he day, and at times was very heavy;
but just before sunset it died away to a faint sputter and crackle of
rifles, and at dark ceased altogether. The moon rose in an unclouded sky
over the dark tree-tops east of the camp; the crickets began to chirp in
the thicket across the brook; sounds like the rapid shaking of a
billiard-ball in a resonant wooden box came from nocturnal birds or
tree-toads hidden in the depth of the forest; and the teeming life of
the tropical wilderness, frightened into silence for a time by the
uproar of battle, took courage from the stillness of night, and
manifested its presence by chirps, croaks, and queer, unfamiliar cries
in all parts of the encircling jungle.

About ten o'clock the stillness was broken by the boom of a heavy gun at
the front, followed instantly by the crash and rattle of infantry fire,
which grew heavier and heavier, and extended farther and farther to the
north and south, until it seemed to come from all parts of our
intrenched line on the crest of the San Juan ridge. For nearly half an
hour the rattle and sputter of rifles, the drumming of machine-guns, and
the intermittent thunder of artillery filled the air from the outskirts
of Santiago to the hospital camp, drowning the murmur of the rippling
brook, and silencing again the crickets, birds, and tree-toads in the
jungle beyond it. Then the uproar ceased, almost as suddenly as it had
begun; the stillness of night settled down again upon the lonely
tropical wilderness; and if I had not been able to hear the voices of
the surgeons as they consulted over an operating-table, and an
occasional shot from a picket or a sharpshooter in the forest, I should
not have imagined that there was an army or a battle-field within a
hundred miles. From the wounded who came back from the firing line an
hour or two later we learned that the enemy made an attempt, about ten
o'clock, to recapture the San Juan heights, but were repulsed with heavy
loss.

Saturday's fighting did not materially change the relative positions of
the combatants, but it proved conclusively that we could hold the San
Juan ridge against any attacking force that the Spaniards could muster.
Why, after a demonstration of this fact, General Shafter should have
been so discouraged as to "seriously consider the advisability of
falling back to a position five miles in the rear," I do not know. Our
losses in the fighting at Caney and San Juan were only two hundred and
thirty