Page:Into Mexico with General Scott (1920).djvu/61

 The gig beat. One hundred yards from the beach it grounded. It scarcely had stopped when a fine, tall officer leaped overboard into the water waist deep; with his sword drawn and waved and pointed he surged for the shore. He wore a uniform frock coat, with a double row of buttons down the front and with large gold epaulets on the shoulders. Upon his head was a cocked hat; and as he gained the shallows the gold braid of his trousers seams showed between boots and skirts. He was of high rank, then; perhaps a general—perhaps the general of the whole army! And his face had dark side-whiskers.

Close behind him there hurried a soldier with the flag. All the men, mainly officers, his staff, had leaped overboard; and from the other boats, fast and faster, the men were leaping, and surging in, and in, holding their muskets and cartridge boxes high, and cheering.

"Boom!" A cannon shot! Smoke floated from the bastion fort of Santiago, in the nearest corner of the city walls, three miles up the shore; but the ball must have fallen short.

"Boom!" A great gun in San Juan castle, three miles and a half, had tried. By the spurt of sand this ball also was short.

"We'd better get out of here," old Manuel rapped. "To the city! Quick! The Americans are surely landing. We don't want to have our ears cut off; and we don't want to be blown up, either. The guns are beginning; they are playing for the dance."

"Yes; and you come, too, you little gringo," young Manuel exclaimed, grabbing Jerry by the arm.