of the wind through the rigging of a ship in a storm. If a man had
raised his arm above his head his hand would have been torn off. It had
come up so suddenly that it was like two dogs, each springing at the
throat of the other, and in a greater degree it had something of the
sound of two wild animals struggling for life. Volley answered volley as
though with personal hate--one crashing in upon the roll of the other, or
beating it out of recognition with the bursting roar of heavy cannon. At
the same instant all of the Turkish batteries opened with great,
ponderous, booming explosions, and the little mountain guns barked and
snarled and shrieked back at them, and the rifle volleys crackled and
shot out blistering flames, while the air was filled with invisible
express trains that shook and jarred it and crashed into one another,
bursting and shrieking and groaning. It seemed as though you were lying
in a burning forest, with giant tree trunks that had withstood the storms
of centuries crashing and falling around your ears, and sending up great
showers of sparks and flame. This lasted for five minutes or less, and
then the death-grip seemed to relax, the volleys came brokenly, like a
man panting for breath, the bullets ceased to sound with the hiss of
escaping steam, and rustled aimlessly by, and from hill-top to hill-top
the officers' whistles sounded as though a sportsman were calling off his
dogs. The Turks withdrew into the coming night, and the Greeks lay back,
panting and sweating, and stared open-eyed at one another, like men who
had looked for a moment into hell, and had come back to the world again.

The next day was like the first, except that by five o'clock in the
afternoon the Turks appeared on our left flank, crawling across the hills
like an invasion of great ants, and the Greek army that at Velestinos had
made the two best and most dignified stands of the war withdrew upon
Halmyros, and the Turks poured into the village and burned it, leaving
nothing standing save two tall Turkish minarets that many years before,
when Thessaly belonged to the Sultan, the Turks themselves had placed
there.

I--THE ROUGH RIDERS AT GUASIMAS

On the day the American troops landed on the coast of Cuba, the Cubans
informed General Wheeler that the enemy were intrenched at Guasimas,
blocking the way to Santiago. Guasimas is not a village, nor even a
collection of houses; it is the meeting place of two trails whic