Captain Jinks, Hero by Ernest Howard Crosby (story read aloud txt) 📕

breakfasted as best they could on coffee without sugar or cream, and some stale bread, with an egg apiece, and whisky. Sam felt unaccountably sleepy, and he thought that all the rest looked sleepy too. It was five o’clock before Burton had the orders ready for the various subordinate commanders, telling each of them in which direction to advance. The plan had been mapped out the night before, but the orders had to be copied and corrected. At last he came out and distributed them to Stroud, Sam, and several other officers⁠—two orders to each, yawning painfully as he handed them out.

“I don’t think I slept a wink last night,” he said.

The two commands to which Sam’s orders were directed were stationed on the extreme right of the army. He made a rough tracing of that part of the map and set out at once on a wiry little native pony. For some distance he followed the highroad, but then was obliged to turn into a branch road which led through the woods, and which soon became a mere wood-path. Before long he heard firing in front of him, and soon he recognized the sound of whistling bullets above his head. He found himself ducking his head involuntarily, and almost for the first time in his life he was conscious of being afraid. This was a surprise to him, as his thoughts during the night whenever he had been awake had been full of pleasant anticipations.

The path suddenly came out into an open rolling country, and Sam pulled up his horse, dismounted, and hiding behind some underbrush, took a look at the situation. There was a Gatling-gun, worked by a young officer and five men, a few hundred yards to the right at the edge of the woods. Beyond to the front he could see a line of troops firing at the enemy from behind a wall. Of the Cubapinos he could see nothing but the smoke of their guns and muskets here and there. Shells were falling in another part of the field, but nowhere near him. Bullets were flying thick through the air, and he heard them hissing constantly. As he looked he saw one of the Gatling crew fall over, doubled up in a heap. Sam moved along in the wood nearer to this gun, so that he might ask where he could find the brigade commander. As he approached he heard the lieutenant say:

“Damn those sharpshooters. They’ve got our range now. With this damned smokeless powder they can pick us all off. Clark, bring some of that artificial smoke stuff here.”

The soldier obeyed, and in a few moments a dense smoke rose above them, covering the whole neighborhood.

What a wonderful thing these inventions are! thought Sam, as he tied his horse to a tree and advanced crouching toward the battery. The lieutenant pointed out to him the position of the brigadier-general, some distance back on the right under cover of the jungle, and told him of a path that would take him there. Sam was not slow to follow his directions, for just then a shell exploded close by. He soon found the general surrounded by his staff on a partially wooded hill, from which, however, they could command the field with their glasses. Bullets were flying about them, and an occasional shell sailed over their heads, but the general seemed perfectly at home. He took the orders, opened them and read them.

“That’s strange,” said he. “Last night I understood that I was to make for that pass between the hills there on the left, and now I’m ordered to take the first turning to the right. I don’t understand it. Do you know anything about it?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, he must have changed his mind. Or else it was a bluff to keep his plans from leaking out. Tell the general that I will carry out his orders at once.”

Sam inquired of the members of the staff where he would be likely to find the 43rd Volunteers, to whose colonel his other orders were directed, but they had no information, except that in the morning that regiment had been stationed farther over on the right. Sam started out again, guiding himself as best he could by a compass which he had in his pocket. He selected the paths which seemed most promising, but the jungle between was impenetrable on horseback. The firing on the extreme right seemed to be farther in the rear, and he made his way in that direction. Again he came out at the edge of the woods, and to his surprise saw a battalion of the enemy at a short distance from him. He turned his horse, stuck his spurs into him, and went back along the path to the rear at a full run, while a shower of bullets fell around him. He still kept on working to the right in the direction of the firing which he heard in front of him. At last in a hollow of the jungle he came upon a Red Cross station, one of those advance temporary relief posts where the wounded who are too much injured to be taken at once to the rear are treated. Twenty or thirty men were lying in a row, some of them on their coats, others on the bare ground. Two surgeons were doing what they could in the line of first aid to the injured, binding up arms and legs, dressing wounds, and trying to stop the flow of blood from arteries. Two soldiers were lifting a wounded man on a stretcher so that he might be carried to the rear, and he was groaning with agony. Every one of the patients was blotched in one place or another with blood, and some of them were lying in pools of the crimson fluid. Sam felt a little sick at his stomach. Two men came in with another stretcher, bringing a wounded man from the front. The man gave