The spectator., 1918-11-19
CHAPTER |.

Lieutenant Mark Wallace of the Seventieth New York regiment came to an abrupt standstill. He was alone in the jungle, upon the blazing hillside before Santiago, in the month of June, 1898.
 Through the branches of the trees the Mauser bullets still whipped and whistled, and the prolonged screech of shells and distant shouting indicated that the battle, which had ragged all day, had not yet reached it's end. But within the short radius of Wallace's vision nothing stirred, not even the palmetto boUghS that rustled with the least breeze like the sound Gf the sea.
 Wallace had only the most confused and incoherent knowledge of what was happening on that historic day. There had been an advance in the cool of the morning, if a brief respite from the op- presSiye heat could be called coolneSS in contrast. Then came the deploy- ment along the base of the hills as the first shells began to fall, the advance in open order, ill which the nicely in- culcated teachings of the parade ground fell to pieces, the tumble of men, of companies, and, later, of regi- ments, pressing forward past the dead and stricken, the shouts, the rattle of machine guns and rifles. Batteries came galloping where they had DO theoretical business to be- upsettiug the junior officers desperate attempts to preserve alignment; Red Cross men invaded the battle line to suecor the wounded; commissariat mules. shaking off the lethargy which no amount of belaboring had ever over- come, ran away with supplies and strewed embalmed beef over the hill- side. In the midst of it all Wallace had rallied some men of his own troop and led them forward; he plunged into the patch of scrub-coyered jungle, and found that he was alone.
 In front of him was a small clearing. made by some Cuban squatter in the preceding year and abandoned after the reaping. It contained the ruin of palm shack, and the furroWs Scraped by primitive blow were only just dis ccrnible amid the rank growth that had sprung up. The lieutenant stop ped and shouted, expecting to see his men come running through the trees.
 But none appeared, and it was at this moment that the bullet that had been stamped with his name, accord ing to the soldiers superstition. found him. He felt a smart blow on the shoulder, which knocked him back ward. He stumbled, fell down, sat up again and discovered that his elbow was shattered. The arm hung help lessly at his side.
 He managed to bind up the wound with his hand and teeth. There was not much pain, but a sort of physical , languor, which made him reel giddl!y when he arose. There was burning thirst, too. It was extraordinary that little thing like that should take the grit out of a man. A little blood was running down his sleeve, but the wound seemed trivial.
 1 Wallace leaned against the wall of i the shack and waited for his men.
 He shouted once or twice more, but nobody answered him, and the battle seemed to be drifting in another direc- ton. Wallace imagined that his troop ]. had advanced around the patch of scrub, in which case he was not likely to establish touch with 'Aem again till nightfall. He cursed his luck and started forward, but the trees began to reel around him; he clutched at the wall of the shack, missed 1t, and fell.
 Then he realized that he was out of the fight. Yet, in spite of his intense disappointment, he knew that worse might have befallen him. He had fought through hours of the day--that was much; he was probably spared to lead his men again-and that was more. He had found and proved l himself; and at twenty-one young man, for all his self-confidence, is com posed of fears and doubts as well. In spite of his soldier ancestors, Mark Wallace had not been sure that his 1 capacity for leadership extended be-