h shrapnel
some time before: and he therefore now carefully aimed the weapon at a
certain spot over which the troops must pass, and the distance of which
he knew almost to an inch. Then, waiting patiently until the leading
column was within about three yards of it, he fired. The shell appeared
to strike the ground and explode almost at the feet of the advancing
troops, and when the smoke of the explosion cleared away it was seen
that an enormous gap had been made in the advancing column, which had
been thrown into the utmost confusion, those men in the immediate
vicinity of the gap, on either side of it, having halted in dismay,
while the right and left wings had continued to advance; and in the
midst of the gap could be seen a long swath of prostrate men, the most
of whom were lying horribly and unnaturally still. It was pitiable to
see those men, many of them scarcely out of their boyhood, led forth to
die in support of grinding, unendurable tyranny and misgovernment: yet
that was not the moment in which to indulge a feeling of mistaken
humanitarian sentiment--mistaken, because Jack knew that unless those
same men could be driven off they would be remorselessly used as the
instruments of ruthless destruction and indiscriminate slaughter; so,
while the confusion among the ranks was still at its height, he ordered
the gun to be reloaded, and again plumped a shell right in the very
midst of them.

This second shell appeared to have been even more terribly destructive
in its effects than the first, for the two columns were, when it fell,
bunched close together, and it seemed to have dropped where the men were
thickest; and ere the now demoralised troops could recover from the
panic into which they had been thrown, their ranks were yet more
disastrously thinned, a rattling crash of Maxim fire from Carlos'
position indicating the direction from which this new punishment had
come. But by this time General Echague had begun to recover his
presence of mind. He saw that to attempt to advance farther in close
formation in the face of such a withering fire would be suicidal, and he
gave the word for his men to take open order, which they instantly did:
and a moment later a slight change in the formation of the attacking
troops showed that while the leading column was intended to be used in
forcing the passage of the river at the point where the bridge had been
destroyed, the other column had been diverted to attack the posit