y had kept a comfortable lookout, lay
sprawling in the middle of the road. The huts that faced it were empty.
The only living things we saw were the chickens and pigs in the
kitchen-gardens. On either hand was every evidence of hasty and
panic-stricken flight. We rejoiced at these evidences of the fact that
the Wisconsin Volunteers had swept all before them. Our rejoicings were
not entirely unselfish. It was so quiet ahead that some one suggested
the town had already surrendered. But that would have been too bitter a
disappointment, and as the firing from the further side of Coamo still
continued, we refused to believe it, and whipped the ponies into greater
haste. We were now only a quarter of a mile distant from the built-up
portion of Coamo, where the road turned sharply into the main street of
the town.

Captain Paget, who in the absence of the British military attache on
account of sickness, accompanied the army as a guest of General Wilson,
gave way to thoughts of etiquette.

"Will General Wilson think I should have waited for him?" he shouted.
The words were jolted out of him as he rose in the saddle. The noise of
the ponies' hoofs made conversation difficult. I shouted back that the
presence of General Ernst in the town made it quite proper for a foreign
attache to enter it.

"It must have surrendered by now," I shouted. "It's been half an hour
since Ernst crossed the bridge."

At these innocent words, all my companions tugged violently at their
bridles and shouted "Whoa!"

"Crossed the bridge?" they yelled. "There is no bridge! The bridge is
blown up! If he hasn't crossed by the ford, he isn't in the town!"

Then, in my turn, I shouted "Whoa!"

But by now the Porto Rican ponies had decided that this was the race of
their lives, and each had made up his mind that, Mexican bit or no
Mexican bit, until he had carried his rider first into the town of Coamo,
he would not be halted. As I tugged helplessly at my Mexican bit, I saw
how I had made my mistake. The volunteers, on finding the bridge
destroyed, instead of marching upon Coamo had turned to the ford, the
same ford which we had crossed half an hour before they reached it. They
now were behind us. Instead of a town which had surrendered to a
thousand American soldiers, we, seven unarmed men and Jimmy, were being
swept into a hostile city as fast as the enemy's ponies could take us
there.

Breckenridge and Titus hastily put the blame u