n6 The Rough Riders 



mering rays from the just-risen sun brought into 

 fine relief the splendid palms which here and there 

 towered above the lower growth. The lofty and 

 beautiful mountains hemmed in the Santiago plain, 

 making it an amphitheatre for the battle. 



Immediately our guns opened, and at the report 

 great clouds of white smoke hung on the ridge 

 crest. For a minute or two there was no response. 

 Wood and I were sitting together, and Wood re- 

 marked to me that he wished our brigade could 

 be moved somewhere else, for we were directly in 

 line of any return fire aimed by the Spaniards at 

 the battery. Hardly had he spoken when there 

 was a peculiar whistling, singing sound in the air, 

 and immediately afterward the noise of something 

 exploding over our heads. It was shrapnel from 

 the Spanish batteries. We sprung to our feet and 

 leaped on our horses. Immediately afterward a 

 second shot came which burst directly above us; 

 and then a third. From the second shell one of the 

 shrapnel bullets dropped on my wrist, hardly break- 

 ing the skin, but raising a bump about as big as a 

 hickory-nut. The same shell wounded four of my 

 regiment, one of them being Mason Mitchell, and 

 two or three of the regulars were also hit, one los- 

 ing his leg by a great fragment of shell. Another 

 shell exploded right in the middle of the Cubans, 

 killing and wounding a good many, while the re- 



