"Only for a few minutes, sir. The colonel says that for you to charge before he's got onto their flank would cost too many men. You'll get the word as soon as he's got the works." "Well said, Billy boy! That sounds almost epigrammatic. Hullo! You hit? Stoop down here, man. Don't try to get perforated." "My hat only," was the answer, as the boy stooped quickly to hide the irrepressible twitching about the muscles of his lips. A Remington had ripped from side to side, tearing a way through the curly hair at the top of his head and almost scoring the scalp. To save his soul he could not quite suppress the trembling of his knees; but, steadying himself by a great effort, he continued: "The colonel says to commence firing by volley the moment our bugles sound the charge. Now I must get back." "All right, youngster. Tell the colonel I savey, and we'll do our level best--only, let us into it as quick as you can." But Gray heard only the first part of the sentence. He was panting when he reached his placid, gray-mustached chief, and could only gasp out: "The captain understands, sir." And then the regimental commander simply turned to the battalion leader, standing silent at his left in a little clump of timber--another veteran captain grown gray as himself in long, long years of service: "Now's our time, old man! Pitch in! Gray, we'll go with him." All along the line from right to left there ran the cross-country road connecting the broader highway, from Malate to San Rafael and Paranaque on the west, and from West Paco by way of Singalon to Pasay. In front of the right wing all was swamp, morass or rice fields. In front of the left wing all was close, dense bamboo and jungle, save where the broad, straight roadway led on past Block House 13, or the narrower cart track stretched southward, overarched in places by spreading branches, and commanded at its narrowest path by the swarm of dusky fighters in Block House 14. A year before the blue-shirts stormed these forest strongholds from the south, and took them from the troops of Spain. Now they were compelled to turn and storm them from the north; for, just as Stanley Armstrong said at San Francisco, the Filipinos had turned upon their ally and would-be friend. Aguinaldo had bearded Uncle Sam.