Page:Under MacArthur in Luzon.djvu/270

240 could assist him, and with a last cry he fell to the ground with a dull thud, to rise no more.

"Horrible!" gasped Ben, who could not help but see the fall, and he shivered with the awfulness of the scene. Then, without taking time for a second thought, he ran into the open and leaped for the shed door, with Leary the private on his heels.

A sight equally thrilling met his gaze inside of the dimly lit building. Stummer had been completely overcome, and a rebel was about to give Dan Casey a finishing blow with his gun butt. But the weapon never came down, for Ben seized it and hurled it aside, and its owner with it.

"Surrender, or we'll shoot you down like dogs!" cried the captain; and as the Filipinos turned to use their rifles, he emptied his revolver into the crowd, while Leary and the others used their guns. The shed was filled with smoke and with the yells and groans of the wounded and dying. A Filipino caught Ben by the legs and threw him to the floor, and the two rolled over and over in a hand-to-hand struggle for the mastery.

It was a trying time, and one Ben was not likely to forget for long months to come, for somebody in the semi-darkness stepped on his shoulder, bruising it