Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/53

Rh on us. A sixth and last discharge brought two more to the ground and then I said, "We can do no more."

With our own hands we had destroyed nine of the foe, and had our proper gunners remained and shot with moderate coolness they might have fired ten or twelve times as fast, before the riflemen took up the ball. Indeed the partial success of two unaided men proved to me beyond a doubt that a little courage and steadiness must have won a decisive victory. For the guns should have destroyed ninety or a hundred, the marksmen would have accounted for at least a hundred more, and with two hundred huge locomotives encumbering the ground with their wrecks, the remainder if not daunted by their loss (supposing they had any sense to appreciate the fact) could never have approached our narrow front except singly, when they would have been destroyed in detail.

This was, however, no time to consider what might have been. Lighting the time fuse of a shell I left it beneath the ammunition wagon, which done we ran at our best pace towards the bridge. As we