But Singleton soon had something else than the two guns of the enemy to think about; for while he had been concentrating his attention upon the two field pieces, the entire body of troops had begun to move, and were advancing, in two columns, with the evident intention of endeavouring to force the passage of the stream somewhere in the neighbourhood of the ruined bridge: apparently they were unaware of the existence of the still weaker position which Carlos had undertaken to defend. Through some strange oversight or carelessness on the part of their commander, they were advancing in close order, and Jack felt that now was the moment when his twelve-pounder was likely to prove useful. He intended to captain the gun himself, and had caused it to be loaded with shrapnel some time before: and he therefore now carefully aimed the weapon at a certain spot over which the troops must pass, and the distance of which he knew almost to an inch. Then, waiting patiently until the leading column was within about three yards of it, he fired. The shell appeared to strike the ground and explode almost at the feet of the advancing troops, and when the smoke of the explosion cleared away it was seen that an enormous gap had been made in the advancing column, which had been thrown into the utmost confusion, those men in the immediate vicinity of the gap, on either side of it, having halted in dismay, while the right and left wings had continued to advance; and in the midst of the gap could be seen a long swath of prostrate men, the most of whom were lying horribly and unnaturally still. It was pitiable to see those men, many of them scarcely out of their boyhood, led forth to die in support of grinding, unendurable tyranny and misgovernment: yet that was not the moment in which to indulge a feeling of mistaken humanitarian sentiment--mistaken, because Jack knew that unless those same men could be driven off they would be remorselessly used as the instruments of ruthless destruction and indiscriminate slaughter; so, while the confusion among the ranks was still at its height, he ordered the gun to be reloaded, and again plumped a shell right in the very midst of them.