"If we get into trouble with the General for this," they shouted, "it
will be your fault. You told us Ernst was in the town with a
thousand men."
I shouted back that no one regretted the fact that he was not more
keenly than I did myself.
Titus and Breckenridge each glanced at a new, full-dress sword.
"We might as well go in," they shouted, "and take it anyway!" I
decided that Titus and Breckenridge were wasted in the Commissariat
Department.
The three correspondents looked more comfortable.
"If you officers go in," they cried, "the General can't blame us,"
and they dug their spurs into the ponies.
"Wait!" shouted Her Majesty's representative. "That's all very well
for you chaps, but what protects me if the Admiralty finds out I have
led a charge on a Spanish garrison?"
But Paget's pony refused to consider the feelings of the Lords of the
Admiralty. As successfully Paget might have tried to pull back a
row-boat from the edge of Niagara. And, moreover, Millard, in order
that Jimmy might be the first to reach Ponce with despatches, had
mounted him on the fastest pony in the bunch, and he already was far
in the lead. His sporting instincts, nursed in the pool-rooms of the
Tenderloin and at Guttenburg, had sent him three lengths to the good.
It never would do to have a newsboy tell in New York that he had
beaten the correspondents of the papers he sold in the streets; nor
to permit commissioned officers to take the dust of one who never
before had ridden on anything but a cable car.
