I was standing in the midst of a mounted riflemen's halt-camp, face to face with a young officer wearing the uniform of the colonelcy in the North Carolina home troops. He was a handsome young fellow, with curling hair and trim side-whiskers to frame a face fine-lined and eager the face of a gentleman well-born and well-bred.
A Senegalese sentry was walking beneath the tricolor, and a row of these black riflemen's heads peeped from the walls and trenches. All of them had evidently been turned out under arms. Apparently there were about 300 people not more in the fortification. Steaming close in without being hailed, the vessels hove to opposite the works.
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