Page:Into Mexico with General Scott (1920).djvu/80

 *ried back and forth, scarcely noticing him. There were gruff orders. He had to see what was going on; so he fell in with the busy files, and in a moment he had arrived at the breech of an enormous cannon, surrounded by sailors stripped to the waist and tugging and heaving to move the cannon into place.

Beyond it there was another cannon, already in place, its muzzle pointing out through sandbags, its squatty solid iron frame resting upon little wheels which fitted a pair of iron rails bolted to a plank turn-table upon a platform. Beyond that was still another great gun. And to the rear there was the sand-bagged roof of a low hut, sunk deeply almost on the level with the surface of the ground. This was a battery, then; and that probably was the powder house—the magazine. And all had been dug out, and erected, here, between the dunes and Vera Cruz, in point-blank range of the walls!

By the hurry and bustle something was going to happen very soon. A smart naval officer in blue and gold, with sword drawn, was overseeing the work of setting the first gun into position. A boatswain, his shirt open upon his hairy chest and a whistle dangling at the end of a cord, was bossing. Everybody was a sailor, so it must be the naval battery.

The boatswain saw Jerry staring; and he stared likewise.

"Hi! What you doin' here, young 'un?"

"Just watching," said Jerry.

"Where you from?"

"Vera Cruz. But I'm an American.

"Shiver my tops'ls!" uttered the boatswain; and the other sailors briefly paused to wipe their