Page:Into Mexico with General Scott (1920).djvu/55

 From the brush and sand hills a troop of Mexican lancers, in bright uniforms of red caps and red jackets and yellow capes, had cantered down to the open beach, their pennons flapping, their lance tips gleaming. They rode and waved defiantly, daring the Americans to come ashore.

A row of little flags broke out from the mizzen mast of the Raritan. At once two gunboat steamers and five sloops of war left the squadron, they ploughed in, a puff of whitish smoke jetted from the bows of a gunboat, and as quick as a wink another puff burst close over the heads of the lancer troop. Boom-boom!

The gay lancers, bending low in their saddles, scudded like mad back into the sand hills and the brush, with another shell peppering their heels.

"Hurrah! Hurrah!" Jerry cheered, for it looked as though that beach was going to be kept clear.

He got such a box on the ear that it knocked him sprawling and set his head to ringing.

"You shut up!" old Manuel scolded. "You little American dog, you! Your Americans are cowards. They dare not land and fight. They think to stand off out at sea and fight. The miserable gringos from the north! That's the Mexican name for them: gringos. You understand?"

No, Jerry did not understand. "Gringo" was a new word—a contempt word recently invented by the Mexicans, when they spoke of the North Americans—his Americans. But he wasn't caring, now; he was wild with the box on the ear, and the sight of the United States soldiers. Boxes on the ear never